The Nuclear Forces and Nuclear Strategy of the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

The focus of the Chinese nuclear strategy is still unclear and the actual size of nuclear arsenals of the PRC has never been published officially. According to the official Chinese nuclear policy, the PRC can use nuclear weapons only as means of “effective retaliation“ in the credible second strike. Despite the official Chinese stance, we have to recognize that the PRC now is the third nuclear power in the world. That follows from the pragmatic assessment of the size of its nuclear arsenals and the variety of nuclear weapons, which China managed to design and deploy. Note that China is the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council which has been actively improving and expanding its nuclear arsenals after the demise of the bipolar world. For many years the development of the Chinese nuclear forces had lagged behind the pace of the arms race set by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The things had changed since the 1990s. Against the background of the superpowers’ deep cuts of nuclear weapons the PRC managed the radical modernization of its nuclear forces, and their shape has changed drastically. A full-scale deployment of the improved mobile solid-propellant IRBM, SLBM and ICBM raises the Chinese nuclear forces to a new level. According to some assessments, China may work to achieve strategic parity with the U.S. and Russia. At the same time, the PRC is almost not bound by obligations of the international arms control regimes, apart of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Intense modernization of the strategic nuclear forces and lack of obligations are raising an issue of China’s involvement in international arms control regimes. It seems reasonable to conduct the pilot trilateral negotiations (China, Russia, and U.S.) on precision-guided hypersonic weapons, boost-glide in particular.