Nineteen days after taking power as China’s leader, Xi Jinping convened the generals who oversee the country’s nuclear missile fleet and issued blunt demands. He said China needed to prepare for the possibility of a confrontation with a formidable adversary, and suggested it wanted stronger nuclear capabilities to counter the threat.
He told the generals that their military was “the pillar of our status as a great power.” According to the official internal summary of Xi’s December 2012 speech on China’s nuclear and conventional missile arsenals, he announced a “strategic plan for responding under the most complex and difficult circumstances to military intervention by a great adversary.” He said that we must move forward. It was later called the 2nd Artillery Corps and was verified by the New York Times.
In public, Mr. Xi’s statements on the nuclear issue were few and routine. But his behind-closed-doors comments revealed in the speech show that fear and ambition have driven China’s transformative buildup of its nuclear weapons stockpile over the past decade.
Mr. Xi suggested early on that China needed a strong nuclear force to emerge as a great power. He also echoed concerns that China’s relatively modest nuclear arsenal could make it vulnerable to the United States, a “great adversary” made up of allies in Asia.
Now, as China’s nuclear options expand, Chinese military strategists are looking to nuclear weapons not only as a defensive shield, but also as a potential sword to intimidate and conquer adversaries. Even without launching nuclear weapons, China could mobilize and brandish missiles, bombers, and submarines to alert other countries to the risk of escalating to brinkmanship.
“Strong strategic deterrence can force an adversary to retreat from hasty action and quell it without starting a war,” Chen Jiaqi, a researcher at China’s National Defense University, wrote in a 2021 paper. writing. We will develop strategic deterrence weapons that can put other countries on the back burner, have a strong voice in times of peace, and take the initiative in times of war. ”
The article traces the motivations for China’s nuclear buildup, based on Mr. Xi’s internal speeches and dozens of People’s Liberation Army reports and studies, many published in professional journals. A recent study on China’s nuclear posture cites some of it. Many others have not been featured before.
Mr. Xi expanded his country’s nuclear arsenal faster than any other Chinese leader, bringing it closer to the big leagues of the United States and Russia. He has doubled China’s nuclear arsenal to about 500 warheads, and if this trend continues, it could have about 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, far more than Washington and Russia each currently deploy. U.S. officials say the number is about the same. (The United States and Russia each store thousands more warheads.)
China is also developing increasingly sophisticated missiles, submarines, bombers, and hypersonic vehicles capable of carrying out nuclear attacks. China has upgraded its nuclear test site in western Xinjiang, paving the way for the possibility of new underground tests, perhaps in the event of a superpower arms race.
Significant changes in China’s nuclear capabilities and nuclear doctrine could greatly complicate competition with the United States. China’s expansion has already sparked intense debate in Washington about how to respond, raising serious questions about the future of key arms control treaties. Meanwhile, the conflict between the United States and Russia raises the possibility of a new era of nuclear war.
Mr. Xi and President Biden have quieted their hatred since last year, but nuclear stability will be difficult to find if the United States confronts both China and Russia while China remains outside of key arms control treaties. Maybe.
Importantly, China’s expansion of its nuclear options could shape the future of Taiwan, an island democracy that Beijing claims as its own territory and relies on U.S. support for security. I’m saying that. In the coming years, Beijing may gain confidence in its ability to limit Washington and its allies’ interference in any conflict.
China’s “trump card” in deciding Taiwan’s fate could be a “strong strategic deterrent” warning that “any external intervention will not and is unlikely to succeed”, China says. Professor Ge Dengfei of the National Defense Technology University wrote: Communist Party magazine in 2022.
Xi Jinping’s nuclear revolution
Since China first tested an atomic bomb in 1964, Chinese leaders have said they would never be the “first to use nuclear weapons” in war. They reasoned that China would only need a relatively modest nuclear arsenal to reliably threaten potential adversaries that it could wipe out enemy cities if it were attacked with nuclear weapons.
“In the long run, China’s nuclear weapons are just a symbol,” Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in 1983, explaining Beijing’s position to visiting Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. “If China spends too much energy on them, we will weaken ourselves.”
Since the 1990s, China has been increasing its conventional military capabilities, but its nuclear arsenal has gradually increased. When Mr. Xi took over as leader in 2012, China had about 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States.
China was already increasingly challenging its neighbors over territorial disputes and saw danger in the Obama administration’s efforts to strengthen U.S. power across the Asia-Pacific. In a speech in late 2012, Mr. Xi warned his commanders that the United States was “strengthening strategic containment and encirclement around us.”
The Chinese government was also concerned that its nuclear deterrent was weakening. Chinese military analysts have warned that the People’s Liberation Army’s missiles are becoming more vulnerable to detection and destruction as the United States advances military technology and builds alliances in Asia.
China’s official history report reinforced that fear. PLA research often focuses on the Korean War and the Taiwan crisis of the 1950s, when American leaders hinted at the possibility of dropping atomic bombs on China. This memory has given Beijing a view that the United States is more likely to use “nuclear blackmail.”
