China's Nuclear Modernisation and the Dynamics of the Stability–Instability Paradox in U.S.–China Strategic Competition

Abstract

China's rapid nuclear modernisation is reshaping crisis dynamics in East Asia in ways that reflect a contemporary form of the stability–instability paradox. As Beijing moves toward a more diverse and survivable second-strike capability, strategic nuclear stability with the United States may become firmer in relative terms, even as coercive pressure and grey-zone activity around Taiwan intensify. This paper situates China within competing interpretations of the paradox, contrasting the classic Snyder–Jervis model with arguments that some states deliberately manipulate nuclear risk, as seen in Pakistan and in Russia's conduct during the Ukraine war. The analysis does not claim that nuclear modernisation initiates coercion, which has older roots, but that improving retaliatory survivability can condition how coercion is sustained, calibrated, and risk-managed under heightened escalation stakes. China is pursuing neither open brinkmanship nor a static form of minimal deterrence. Instead, it is building a nuclear backstop that supports prolonged competition below the threshold of major war. Evidence from China's missile expansion, silo construction, sea-based forces, and regional military behaviour shows how a firmer nuclear ceiling can coexist with recurrent lower level instability. The paper concludes with implications for U.S. crisis management and regional deterrence in the Taiwan Strait.

Introduction

The current trajectory of Chinese nuclear modernisation is moving China toward a significantly more capable position vis-à-vis the United States in both the size and sophistication of its force. Analysts predict that by the mid-2030s, China's pursuit of a diversified, survivable, and advanced nuclear posture will no longer function as a small, relatively static backdrop to Indo-Pacific security politics. Over the past two decades, Beijing has expanded and modernised its conventional and nuclear capabilities in ways that change how both regional actors and Washington think about war, crisis, and coercion in East Asia. Officially, China still proclaims a no-first-use policy and presents its arsenal as a minimalist deterrent. In practice, the shift from a modest and vulnerable force toward a larger, more diverse, and more survivable posture has raised concern among neighbours and in the United States about how nuclear expansion will shape crisis behaviour.

Nowhere is this concern sharper than across the Taiwan Strait. China treats reunification with Taiwan as a core national goal. The United States views Taiwan's security as crucial to credibility, the regional balance, and its strategic interests. Any Chinese attempt to take control of Taiwan by force would almost certainly invite U.S. military involvement and would carry a real risk of major-power war. As China's nuclear forces become more secure against disarming strikes, however, leaders in Beijing may judge that U.S. intervention would entail higher costs and greater uncertainty. Strategic nuclear stability at the top level may therefore create more room for coercion and conventional pressure below that level.

This is the logic captured by the stability–instability paradox, particularly the interpretation that greater stability at the nuclear level can widen the scope for limited conflict and coercion below the threshold of nuclear war (Jervis, 1989; Snyder, 1965). At its core, the paradox holds that mutual nuclear deterrence can reduce the likelihood of all-out war while increasing the frequency or intensity of limited conflicts. Nuclear weapons discourage leaders from gambling on a large-scale war that might escalate to nuclear use. The same leaders may feel more confident about running risks at lower levels of conflict because they expect neither side to breach the nuclear threshold. Cold War debates over U.S.–Soviet behaviour, and later empirical work, point to this dual effect of nuclear arsenals on international politics (Cohen, 2013; Rauchhaus, 2009).

China's recent behaviour should not be treated as a sudden product of nuclear modernisation alone. Beijing had already become more assertive across the Indo-Pacific for a range of reasons, including growing conventional capabilities, shifting regional power balances, domestic political priorities, and leadership perceptions of U.S. decline. Deterrence theory therefore presents a mixed picture: nuclear weapons can stabilise the upper tier of conflict while encouraging proxy wars, grey-zone campaigns, and other forms of coercion that fall short of open interstate war. Rauchhaus's quantitative study finds that nuclear-armed rivals are less likely to fight full-scale wars but more likely to engage in lower level militarised disputes (Rauchhaus, 2009). This article does not claim that nuclear modernisation initiates coercive behaviour, which has older roots and multiple drivers. Instead, it isolates the nuclear dimension as a conditioning factor that shapes how such behaviour is sustained, managed, and calibrated under conditions of strategic competition. Although China remains far from numerical parity with the U.S. arsenal, its concentrated military investments in the Indo-Pacific, combined with advances in missile forces and sea-based deterrent capabilities, have already altered local perceptions of risk.

