CHINESE NUCLEAR POSTURE AND FORCE MODERNIZATION

Abstract

Claims that China is the only nuclear power currently expanding its arsenal fail to take into account the technical, historical, and bureaucratic realities that shaped China's nuclear posture and drive its ongoing modernization. China's strategic modernization is largely a process of deploying new delivery systems, not designing new nuclear warheads; the majority of its new missiles are conventionally armed. Today, China maintains the smallest operationally deployed nuclear force of any of the legally recognized nuclear weapon states, operates under a no-first-use pledge, and keeps its warheads off alert. The modernization of China's delivery systems is the culmination of a decades-long plan to acquire the same capabilities deployed by the other nuclear powers. U.S. concerns about this modernization focus too much on deterring a deliberate Chinese attack and ignore the risk that modernized U.S. and Chinese forces could interact in unexpected ways during a crisis, creating uncontrollable escalatory pressures. To manage this risk, Washington should assure Chinese leaders that it does not seek to deny China's deterrent, in exchange for some understanding that China will not seek numerical parity with U.S. nuclear forces.

Keywords:

• China
• nuclear weapons
• disarmament
• modernization
• United States

Acknowledgements

A version of this article first appeared in Engaging China and Russia on Nuclear Disarmament, Cristina Hansell and William C. Potter, eds., James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Occasional Paper No. 15, April 2009, pp. 37–46.

Notes

1. “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century,” Department of Defense/Department of Energy, September 2008, p. 6.

2. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, January 2001). On the readiness of China's plutonium production reactor at Guangyuan and uranium enrichment facility at Heping, see David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Global Stocks of Nuclear Explosive Materials, Ch. 13, “Chinese Military Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium Inventories,” Institute for Science and International Security, June 30, 2005.

3. The phrase is from Nie Rongzhen (translated by Zhong Renyi), Inside the Red Star: The Memoirs of Marshal Nie Rongzhen (Beijing: New World Press, 1988), p. 702.

4. Albert Wohlstetter, The Delicate Balance of Terror, P-1472 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1958).

5. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 461.

6. Mark A. Ryan, Chinese Attitudes toward Nuclear Weapons: China and the United States during the Korean War (New York: ME Sharpe, 1989), p. 179.

7. Ralph L. Powell, “Great Powers and Atomic Bombs Are ‘Paper Tigers,’” China Quarterly, No. 23 (July–September, 1965), pp. 55–63.

8. Matthew Evangelista cites a wonderful pair of remarks from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President Dwight D. Eisenhower that suggest both saw nuclear weapons in terms of minimum deterrence. “Missiles are not cucumbers,” Khrushchev said, “one cannot eat them, and one does not require more than a certain number in order to ward off an attack.” Eisenhower was more precise about that “certain number.” “We should develop a few of these missiles as a threat, but not 1,000 or more,” Eisenhower said. He added that if the Soviet Union and the United States could launch more, then “he personally would want to take off for the Argentine.” Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

9. Nie, Inside the Red Star, p. 702.

10. For more on the ‘‘four marshals,’’ see Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 245–49; Chen Jian and David Wilson, ‘‘‘All Under the Heavens is Great Chaos’: Beijing, the Sino-Soviet Border Clashes, and the Turn Toward Sino-American Rapprochement,’’ Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 155–75.

11. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (Yale University Press, 1967), p. 3.

12. Private communications with Chinese and American participants, 2008_2009. The story is briefly recounted in Lionel Beehner, ‘‘Found in Translation,’’ Seed Magazine, March 24, 2009.

13. The quote is taken from Office of the Secretary of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1997). The intelligence community continues to describe the Chinese nuclear stockpile in this manner. See, for example, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Maples’ statement in 2006 that “China currently has more than 100 nuclear warheads.” Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, “Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States,” Statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 28, 2006.

14. See, for example, “China's Nuclear Weapons Testing: Facing Prospects for a Comprehensive Test Ban,” Office of Scientific and Weapons Research, September 30, 1993, p. 1; and “China Seeking Foreign Assistance To Address Concerns About Nuclear Stockpile Under CTBT,” Proliferation Digest, March 29, 1996, p. 38. (Both documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act.)

15. On the history of China's ballistic missile programs, see John Wilson Lewis and Hua Di, “China's Ballistic Missile Programs: Technologies, Strategies, Goals,” International Security 17 (Fall 1992).

16. On Chinese ballistic missile developments, see Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2008, Department of Defense, 2008; and “Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat,” National Air and Space Intelligence Center, NASIC-1031-0985-06, March 2006.

17. On Chinese stockpile stewardship activities, see, “CTBT: Regional Issues and U.S. Interests,” Bureau of Arms Control, U.S. Department of State, October 8, 1999.

18. See Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, Current And Projected National Security Threats To The United States, S. Hrg. 107–597, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, 321; and “Country Profiles: China,” Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Countermeasure Integration Program, April 1995, pp. 12–18. China also has the capability to place multiple warheads on its older, liquid-fueled DF-5 ICBMs, although it has not yet done so.

19. For example, Sun Xiangli, deputy director of the Arms Control Research Division, Beijing Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, has disputed the notion that “the number of weapons that make up a limited nuclear force is immutably fixed. In fact, the required size for such a capability is a dynamic quantity relating to the nuclear arsenal's survivability. For instance, one guide to the size required of China's nuclear force is to be able to mount a nuclear strike that can penetrate an enemy's missile defense system after surviving a first strike.” Sun Xiangli, “Analysis of China's Nuclear Strategy,” China Security, No. 1 (Autumn 2005), pp. 23–27.

20. International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services Subcommittee of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat through 2015, S. Hrg. 107–467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002.

21. “Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat,” National Air and Space Intelligence Center, NASIC-1031-0985-06, March 2006.

22. Robert D. Walpole, speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 17, 1998, <https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/1998/walpole_speech_091798.html>. The textbook Zhanyi Xue implies this arrangement by defining the “missile base group” as “two or more missile bases and warhead bases.” See Zhanyi Xue [Operational Studies] (Beijing: National Defense University, 2000), Ch.14, p.1. For a description of Chinese operating practices, see Strategic Missile Tidbits (1995), p. 3 (released under the Freedom of Information Act).

23. PRTBs are described in Richard Clarke, Your Government Failed You (New York: Ecco, 2008), pp. 102–103. Chinese press reports of mobile ballistic missile exercises are described in Li Bin, “Tracking Chinese Strategic Mobile Missiles,” Science and Global Security 15 (2007), pp. 11–30.

24. Zhanyi Xue [Operational Studies].

25. Some Chinese military officers complain about the difficulty of maintaining the viability of China's small deterrent after riding out a nuclear attack. Others appear to favor preemptive doctrines more generally. These criticisms are summarized in Alistair Iain Johnston, “China's New ‘Old Thinking’: The Concept of Limited Deterrence,” International Security 20 (Winter 1995–96), pp. 5–42, especially pp. 21–23.

26. The alert is detailed in John Lewis and Xue Litai, Imagined Enemies: China Prepares for Uncertain War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 51–74.

27. See Ch. 14 of Zhanyi Xue [Operational Studies].

28. For example, one exercise is described in Dong Jushan and Wu Xudong, “Build New China's Shield of Peace,” Beijing Zhongguo Qingnian Bao, July 1, 2001, FBIS-CPP-2001-0703-000119.

29. Scott D. Sagan, “Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management,” International Security 9 (Spring 1985), p. 136.

30. Scott D. Sagan, Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 117–18.