China Dragon Roared . . . Was Anybody Listening?

By James Donahue

July 16, 2005

A few weeks ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld challenged China’s new military buildup during a conference of nations he attended in Singapore.

As if to taunt the Chinese delegation attending the conference, Rumsfeld asked the group: “If everyone agrees the question of Taiwan is going to be settled in a peaceful way, why this increase in ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan?”

An AP story said Rumsfeld then stated that the Pentagon’s annual assessment of China’s military capabilities indicates China is spending more than its leaders acknowledge and expanding its missile capabilities and developing advanced military technology.

He said China now has the world’s third-largest military budget, only behind the United States and Russia.

“Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?”

Rumsfeld’s remarks highlighted what has been a growing sense that the Bush Administration is publicly demonizing China, if only in the eyes of the American public. Among the most recent issues in the news has been the US government's opposition to a bid by China National Offshore Oil Corporation to purchase Unocal, the ninth-largest US oil company.

One of the few things preventing the ultimate clash between these two ideologically opposite thinking cultures is the commerce that the two countries share. That there is a disagreement over the purchase of an oil producing company, something China desperately needs at a time when the world oil supply is falling short, is significant.

The sabers are rattling in both Washington and Beijing and it is not a good sound.

In fact, Psychic Aaron C. Donahue warned in 2003 that if President Bush was re-elected to office, the United States and China would be engaged in a world war that would escalate to a nuclear exchange. He also warned that the United States will lose this war.

He has been predicting this looming war for several years.

Donahue's February 2004 interview with Art Bell was replayed on Coast-to-Coast Radio on Sunday, July 10. During this show, he predicted that Bush would win the election and that the United States was in great danger of going to war with China.

Mr. Bush may believe he is in control of the world’s most powerful military force and that America is invincible. But he may not be as strong as he believes. He has committed most of the nation’s military manpower and machinery to a senseless war in Iraq that is not going to go away. The Pentagon is in no position to make serious moves against a nuclear power like China.

Yet that is just what Bush and his staff appear to be doing. The United States has been selling high tech military defense weaponry to Taiwan and Bush publicly promised that he will defend Taiwan if China ever attacks that island.

The issue between Taiwan and mainland China is internal. It began after the Communists took over China in civil war during the 1940s and Nationalist leader Chang Kai-chek fled with his army to Formosa, now Taiwan.

That island has been struggling for its own independence from mainland China ever since. Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian campaigned for re-election last year on a promise that he would press to gain a total independence from China.

China, on the other hand, has claimed Taiwan as part of its territory since the beginning of this separation and has vowed to bring the self-governed group back into the fold. In March, China’s parliament passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of “non-peaceful means” to accomplish this.

The Chinese government is obviously getting into position to regain Taiwan, either peacefully or through force.

It was against that backdrop, that Chinese General Zhu Chenghu, a top ranking officer of the People’s Liberation Army, warned that China would use nuclear force if the United States gets involved in defending Taiwan.

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” he said last week during a briefing with foreign journalists.

We understand that Mr. Bush probably doesn’t understand the ramifications of what is happening in China these days. But we are hoping his political advisors have a handle on the seriousness of the situation. If they are wise in their counsel, they will do all they can to steer our president away from an inevitable clash with China that will prove to be a disaster for everyone involved.