Major-General Zhu Chenghu is a senior Chinese military officer and dean at Beijing's National Defence University. He is also a notorious hawk on questions of nuclear doctrine. So when he declares that China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US in any future conflict over Taiwan, it is both alarming and predictable. He represents widespread thinking in the People's Liberation Army, but he is an extremist: a Chinese version of Curtis LeMay, the former US air force general who proposed massive nuclear pre-emptive strikes during the cold war.

The danger is that Gen Zhu's words, delivered at a briefing of foreign correspondents in Beijing last week, could scarcely have come at a worse time in terms of US-China relations. Anti-China hawks in Washington are eager to seize on any evidence of Chinese belligerence to justify draconian restrictions on trade and investment in the US Congress. The general has obliged, even though other Chinese officials have played down his views.