From Beijing's perspective, a more survivable second-strike capability can limit U.S. options in a Taiwan contingency by altering expectations about escalation and reinforcing mutual restraint once a crisis is underway, rather than by creating the initial incentives for coercion. If Chinese leaders believe that retaliation would remain credible even under severe pressure, they may also judge that the United States faces higher costs and greater uncertainty when considering escalation in a conventional clash. This expectation can shape how existing coercive tools are employed, including incursions into air defence identification zones, large-scale exercises near Taiwan, and pressure on U.S. allies. The paradox emerges here as a strategic calculation rather than an abstract model. As the nuclear backstop appears more resilient, Beijing may be better positioned to sustain and manage conventional and grey-zone competition under conditions of greater restraint at the nuclear level.

This article examines how China's nuclear modernisation interacts with the stability–instability paradox in the specific context of U.S.–China strategic manoeuvring over Taiwan and the wider Indo-Pacific. It traces the evolution of China's nuclear strategy from minimal deterrence toward a more capable retaliatory posture. It then analyses how recent modernisation steps, including new missile silos, the deployment of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), and advances in sea-based deterrent forces, affect Beijing's expectations for crisis bargaining with the United States. The discussion centres on how these advancements may strengthen strategic stability in the nuclear domain while aligning with China's increasingly assertive actions at lower levels of conflict.

The article argues that China's expanding nuclear capabilities are likely to reinforce the stability–instability paradox in East Asia by conditioning escalation dynamics in ways that support nuclear deterrence while widening the scope for sustained competition below the threshold of major war. As the risk of deliberate nuclear war between China and the United States declines, the probability of sustained coercive pressure and limited clashes around Taiwan and nearby seas may grow. A more survivable Chinese arsenal will not give Beijing a free hand. It will, however, change U.S. and regional calculations by making major escalation more costly and uncertain. This shift is increasingly visible in patterns of Chinese military activity and in the way regional states adjust their defence and diplomatic strategies.

In doing so, the analysis links China's arsenal expansion to a broader set of questions about how nuclear modernisation, regional balances, and crisis behaviour interact. It speaks to debates on the general effects of nuclear weapons on war and peace, while grounding the analysis in a contemporary rivalry that sits at the centre of current security concerns.

Theoretical Framework: Competing Logics of the Stability–Instability Paradox

The stability–instability paradox emerged from early efforts to explain how nuclear weapons reshaped international politics. Scholars such as B. H. Liddell Hart and Glenn Snyder examined how nuclear arsenals altered choices about war and peace. They argued that nuclear weapons can deter large wars between nuclear-armed rivals while simultaneously opening space for smaller or limited conflicts at lower levels of violence. Rival nuclear dyads often redirect competition into proxy conflicts to avoid direct large-scale war (Roehrig, 2016). These ideas developed during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union built both nuclear and conventional forces while confronting each other through crises and proxy wars rather than direct military confrontation (Sultan, 2014).

Glenn Snyder offered the clearest early statement of the paradox in Deterrence and Defense (1961). He argued that “the greater the stability of the strategic balance of terror, the lower the stability of the overall balance at lower levels of violence” (Snyder, 1961). Nuclear weapons reduce incentives for all-out nuclear war and major direct clashes. At the same time, the presence of nuclear deterrence can make leaders more willing to test one another through limited conventional confrontations, crises, or indirect conflicts. Snyder also emphasised that conventional forces matter for how this trade-off plays out. Strong conventional capabilities can deter limited war and reduce pressure to escalate to nuclear use, yet they also provide leaders with more options to fight below the nuclear threshold and may weaken the restraining effect of nuclear weapons (Snyder, 1965).

