Zhu Chenghu - Background

Background

Beijing has had atomic bombs since 1964 and has a first and often stated ‘‘no first use’’ policy on nuclear weapons. Zhu is the first Chinese high-ranking military official in the past ten years to have said that China is likely to use nuclear weapons against the United States if the need arises. The explicitness of his remarks has gone beyond that of similar remarks made by Xiong Guangkai during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996.

Zhu is one of China's better-known military analysts. During the war in Kosovo in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the more recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zhang Zhaozhong, Peng Guangqian, Luo Yuan, and Zhu often publicly discussed and analyzed the war situation at China's two major military staff colleges – the NDU and the Academy of Military Sciences. The four men were also regarded in the Western world as Chinese high-ranking military officials who had taken on a hawkish shade.

The Chinese press speculates that Zhu was transferred from the Institute for Strategic Studies (of the NDU), where he held a sensitive first-line position, to the second-line Department of Military Training for Foreigners (of the NDU), the predecessor of the Defense Affairs Institute, so that there would be less of a chance for him to express his hawkish opinions publicly. Zhu is the first Chinese general who has faced calls from the U.S. House of Representatives to be dismissed from his position .