A Chinese general denounced an idea that Taiwan's military could threaten China's Three Gorges dam and said on Wednesday that any strike on the world's biggest hydropower project would lead to war.
In its annual report to the US Congress on China's military power, the Pentagon said proponents of strikes against China "apparently hope" that merely establishing places like the Three Gorges dam as targets would deter Chinese military coercion.
China will "be seriously on guard against threats from 'Taiwan independence terrorists'", People's Liberation Army (PLA) Lieutenant General Liu Yuan said in a commentary in the official China Youth Daily, warning against such a move.
"(It) will not be able to stop war...it will have the exact opposite of the desired effect," Liu said.
"It will provoke retaliation that will 'blot out the sky and cover up the earth'," he said, quoting a Chinese idiom.
China has considered Taiwan a breakaway province that must be returned to the fold, by force if necessary, since their split at the end of a civil war in 1949.
The warning came as the Taiwan Defence Ministry said it had test fired two Patriot anti-missile missiles to showcase its air defence capability.
The test was part of a routine drill and was conducted at a military base in southern Taiwan, the ministry said. It did not say when the test was held or give any other details.
Liu said no country had conventional warhead missiles capable of critically damaging the dam - made of concrete with a maximum thickness of more than 100 metres (328 feet).
"The Three Gorges Dam will not collapse and cannot be destroyed," he said.
Seismologists have said the dam is designed to withstand an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale.
The dam was first proposed decades ago, but construction was delayed because late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong wanted to ensure the PLA could defend it against any attack by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops.
Construction finally began in 1993 and China has expressed confidence it can defend it. But the Pentagon report stirred controversy in China.