Snyder linked this logic to historical cases and to asymmetric dyads. He argued that the balance of power between the United States and China in the 1960s reflected both nuclear capabilities and conventional strength. China's weaker conventional position and small nuclear force encouraged Beijing to pursue nuclear weapons for self-defence and to raise the credibility of deterrence in some settings. At the same time, China's relative nuclear weakness shaped its conventional choices. Asymmetric nuclear strength could produce patterns of restraint and caution in conventional behaviour that might not have existed in the absence of nuclear weapons. Nuclear arsenals influenced decisions about when and how to employ regular forces and encouraged reliance on guerrilla warfare and proxy struggles under the nuclear shadow (Snyder, 1960). This logic, developed in the context of Cold War rivalry, later became a foundational tool for understanding nuclear competition and limited conflict across a range of nuclear dyads (Jervis, 1984).

Robert Jervis extended this analysis by emphasising how mutual second-strike capability produces strategic stability at the nuclear level. When both sides can absorb a nuclear strike and still retaliate with devastating force, leaders become cautious about actions that might trigger uncontrolled escalation (Jervis, 1984). Strategic stability at the top, however, can render lower levels of conflict more volatile. Lambeth reached a similar conclusion, noting that U.S.–Soviet strategic parity constrained direct nuclear confrontation while encouraging more assertive competition in peripheral regions (Lambeth, 1979). The shared condition underlying these arguments is not simply the presence of nuclear weapons, but mutual second-strike capability: each rival retains the ability to impose unacceptable costs even after suffering an attack, forcing leaders to account for escalation risks in crises and in day-to-day bargaining (Dahl, 1957).

Jervis later described these dynamics as part of a broader nuclear “revolution” in strategy. Nuclear weapons, he argued, promote practices of deterrence that differ from conventional war planning, including heightened sensitivity to escalation risks, efforts to manage crises across different levels of violence, and preparation for limited war under the nuclear shadow (Jervis, 1989; Jervis, 1993). Nuclear-armed states pursue political objectives while recognising that miscalculation can produce catastrophic outcomes. As a result, signalling, restraint, and perception play an especially important role in nuclear-era conflicts.

Empirical research broadly supports these insights. Nuclear arsenals deter direct aggression between nuclear-armed rivals while increasing the frequency of lower level disputes. Leaders typically seek to avoid large-scale nuclear war and instead keep competition at lower intensities or shift it into proxy arenas (Narang, 2013). Geller finds that nuclear dyads experience more militarised disputes but fewer full-scale wars than non-nuclear rivals, reinforcing the core logic of the stability–instability paradox (Geller, 1990).

Recent work, however, adds an important qualification. The classic formulation associated with Snyder and Jervis emphasises structural stability at the strategic level and competition below it. Other studies argue that leaders may at times actively manipulate nuclear risks as a tool of coercion. Analyses of Pakistan's behaviour and of Russia's nuclear signalling during the Ukraine war suggest that some states lean on escalation risks more directly to shield sub-conventional or conventional aggression and constrain stronger opponents (Kapur, 2005). These arguments do not overturn the original paradox, but they raise questions about when nuclear weapons function primarily as background constraints and when leaders deliberately seek to generate, advertise, or exploit nuclear danger for leverage.

These two logics rest on different mechanisms. In the Snyder–Jervis framework, strategic stability is structural: mutual second-strike capability reduces incentives for major war, and competition shifts downward because leaders expect nuclear escalation to be catastrophic and therefore restrain it. In risk-manipulation accounts, escalation risk is not merely tolerated but actively invoked. States signal a willingness to accept, and sometimes to create, nuclear danger, often under conditions of conventional weakness, to shield their own sub-conventional or conventional aggression and to constrain a stronger opponent. The key distinction is whether nuclear weapons function mainly as a background constraint shaping crisis management, or as an actively invoked instrument of brinkmanship and deliberate risk manipulation.

