![]() In what one participant called "a well-rehearsed minuet," Perry notified Liu that there would be "grave consequences" should Chinese weapons strike Taiwan - words not spoken to China since the countries established diplomatic ties, and universally understood as code for a military response. ![]() Liu Huaqiu, a senior Chinese national security official, found a grim-faced Perry waiting for him when he arrived at a scheduled dinner that evening in the State Department's eighth-floor Madison Room. ![]() They splashed down in the shipping lanes adjacent to Taiwan's two principal seaports: first Kaohsiung in the south, then Chilung in the north, then south again to Kaohsiung. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance craft and the cruiser USS Bunker Hill had monitored three Chinese M-9 ballistic missiles as they were rapid-fired from China's Huanan mountains toward Taiwan. Perry delivered a threat - about as blunt as they come in contemporary diplomacy - to go to war. On Thursday, March 7, 1996, in an elegant dining room overlooking the Potomac River, Defense Secretary William J.
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