“We must have sharp weapons to protect ourselves and killer maces that others fear,” Xi told armed officers of the People’s Liberation Army in late 2014.
In late 2015, he took a major step toward building up China’s nuclear arsenal. Wearing a green suit as China’s military chief, he presided over a ceremony in which the Second Artillery Corps, the country’s nuclear missile custodian, was reborn as the Rocket Army and elevated to a military service alongside the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Xi said the Rocket Force’s mission includes “strengthening credible nuclear deterrence and nuclear counterattack capabilities,” or the ability to withstand an initial attack and counterattack with destructive force.
From tunnel to silo field
China is not just pursuing more warheads. It also focuses on concealing and protecting warheads so they can be launched more quickly from land, sea, and air. The newly promoted Rocket Force added a powerful voice to the effort.
Rocket Force researchers said in a 2017 study that China would follow the United States in pursuing “sufficient nuclear forces to balance the new global situation and ensure that our country can seize the initiative in future wars.” It says that you should.
China’s nuclear deterrent has long relied heavily on troops dug into tunnels deep in remote mountains. Medical research into their harsh daily lives shows that soldiers are deprived of sunlight, regular sleep, and fresh air and trained to hide in tunnels for weeks or months while trying to avoid detection by the enemy. is recieving.
A 2018 Chinese state TV report said: “In the event of war, this nuclear weapon, which shuttles underground, will break through cover and launch missiles in places where the enemy does not expect it.”
The Rocket Force expanded rapidly, adding at least 10 new brigades within a few years, an increase of about one-third, according to a study published by the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Research Institute. China is also adding mobile missile launchers on roads and railroads to outwit U.S. satellites and other detection technology.
Nevertheless, Chinese concerns about US capabilities remain. Even as China deployed road-mobile missiles, some PLA experts argued that the missiles could be tracked by more sophisticated satellites.
A solution advocated by some Rocket Force analysts in 2021 is to also build clusters of launch silos for missiles, allowing the U.S. military to determine which ones house real missiles and which carry dummies. Out in one hit that forced them to detect and “make it even harder to wipe them out.” ”
Other China studies have made similar arguments about silos, and Mr. Xi and his commanders appear to be listening to them. His boldest move yet in nuclear expansion is the construction of three vast fields of some 320 missile silos in northern China. The silos are safely away from U.S. conventional missiles and can house missiles capable of attacking the United States.
However, this expansion was met with confusion. Mr. Xi abruptly replaced two of the Rocket Force’s top commanders last year, an unexplained mess that suggests the Army’s growth is being hampered by corruption. This year, nine senior Chinese military officials were expelled from the legislature, signaling an expansion of the investigation.
The disruption may slow China’s nuclear weapons program in the short term, but Mr. Xi’s long-term ambitions appear to have solidified. At the 2022 Communist Party Congress, he declared that China must continue to build up its “strategic deterrence.”
And despite the hundreds of new silos, Chinese military analysts are discovering new causes for concern. Last year, Chinese rocket engineers proposed strengthening the silos to better protect missiles from precision attacks. “Only then can our side ensure a deadly counterattack in the event of a nuclear attack,” they wrote.
difficult decision
Chinese leaders say they want peaceful unification with Taiwan, but are willing to use force if they deem other options to be futile. If China moves to occupy Taiwan, the United States may intervene to defend it, and China may be calculating that expanding its nuclear arsenal could serve as a strong warning.
Chinese military officers have previously issued strong warnings about nuclear retaliation against Taiwan. Now, the Chinese threat may be even more significant.
The ever-expanding fleet of missiles, submarines, and bombers could pose a credible threat not only to cities on the mainland United States, but also to U.S. military bases in Japan, Guam, and elsewhere. The risk of a conventional conflict escalating into a nuclear conflict could influence the decision. Chinese military analysts have argued that Russia’s nuclear warning is constraining NATO countries’ response to the invasion of Ukraine.
“The escalation ladder that they can now apply is much more nuanced,” said Bates Gill, executive director of the Asian Social Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “The implicit message is not just, ‘We can nuke Los Angeles.’ Now it’s, ‘We could annihilate Guam, but we wouldn’t want to risk escalation by doing so. .”
Beijing’s options include about 200 DF-26 missile launchers that can swap conventional and nuclear warheads to strike targets across Asia. Chinese official media reported that Rocket Force units were carrying out such exchanges, boasting about the missile’s dual conventional and nuclear role during military parades, which were meant to scare away rivals. It was a kind of exposure.
In a real-life confrontation, the United States faces difficult decisions over whether potential targets against China include nuclear-armed missile forces and, in extreme cases, whether incoming DF-26 missiles are nuclear. there’s a possibility that.
John K. Culver, a former senior CIA analyst who studies China’s military, said: “I don’t believe any U.S. president would risk nuclear escalation with whatever advice he was getting on behalf of Taiwan.” It’s going to be a really difficult decision.” “As soon as the United States begins bombing mainland China, no one will be able to accurately tell the U.S. president exactly where China’s front lines are.”