China aligns more closely with the first logic than with the second, but the distinction should be stated with care. Beijing has generally emphasised retaliation and restraint in its declaratory posture and has not made routine, early nuclear threats a central feature of its coercive playbook in the way Pakistan has at times, or Russia has during the Ukraine war. China's nuclear modernisation is also oriented toward survivability and second-strike assurance under perceived U.S. counterforce and missile-defence pressure. This is consistent with a strategic environment in which leaders seek a more resilient deterrent backstop rather than a posture built around overt nuclear brinkmanship. At the same time, a more survivable retaliatory capability can still shape conventional and grey-zone competition by conditioning expectations about escalation and intervention once a crisis begins. The result is not open nuclear risk manipulation, but competition that is sustained and calibrated under expectations of mutual restraint at the nuclear level.

This theoretical framework sets the stage for the U.S.–China case. As tensions with the United States have grown, China has expanded both its nuclear and conventional forces in an effort to narrow the military gap and enhance its security and status in a system long shaped by U.S. power. Although China still trails the United States in many dimensions, achieving a more favourable balance remains central to its great-power ambitions. Power transition theory provides important context for this rivalry. The stability–instability paradox adds a further layer by specifying how nuclear capabilities can shape crisis bargaining within that transition. As China approaches a more secure retaliatory capability, leaders on both sides may tolerate higher levels of conventional and grey-zone risk while continuing to treat large-scale nuclear war as an unacceptable outcome.

China's Nuclear Modernisation and Escalation Management

China entered the nuclear age on 16 October 1964, when it tested its first nuclear explosion. It emerged as the fifth nuclear weapons state, after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France, to independently develop and test a weapon of mass destruction. Since then, its nuclear posture has been widely described as defensive and restrained. For decades, Beijing maintained what many analysts characterise as a minimal deterrent, built around a relatively small arsenal and limited alert levels, which helped avoid a more intense nuclear arms race in the Indo-Pacific (Pan, 2016).

A key feature of this posture has been the way the People's Liberation Army (PLA) manages warheads and delivery systems. Unlike the United States and Russia, which keep a large share of their forces on high alert, the PLA has traditionally stored nuclear warheads separately from missiles and aircraft, integrating them only in preparation for a retaliatory strike (Kristensen et al., 2023). This practice signals a doctrinal emphasis on retaliation rather than preemptive use or rapid-launch options, and it aligns with Beijing's long-standing portrayal of its nuclear forces as a last-resort deterrent (Holmes, 2020).

China's nuclear strategy has long aimed at a modest but credible arsenal guided by defensive principles and a desire to avoid open arms racing. Since the late 1970s, its official approach has emphasised “sufficient” deterrence, meaning the ability to absorb a nuclear strike and respond and thereby prevent coercion or attack. The goal has been to align capabilities with perceived threats while keeping the force limited enough to support economic development and diplomatic campaigns for global nuclear disarmament (Sun, 2016). Central to this posture is the No First Use policy. The 2006 Defense White Paper reaffirmed that China would not use or threaten nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states or in nuclear-weapon-free zones (Li, 2018). For more than six decades, the arsenal remained relatively small, historically below about 250 warheads, reflecting a focus on sufficiency rather than parity with other major powers. The elevation of the Second Artillery Corps to the PLA Rocket Force in December 2015, however, marked a clear institutional signal that nuclear and missile forces were gaining weight inside China's broader defence strategy and were increasingly treated as a central component of modern warfare. This organisational shift is also a defensible hinge point for the paper's broader argument: Chinese coercion and regional assertiveness predate the most visible modernisation surge, but modernisation strengthens the ability to sustain and manage competition under the nuclear shadow once a crisis is underway.

Reliable data on China's nuclear forces remain scarce, since Beijing does not publish detailed figures. External estimates nonetheless point to a clear upward trend. Many analysts estimate that China's stockpile rose to roughly 500 warheads between 2014 and 2024, though figures vary and carry uncertainty. SIPRI's 2025 yearbook reports approximately 600 warheads in stockpile, an increase of about 100 in a single year (Kristensen and Korda, 2025). This remains far below U.S. and Russian totals, but the growth rate is striking. It also fits a broader pattern in which major powers modernise delivery systems, command-and-control, and supporting infrastructure under evolving technological and strategic pressures.

