“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” Zhu Chenghu, a major general in the People’s Liberation Army, said at an official press briefing for foreign journalists.

General Zhu, a well-known hawk who has said before that China could strike the US with long-ranged missiles, said his comments were “my assessment”, and not the “policy of the Government”.

Nevertheless, his threat, in which he emphasised that China’s definition of its territories included warships and aircraft, is the first time for a decade that a senior official in Beijing has used such provocative rhetoric.

General Zhu, a professor at the National Defence University in China, added: “If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond.

“We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

Rick Fisher, a former US congressional official and an authority on the Chinese military, said the specific nature of the threat was “a new addition to China’s public discourse”.

Although General Zhu is not formally engaged with policy-making, his comments come at a sensitive time for relations between Washington and Beijing on a range of issues, including Taiwan and trade.

This week congressional hearings in Washington over the intentions of the Chinese oil company Cnooc Ltd to buy Unocal Corporation have featured strong anti-Chinese comments on Capitol Hill.

Statements such as General Zhu’s “have sort of sown the seeds in Washington that the Chinese are not just a threat, they’re a real danger”, John Tkacik, a China specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Asian Wall Street Journal.

Mr Tkacik said General Zhu’s comments may have been intended as a kind of “psychological warfare” to underscore China’s resolve, but that they were likely to backfire in Washington.

Taiwan has enjoyed nominal independence since 1949, but Beijing claims Taiwan as part of China. General Zhu described Taiwanese independence as “a cancer” that could spread.

China’s official doctrine has called for no first use of nuclear weapons since its first atomic test in 1964.

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