China has responded to reports that Taiwan was planning to breach the $25 billion Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river, if China tried to conquer Taiwan. One Chinese general commented that an attack on the dam would, "provoke retaliation that will blot out the sky and cover up the earth." The general used a Chinese idiom, but the meaning was clear; mess with the dam and we go nuclear. At the same time, China said that the dam, built to withstand a level 10 (on the Richter scale) earthquake, could not be brought down by any kind of aerial bomb. They should talk to some bomb designers, or maybe they already did. If the dam is invulnerable, why bother making nuclear threats? Dropping a nuke on Taiwan might get a nuclear response from the United States. Or, from Taiwan itself. While Taiwan has officially refrained from building nuclear weapons, nuclear threats from China certainly encourage development of nukes. Taiwan has long been one of those countries that could easily build nuclear weapons, but has not done so.