This build-up is occurring alongside China's wider effort to push back against what it views as a U.S.-led security order. Chinese strategic writings and official statements frequently frame modernisation less as a bid for nuclear superiority than as a response to a deteriorating strategic environment and to perceived U.S. advantages in counterforce and “damage limitation,” including missile defence, anti-submarine warfare, and space-based sensing (Li and Wu, 2024). Importantly, this framing emphasises vulnerability and survivability rather than confidence and dominance. Beijing's modernisation agenda is repeatedly justified as a way to preserve a credible retaliatory capability under conditions in which U.S. precision strike, ISR-enabled targeting, and missile defence are seen as eroding the viability of a small and exposed force.

Recent modernisation steps show how far this process has advanced. SIPRI's estimate of 600 warheads includes forces assigned to land- and sea-based ballistic missiles and to nuclear-capable aircraft (Kristensen and Korda, 2025). U.S. sources suggest that China may field more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than either the United States or Russia within the next decade, even if its total warhead count remains lower than both (Kristensen and Korda, 2024). China is constructing roughly 350 new missile silos across several regions, intended to host both solid- and liquid-fuelled ICBMs. It is also building new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and long-range bombers. Together, these moves expand the range, survivability, and redundancy of China's nuclear forces and are consistent with a drive to secure a more reliable second-strike capability rather than a posture designed for routine nuclear brinkmanship.

Specific systems illustrate this shift. The PLA is fielding DF-31 and DF-41 class ICBMs, with ranges of about 7200 to 12,000 kilometres and MIRV capability that allows a single missile to carry up to three warheads aimed at different targets (Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2023). It is expanding the inventory of DF-26 missiles with ranges near 3000 kilometres, able to carry nuclear or conventional warheads against targets across the western Pacific, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea. These developments point to growth in both strategic forces and theatre-range options that complicate escalation dynamics because of their dual-use character. At sea, China has deployed six Jin-class submarines that can launch ballistic missiles, adding a more survivable leg to the deterrent and supporting operations in contested maritime zones (Geller, 2022).

These nuclear forces sit alongside broader efforts to build anti-access and area-denial capabilities. PLA doctrine now emphasises advanced A2/AD systems, including long-range missiles, integrated air defences, and expanding space and cyber tools, that extend Chinese reach beyond the First Island Chain into the wider Pacific. Programs in artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons seek to improve targeting, response time, and penetration of U.S. defences (Bugos and Klare, 2023; Karadag, 2022). China also benchmarks U.S. capabilities when planning its own moves. As one of the world's largest military spenders, it invests in space, missile forces, and emerging technologies that it sees as necessary to complicate U.S. conventional strike and missile defence strategies and to preserve the credibility of its deterrent under pressure.

Chinese documents and official statements shed light on how leaders justify these changes. The 2013 Defense White Paper criticises the United States for undermining global strategic stability through advances in nuclear forces, outer space systems, cyber operations, and missile defence (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2013). Chinese experts likewise express concern about U.S. capabilities that could weaken China's deterrent, particularly when missile defence and counterforce developments are paired with advanced conventional strike options (Cunningham and Fravel, 2015). Across these statements, the repeated emphasis is that stability depends on the survivability of retaliatory forces, and that survivability is threatened by U.S. efforts to improve damage limitation.

At the same time, modernisation does not eliminate Chinese vulnerabilities. U.S. counterforce capabilities, ISR-enabled targeting, missile defence, and fears of command-and-control disruption or decapitation continue to shape Chinese threat perceptions and reinforce the logic of survivability and redundancy rather than nuclear confidence (Talmadge, 2017). The point, therefore, is relative change. Even incremental improvements in mobility, basing, and diversification can complicate worst-case disarming-strike scenarios and thereby matter for crisis bargaining, without implying that China has achieved full assurance or that escalation risks disappear.

