Zhang Zhaozhong

For the fictional character, see Zhang Zhaozhong (The Book and the Sword).

Zhang Zhaozhong
Zhang Zhaozhong doing a speech at Beijing Institute of Technology in 2008
Native name	张召忠
Born	1952 (age 72–73) Yanshan County, Hebei, China
Allegiance	China
Service / branch	PLA Navy
Years of service	1970 - 2015
Rank	Rear admiral
Commands	military theorist at the PLA National Defense University

Zhang Zhaozhong (Chinese: 张召忠; born 1952) is a Chinese military theorist at the PLA National Defense University. He held the rank of rear admiral in the People's Liberation Army Navy prior to his retirement.

Earlier Life

He was born in a small village. Due to the Cultural Revolution, he was not able to pick his profession when he was enrolled in university, and was given the major in Arabic. He later was put to work as observer of the Iran-Iraq War.

Career

A frequent commentator on state-run television outlets, Zhang is known of his successful predictions about the Gulf War and wrong predictions during the CCTV live broadcast of the Iraq War, mainly due to the overestimation of Iraqi military's will to fight and failure to completely understand the American strategy. . He is also known for some of his belligerent comments to hide the real military strength of China. The best-known instance was his dramatical denial of the existence of the Chinese stealth fighter J-20 by exaggerating the American technological advantages.

In contrast, he also sometimes expresses a low opinion of U.S. military capabilities, with his 2012 assertion that the U.S. would "run like a rabbit" if China went to war with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands being an example. He also suggested that the PLAN might equip civilian fishing boats for suicide attacks against the United States Navy.

Zhaozhong is known for his CCTV commentaries where he has, among other things, said that smog is a good thing for China because it would obscure US laser weapon systems in the event of an attack Zhang also publicly predicted at various points "...the U.S. military could not take Baghdad in 2003, hours before U.S. troops marched into Saddam Hussein’s palace; that Libyan rebels could not find Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 as the dictator was being dragged out of his hideout; that Chinese seaweed farmers’ nets in the Yellow Sea could deter U.S. nuclear submarines from approaching; that Chinese fishing vessels could destroy the U.S. Navy’s 10,000-ton Zumwalt-class destroyer."

Controversy

With those misguided statements from Zhang Zhaozhong spread across the Internet in China, he quickly becomes part of an online Internet meme. The situation has led Chinese Internet users to mockingly refer to Zhang as “chief of the Strategic Fool-You Agency.”