China General Threatens War if Taiwan Targets Dam

BEIJING - - A Chinese general denounced an idea that Taiwan's military could threaten China's Three Gorges dam and said recently that any strike on the world's biggest hydropower project would lead to war.

In its annual report to the U.S. Congress on China's military power, the Pentagon said proponents of strikes against China "apparently hope" that merely establishing places like the Three Gorges dam as targets would deter Chinese military coercion.

China will "be seriously on guard against threats from 'Taiwan independence terrorists,"' People's Liberation Army (PLA) Lieutenant General Liu Yuan said in a commentary in the official China Youth Daily, warning against such a move.

"(It) will not be able to stop war...it will have the exact opposite of the desired effect," Liu said.

"It will provoke retaliation that will 'blot out the sky and cover up the earth'," he said, quoting a Chinese idiom.

China has considered Taiwan a breakaway province that must be returned to the fold, by force if necessary, since their split at the end of a civil war in 1949.

The warning came as the Taiwan Defense Ministry said it had test fired two Patriot anti-missile missiles to showcase its air defense capability.

The test was part of a routine drill and was conducted at a military base in southern Taiwan, the ministry said. It did not say when the test was held or give any other details.

Liu said no country had conventional warhead missiles capable of critically damaging the dam -- made of concrete with a maximum thickness of more than 100 meters (328 feet).

DAM WON'T COLLAPSE

"The Three Gorges Dam will not collapse and cannot be destroyed," he said.

Seismologists have said the dam is designed to withstand an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale.

The dam was first proposed decades ago, but construction was delayed because late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong wanted to ensure the PLA could defend it against any attack by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops. Construction finally began in 1993 and China has expressed confidence it can defend it.

But the Pentagon report stirred controversy in China.

"Since Taipei cannot match Beijing's ability to field offensive systems, proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China's urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion," it said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week the report was "Cold War mentality harbouring evil intentions."

President Bush has pledged to do whatever it takes to help democratic Taiwan defend itself against Chinese invasion.

Tensions have simmered since Taiwan's March presidential polls, which incumbent Chen Shui-bian won by a razor-thin margin after a mysterious election eve assassination attempt.

China suspects Chen will push for formal independence around 2008, when Beijing hosts the Olympics. Chinese officials have vowed to pay any price to stop him on his road to statehood -- even losing the Games.

Liu, the general, called the reference in the Pentagon report "petty psychological war."

He likened Washington to "a prostitute pretending to be a gentleman" and no better than Osama bin Laden, whose al Qaeda group has been blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Three Gorges Dam, also the world's largest flood control project, is due to be completed in 2009 at a cost of nearly $25 billion. With total capacity of 18,200 megawatts, it will generate 84.6 billion kwh of electricity a year.

China says it needs the dam to contain the Yangtze River's devastating annual floods and to meet future power demand. But critics say it is not a practical solution to either problem and could cause pollution and silting by slowing the river's flow.