Observable Indicators of Confidence and Insecurity in Chinese/People's Liberation Army Discourse

Because direct access to internal decision-making is limited, the argument relies on observable discourse patterns to infer how survivability concerns are framed and addressed. Building on the claim above that modernisation functions as a strategic backstop that conditions crisis bargaining, this subsection operationalises “confidence” and “insecurity” as inferences from recurring problem-framings in Chinese/PLA-adjacent discourse and from the solutions those sources prioritise. A first indicator of insecurity is sustained concern that U.S. “damage limitation” tools, especially missile defence combined with counterforce and improved sensing, could erode the credibility of retaliation by shrinking China's surviving second-strike salvo (Cunningham and Fravel, 2015; Hiim et al., 2023; Kaufman and Waidelich, 2023; Li and Wu, 2024). This logic treats vulnerability not as a temporary gap but as a structural condition of a small or exposed force confronting an adversary seeking denial options.

A second indicator of insecurity is the persistent emphasis on penetration aids and technical countermeasures, including decoys, manoeuvre, and other defeat mechanisms, which implies that Chinese analysts treat assured retaliation as contingent and adversary-dependent rather than automatic. A third indicator is continuing attention to command-and-control survivability and escalation “entanglement” risks, especially concerns that conventional operations, ISR-enabled targeting, or disruptions to space/cyber infrastructure could be interpreted as attempts to neutralise the nuclear deterrent, creating incentives for redundancy, mobility, dispersed basing, and more secure warning and command arrangements. In this framing, survivability is achieved through organisational and technical design choices rather than through overt nuclear brinkmanship.

Indicators of “confidence,” by contrast, are best understood as managed reassurance rather than claims of invulnerability: continuity in retaliation-centred declaratory framing, paired with institutional and force-structure steps intended to make restraint credible under pressure, including diversified delivery systems and survivability enhancements designed to preserve a retaliatory capability even after absorbing an attack (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2025). Taken together, these patterns support a narrow inference: PRC discourse signals persistent insecurity about U.S. damage-limitation capabilities, while justifying modernisation as risk insurance that can condition escalation expectations once confrontation begins, without implying that modernisation initiates coercion.

Grey-Zone and Conventional Instability Under a Stable Nuclear Ceiling

China's nuclear build-up and conventional modernisation sit alongside a visible rise in grey-zone pressure and military activity in its near seas. The pattern fits the logic of the stability–instability paradox. This article does not claim that grey-zone coercion emerged because of nuclear modernisation. Rather, the argument is that as mutual deterrence becomes more robust in relative terms and escalation pathways become more uncertain, competition can become more persistent and more tightly managed below the threshold of major war.

China's behaviour is not reducible to nuclear modernisation alone. The rise in grey-zone activity also reflects China's growing conventional power, the domestic politics of nationalism and legitimacy, and leadership incentives that reward resolve on sovereignty issues. These factors help explain why pressure has increased, but they do not by themselves explain why repeated crises can be sustained under conditions of extreme escalation risk involving a major-power rival. The distinct contribution of nuclear modernisation in this article is narrower. It conditions crisis bargaining by shaping expectations about intervention and escalation, raising uncertainty about the costs of major-power confrontation, and reinforcing restraint at the strategic level once a crisis is underway (Chubb, 2020). In that sense, the nuclear dimension does not replace conventional or domestic explanations; it helps account for how persistent coercive competition can unfold beneath a more stable ceiling of strategic deterrence.

The Taiwan Strait is the clearest example. Beijing treats unification as a core national goal and now backs that claim with frequent military moves around the island. Taiwan's defence ministry has reported a marked increase in PLA air operations in and around Taiwan's Air Defence Identification Zone in recent years. Sorties have shifted from occasional events to a near-daily presence. Many flights involve mixed formations of fighters, bombers, and support aircraft. Chinese aircraft now cross the median line in the Strait far more often than in the past and sometimes fly arcs that suggest rehearsal of encirclement patterns. These flights serve practical and political purposes. They gather intelligence on Taiwan's radar coverage and on its scrambling habits. They test how quickly Taiwan, the United States, and Japan respond to different types of incursions. They wear down Taiwanese pilots and airframes. They also deliver a standing message that Chinese forces can approach the island at will.

