China's Strategic Arsenal

Worldview, Doctrine, and Systems

James M. Smith,Paul J. Bolt

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781647120801
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide a fresh assessment of China's strategic military capabilities, doctrines, and its political perceptions in light of rapidly advancing technologies, an expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal, and increased great-power competition with the United States.

ONE

The US-Chinese Relationship
and China as a Twenty-First-Century
Strategic Power

James M. Smith and Paul J. Bolt

The chapters in this book are fundamentally about China—its strategic worldview, its doctrines, and its systems. In prelude to and as context for that detailed analysis, our chapter provides a broad yet brief overview of Sino-US relations across the second half of the twentieth century and into the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We do so largely from a US perspective, since the context for the Chinese perspective is the focus of the remainder of the book. The Cold War relationship, characterized by a path from conflict to limited cooperation, is outlined first, followed by the mixed cooperation and competition of the post–Cold War era and then today’s renewed great-power competition.

THE COLD WAR SINO-US STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP

The Sino-US relationship during the Cold War can be divided into two phases. The first phase began with the entry of China into the Korean War in 1950 and lasted until Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972; the second phase extended from Nixon’s visit until 1989. The first phase was characterized by war, threats of war, and nuclear tensions. The second witnessed rapprochement and hope for a productive relationship, but disagreements, disappointments, and misunderstandings persisted, especially over Taiwan. The second phase concluded when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crushed the student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989.

After World War II American security strategy in the Asia-Pacific evolved rapidly due to shifting strategic realities. In late 1945 the US government envisioned a future defined by a neutral Japan, a stable China, and collective security for the region based on principles defined at Yalta in 1945. However, as it became clear that communist forces led by Mao Zedong were winning the Chinese civil war, American policymakers were forced to adapt. In 1948 George Kennan, director of policy planning at the State Department, presented a new strategy for the Pacific that focused on offshore maritime control. Two years later the United States was fighting on the Korean Peninsula and then drawn into an unanticipated land war against Chinese troops on the Asian mainland. The war poisoned US relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for two decades and led the United States to develop a series of alliances in Asia to contain communism and China, the so-called hub-and-spokes system.¹

The first phase of the Cold War relationship between the United States and China was defined by mutual hostility. Patrick Tyler describes the period as “a barely arrested state of war” between the two countries.² Harry Harding asserts that the United States considered the PRC government to be “dangerously radical and irresponsible,” while China saw the United States as the world’s leading capitalist power and supporter of the Kuomintang (KMT), the ruling party of the Republic of China (ROC) and confined to Taiwan.³ Chinese historian Dong Wang asserts that “the defining character of American-Chinese relations in the 1950s and 1960s was the American-led crusade against Communism which attempted to set the ground rules for the governance of China and other parts of the world.”⁴

Two related issues that divided the United States and China in the first phase of the Cold War were ideology (with a strategic component) and the status of Taiwan. Washington’s containment policy was designed to resist the spread of communism. Thus while China sought to create international space for itself and promote its ideology internationally, particularly in the developing world, the United States endeavored to isolate Beijing.⁵ China’s alliance with the Soviet Union deepened American antagonism. After 1949 American policymakers worried that China, backed by Soviet nuclear weapons, might dominate Asia.⁶

Following the Korean War armistice, Taiwan figured most prominently as the physical locus of Chinese-American tensions. The American decision to send the Seventh Fleet to guard the Taiwan Strait after the onset of the Korean War ensured that Beijing’s forces would be unable to drive the KMT out of Taiwan and unable to unify the mainland and Taiwan under the rule of the PRC. While Beijing considered the subject of Taiwan to be an internal affair and unfinished business left over from the Chinese civil war, the United States diplomatically recognized only the ROC. The Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the ROC, signed in 1954, committed the United States to the defense of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands (although the treaty excluded Kinmen and Matsu).

