Xiong Guangkai
熊光楷
Xiong in April 2005
Head of the Intelligence Bureau of the PLA General Staff Department
In office
12 August 1988 – November 1992
Preceded byCao Xin
Succeeded byLuo Yudong
Personal details
Born (1939-03-15) 15 March 1939
Shanghai, China
Political partyChinese Communist Party
Alma materPLA Foreign Language College
Military service
Allegiance People's Republic of China
Branch/service People's Liberation Army Ground Force
Years of service1956–2006
Rank General

Xiong Guangkai (Chinese: 熊光楷; pinyin: Xióng Guāngkǎi; born 15 March 1939) is a retired Chinese general.

Biography

Xiong was born in Shanghai on 15 March 1939, while his ancestral home in Nanchang, Jiangxi. He joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in 1956 and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1959. Xiong was Deputy Director (1984–88) and later Director (1988–92) of the Intelligence Bureau of the PLA General Staff Department, Assistant (1992–96) and later Deputy Chief-of Staff (1996–2005). In 1988 he was conferred the rank of Major General, in 1994 Lieutenant General and in 2000 General.

Xiong also served on the Central Leading Group on Taiwan,[1] He was an alternate member of the 14th, 15th and 16th Central Committees and is currently an adjunct professor at Qinghua and Beijing Universities and Chairman of the China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS), where he succeeded Xu Xin.[2]

In 1995, General Xiong was widely but incorrectly quoted as threatening to use nuclear weapons against Los Angeles. The person to whom he was alleged to have said this, Chas Freeman, denies it.[3]

On China-Pakistan Relations

When confronted about Beijing's uncompromising support for Pakistan, Xiong Guangkai famously said, "Pakistan is China's Israel."[4] Andrew Small, the author of The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics, characterizes this remark as "part explanation, part sarcastic jibe, delivered by (China's) military intelligence chief after one too many meetings with US counterparts on the subject."[5]

References

  1. ↑ ""Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead!" Foreign Policy and Military Intelligence Assessments after the Retirement of General Xiong Guangkai" (PDF). media.hoover.org. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  2. ↑ Archived October 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ ArmsControlWonk: Gertz and Xiong: A Love Torn Asunder
  4. ↑ Thalif Deen. "China: 'Pakistan is our Israel' – Features". Al Jazeera English. Retrieved 13 May 2012.
  5. ↑ Small, Andrew (2015). The China–Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics. C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-0-19-021075-5.


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