This is grey-zone coercion. It stays below the legal threshold of war but shifts the day-to-day balance in China's favour and keeps Taiwan under constant pressure. At sea, a similar pattern is visible. The PLA Navy, the China Coast Guard, and maritime militia vessels operate more frequently around Taiwan and in contested parts of the East and South China Seas. Chinese ships shadow U.S. and allied vessels, conduct close passes, and sometimes execute manoeuvres that foreign navies describe as unsafe. Live-fire drills and large exercises near key waterways have become a regular feature of the calendar, especially after political events that Beijing opposes, such as high-level visits by U.S. officials to Taipei. These operations complicate foreign naval activity and remind regional states that China can concentrate forces quickly near disputed areas.

These moves are easier to sustain in an environment where leaders believe the nuclear ceiling is more resilient and that escalation to large-scale war would be catastrophic. China's growing arsenal, its new ICBM fields, and its more survivable sea-based deterrent complicate any adversary's confidence that a disarming first strike is feasible at an acceptable cost. At the same time, anti-access and area-denial systems, including long-range missiles, integrated air defences, and improved surveillance networks, raise the operational risks of U.S. operations close to China's coast. The combined effect is not that China is invulnerable. It is that crisis bargaining increasingly takes place under heightened uncertainty about escalation pathways, including the risk that conventional operations could threaten assets linked to strategic deterrence, which can shape how both sides manage incidents and calibrate responses.

Studies of the regional balance reinforce this point. Biddle and Oelrich argue that land-based missiles and sensors give defenders near their own coast a strong ability to contest air and sea access. They find that Chinese systems can turn much of the Western Pacific inside the First Island Chain into a high-risk zone for U.S. ships and aircraft, even though Chinese forces would face similar dangers if they tried to project power far from home waters (Biddle and Oelrich, 2016). Their analysis does not show clear Chinese dominance. It shows overlapping denial zones and a broad belt of contested space, with Taiwan sitting in the middle of that belt. Anderson and Press (2025) model a U.S.-China war over Taiwan and focus on U.S. airpower based in the region. They show that under the current posture, Chinese missile attacks on airbases could destroy large numbers of U.S. aircraft on the ground in the early stages of conflict. Dispersing aircraft to many small, unhardened airfields does little to solve the problem and can increase vulnerability, since missiles can still damage crowded parking areas and support facilities. In their model, only major investments in hardened shelters, better missile defences, and jamming of missile guidance bring U.S. losses down to levels that allow sustained operations (Anderson and Press, 2025). Their findings again point to a contested conventional environment in which both sides would pay a high price in a full-scale war.

From Beijing's perspective, these trends support a specific type of strategy. Nuclear modernisation and improved conventional defences do not remove escalation risks, but they can reduce worst-case fears of rapid defeat and shape expectations about how far outside powers might go in a crisis. They also raise questions in U.S. planning about how far to escalate in a confrontation over Taiwan or the nearby region, particularly when escalation could threaten systems relevant to strategic deterrence and create pressures for rapid decision-making. This mix supports the use of grey-zone tactics and controlled, limited shows of force. Leaders can probe red lines, adjust pressure, and test responses while counting on mutual deterrence and mutual vulnerability to keep deliberate escalation in check. Recent Chinese behaviour fits this logic. Incursions into Taiwan's Air Defence Identification Zone, crossings of the Strait's median line, live-fire zones that overlap normal shipping lanes, and large exercises around the island all increase the sense of danger in the Strait. None of these activities by itself marks a clear start of war. Together, they create a constant, low-level crisis atmosphere. Any accident or miscalculation, such as a collision at sea or an unsafe intercept in the air, could spark a sharp confrontation. Yet both sides also recognise that deliberate escalation to large-scale attack would carry enormous risks.

Regional responses show how this environment looks from the outside. Japan has revised its national security strategy, raised defence spending, and invested in longer range strike capabilities that can hold Chinese assets at risk. Australia and other U.S. partners have entered new security arrangements, deepened exercises, and increased attention to maritime domain awareness. Several Southeast Asian states have quietly strengthened ties with the United States or hedged with multiple partners. These steps reflect concern about sustained Chinese coercion in the grey zone and about the risks of repeated crises more than fear of immediate general war.