During this early Cold War period the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons against China on multiple occasions. For example, in pressuring China to reach an armistice at the end of the Korean War, the Dwight Eisenhower administration warned that the United States would be willing to use its nuclear weapons. During the First Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954–55, Eisenhower suggested at a news conference that American tactical nuclear weapons might be used in Asia (a signal to the Chinese). In the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 Eisenhower told the Joint Chiefs to be ready to use nuclear weapons, and B-47s armed with nuclear bombs were deployed to Guam. Furthermore, the United States based its Matador nuclear missiles in Taiwan during the Cold War.⁷ Nevertheless, John Pomfret suggests Eisenhower was mainly bluffing.⁸

Mao had famously stated in the 1940s that nuclear weapons were “paper tigers.” Although much was made of his comment outside China, the statement indicates that Mao believed nuclear weapons had military and political limitations. However, Mao also knew that having nuclear weapons was a crucial deterrent in itself. Thus in the 1950s China began a nuclear program in response to American nuclear deployments in Asia and US threats to use nuclear weapons against China. Mao and Zhou Enlai asserted that China’s nuclear program was defensive and designed to prevent blackmail.⁹ A Chinese statement in 1963, by which time China was striving to break the nuclear monopolies of both the United States and the Soviet Union, insisted that “nuclear weapons in the possession of a socialist country are always a means of defense against nuclear blackmail and nuclear war.”¹⁰ Although the Soviets had promised nuclear aid to China, they failed to provide an expected prototype of an atomic bomb and relations between the two socialist states deteriorated in the late 1950s.¹¹

As China approached its first atomic test on October 16, 1964, American intelligence officials assessed the likely timing of the event. While the CIA expected a test after 1964, State Department analyst Allen Whiting’s best estimate was October 1.¹² American government analysts debated how detrimental this test would be to the security of the United States. In a State Department report from April 1964 Robert Johnson downplayed the risks of a Chinese nuclear test. Johnson asserted that the benefits of a test for China would be largely political rather than military. The great preponderance of American nuclear power made it highly unlikely that China would engage in a first strike in any context that didn’t threaten the survival of the PRC regime, and Chinese weapons would not deter the United States from assisting its Asian allies anyway. As a result, the United States did not need to consider any major policy changes.¹³

On the other side of the debate, the document “China as a Nuclear Power,” issued by the Office of International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense less than two weeks before China’s test, presented a bleak view of the future, with China emerging as a nuclear power. The report suggested China could soon be producing thirty to fifty weapons per year, with intercontinental capability to destroy San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Washington by 1975. Moreover, Chinese nuclear weapons could greatly limit American freedom of action in Asia and elsewhere. Possession of nuclear weapons would not make China more cautious, but rather would be a tool in China’s efforts to dominate Asia.¹⁴

Both the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations considered taking military action against Chinese nuclear facilities. However, the Soviets rebuffed American efforts to gain their support for an attack.¹⁵ An example of one American government report considering military action was produced by the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in December 1964, two months after China’s first test. The report evaluates four potential options that were raised in a prior (and still publicly unavailable) American government report: US nonnuclear air attacks against Chinese nuclear facilities, an air attack by the ROC, covert attacks launched by agents in China, and the insertion by air of ROC sabotage teams into China to destroy nuclear facilities. The report criticizes the conclusions of State Department analyst Johnson, suggesting that he underestimated the dangers of Chinese nuclear capabilities to American interests.¹⁶

After China’s test of an atomic bomb, both the United States and China issued statements. President Johnson, at a press conference on October 16, 1964, stated that the United States was not surprised at China’s test but reassured the public that the United States would remain more powerful than China and Chinese nuclear weapons would not deter the United States from assisting its allies.¹⁷ The written Chinese statement issued on October 16 asserted that the atomic test was an achievement in the Chinese people’s “struggle to strengthen their national defence and oppose the US imperialist policy of nuclear blackmail and nuclear threats.”¹⁸ The document goes on to say that “in developing nuclear weapons, China’s aim is to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear powers and to eliminate nuclear weapons.” The statement promised that China will never use nuclear weapons first, and called for an international conference on the proh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 The US-Chinese Relationship and China as a Twenty-First-Century Strategic Power
• 2 China’s “Nested” Worldview
• 3 China’s Nuclear Doctrine and Deterrence Concept
• 4 Strategic Stability and the Impact of China’s Modernizing Strategic Strike Forces
• 5 China’s Strategic Systems and Programs
• 6 China’s Regional Nuclear Capability, Nonnuclear Strategic Systems, and Integration of Concepts and Operations
• 7 Organization of China’s Strategic Forces
• 8 China on Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Strategic Stability
• 9 China’s Strategic Future
• List of Contributors
• Index