When China’s Gen. Chi comes to call

By: William Triplett II
The Washington Times, 4 December 1996

In San Diego, the Republicans declared their attitude toward
the Chinese government to be one of “vigilance.” With
the lavish welcome being prepared for the Chinese defense
minister this week, the Clinton administration has evidently
chosen the opposite – appeasement.

Of all the current serving Chinese military officers, Gen.
Chi Haotian has the most of his countrymen’s blood on his hands.
On the night of June 3-4, 1989, he was chief of the general
staff, the equivalent in rank to the chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs. As Time magazine declared in 1989, “As chief of
staff, Chi bears major responsibility for the violence unleashed
upon Beijing’s citizenry by his troops.” He was in
operational control and responsible for the detailed planning of
the assault on Beijing. According to the U.S. Defense Liaison
Office in Hong Kong, Gen. Chi had up to 350,000 troops at his
command from at least 14 of China’s Group Armies and two airborne
brigades. From all four points of the compass, Gen. Chi sent in
hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, including
China’s most modern tank, the T-69. His generals made a contest
of it to see which unit could reach the square first. The unarmed
people of Beijing attempted to defend their city and paid the
price. According to a recent Chinese People’s Liberation Army
[PLA] defector, the PLA killed 3,700 students, workers and
ordinary citizens that night. Frantic parents seeking to learn
the fate of their children were mowed down by Gen. Chi’s troops
right in front of the Beijing Hotel. Even the doctors and
ambulance drivers treating the wounded were targets.

Gen. Chi is a party man and career political commissar. To
ensure that PLA troops would fire on the Chinese people, he took
two crucial actions. First, he kept his troops on the outskirts
of the city under 10 days of intense political indoctrination.
The young, peasant soldiers were told over and over they were
being sent in to protect the city from “hoodlums.” They
knew nothing of the demonstrations for democracy in Tiananmen
Square. Second, Gen. Chi used the 27th Group Army as his
spearhead. He had spent many years with the 27th, ultimately
rising to be their senior political officer. He knew they were
loyal to the party and they didn’t let him down. Most on-the-spot
observers of the massacre accuse the 27th of doing the majority
of the killing.

Immediately after June 4, Gen. Chi turned his attention to
suppressing Chinese news coverage of the massacre and
propagandizing to foreigners. In the latter role, he has had
considerable experience since he exercised military control over
the Chinese propaganda outlets throughout the mid-1970s.

In January 1990, Gen. Chi made his views known in the Chinese
publication Qiushi [Seeking Truth]. He expressly rejected the
idea that the PLA should become a professional, nonpoliticized
military. Quoting Mao Tse-tung, he declared that the party would
always command the gun.

For his devotion to the party, Gen. Chi was promoted to
defense minister in 1993 and vice chairman of the Central
Military Commission in 1995. Other military officers less willing
to fire on the Chinese people saw their careers end in the Army
purges of 1990.

Since Tiananmen, Gen. Chi has been associated with
America-baiting, threats against Taiwan’s democracy and the rapid
modernization of China’s military forces. In the fall of 1993,
Gen. Chi and several other military officers initiated an
extraordinary petition to President Jiang Zemin, demanding a
tougher line against the United States. According to the Hong
Kong press, the petition to Mr. Jiang reads [in part] as follows:

“Neither the Chinese people nor the People’s Liberation
Army will ever forget the interference and bullying of U.S.
hegemonists China has suffered in the 1990s, who threatened and
invaded China with warships, and sold advanced naval and
aeronautical weapons to Taiwan to obstruct the peace and
unification cause across the Taiwan Straits.”

Most Americans would be very surprised to learn that we had
“invaded China with warships” in the early 1990s. But
Gen. Chi’s virulent brand of anti-Americanism may derive from his
service against U.S. forces during the Korean War. He was a
battalion political instructor in the 27th Army of the
“Chinese People’s Volunteers” and the CPVs are thought
to have suffered up to a million casualties in that war. After
three years of fighting, he would have seen many comrades fall.

The 1993 petition is also important because it reveals the
PLA’s thinking on the Taiwan issue almost two years before
Republic of China President Lee visited Cornell. During the 1995
and 1996 PLA exercises designed to intimidate Taiwan’s new
democracy, Gen. Chi was at the forefront threatening the use of
force. For example, on Army Day 1995 (Aug. 1), he gave a very
hard-hitting speech, pledging never to abandon the option of
force against Taiwan. And as the Economist noted in the spring of
1996, “Chi Haotian, China’s defense minister, even spoke
recently of the need for the ‘liberation’ of Taiwan – language
not heard from a Chinese official for over a decade.”

Finally, there is Gen. Chi’s role in the PLA’s military
buildup. According to the administration’s handout biography of
the general, “Chi has publicly pushed for the modernization
of his country’s armed forces and has regularly alluded to the
role sophisticated weapons played in winning the Persian Gulf
war.” In 1995, China’s strategic rocket forces, known as the
Second Artillery, announced completion of the Great Wall Project.
According to the U.S. Defense Liaison Office in Hong Kong:

“This is apparently the modern missile-launching
positions which dot the country [emphasis added] and on
which construction was speeded up in 1994. The project may have
made possible the deployment of M-9 missile-launching units to
Nanjing Military Region to take part in the recent missile
training launches near Taiwan.”

No conceivable Republican administration would give Gen. Chi
a visa, much less treat him as an honored guest. Bringing Gen.
Chi to Washington closes out forever any claim the Clinton
administration may have to speak for the national interest on
China, or even common decency.

William C. Triplett II is the former chief Republican
counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.