In practice, the Indo-Pacific now operates on two linked levels. At the strategic level, leaders in Washington and Beijing appear to recognise that any nuclear exchange would be disastrous and should be avoided. At the conventional and grey-zone level, especially around Taiwan, confrontation has become more frequent and more intense. China's nuclear modernisation contributes to a more resilient top-level ceiling by strengthening second-strike survivability and reinforcing restraint against uncontrolled escalation. Within that space, Chinese forces can sustain pressure through air and naval activities, coercive exercises, and other tools that fall short of open conflict. The result is a pattern of chronic instability at lower levels, sustained under a more stable nuclear backdrop, that matches the expectations of the stability–instability paradox in a contemporary major-power rivalry.

Learning from Russia–Ukraine War

If China largely fits the Snyder–Jervis “stable ceiling” logic, Russia illustrates the alternative “risk-manipulation” pathway. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 turned nuclear escalation risks from an abstract concern into a visible part of day-to-day crisis management. This case is relevant to the argument in this article because it shows, in real time, how nuclear signalling can shape third-party intervention decisions in a major conventional war, while also revealing the political and economic costs that accompany overt brinkmanship. It therefore serves as a useful contrast to China's modernisation, which this article treats primarily as a way of strengthening second-strike survivability and conditioning escalation expectations rather than as a strategy of routine nuclear threats.

After Russian forces crossed the border on 24 February 2022, some observers expected that NATO might intervene directly to defend Ukraine. Within days, President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia would treat any NATO troop deployment as a grave threat and raised the alert status of Russian nuclear forces (Soldatkin and Osborn, 2024). The move signalled that Moscow was willing to brandish its arsenal early in the conflict to deter outside intervention and to shape the escalation environment around a large conventional campaign (Arceneaux, 2023).

This episode also sits against the background of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Under that agreement, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom offered security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv giving up the nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union and joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state (Budjeryn, 2014). Russia's subsequent invasion and nuclear warnings highlight two stark lessons. For a non-nuclear state, formal guarantees can be fragile if a major power decides to violate them. For a nuclear state, even general nuclear warnings can raise the perceived costs of direct military confrontation for other nuclear powers.

Russia's behaviour in Ukraine reflects a particular way of using the nuclear shadow. Moscow has tied nuclear threats closely to a major conventional war on its neighbour's territory. Russian officials have hinted at the use of force against NATO states if they enter the conflict, and Russian nuclear exercises have run alongside conventional operations. This is a model of overt brinkmanship and visible nuclear signalling, and it resonates with earlier discussions of Pakistan's strategy, where leaders use early nuclear signalling to deter outside escalation while pursuing sub-conventional or conventional aims against a stronger rival (Ganguly and Kapur, 2010; Kapur, 2005; Narang, 2013). The key point for this article is not that Russia and Pakistan behave identically, but that both illustrate a mechanism rooted in deliberate nuclear risk manipulation rather than in stable deterrence alone.

Chinese experts follow the Ukraine war closely and draw their own conclusions. They see reputational risks in Russia's conduct because of Beijing's past emphasis on sovereignty and non-intervention. They see higher polarisation between Western states and Russia that complicates Chinese diplomacy in Europe, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. They also see how Western sanctions and export controls on Russia create long-term costs for a state that depends heavily on external markets and technology (Kusa, 2022; Sacks, 2022). These observations feed Chinese debates about economic resilience, diversification, and vulnerability under crisis pressure.

At the same time, the war offers a set of military and political lessons that Chinese analysts can apply to a potential Taiwan conflict. Fravel notes that Chinese discussions underline the risk of facing a broad coalition of advanced democracies in a crisis, the need to prepare for extensive sanctions, and the importance of planning for prolonged fighting rather than quick victories (Fravel, 2023). Ukrainian performance on the battlefield, supported by Western intelligence, precision-guided weapons, and air defence, illustrates how a smaller defender can impose high costs on an invader with a larger army. For China, this underscores the need to counter United States and allied advantages in intelligence, surveillance, and long-range strike if it ever chooses to fight over Taiwan.

The nuclear dimension is central in these debates, but it should be framed carefully. Goldstein and Waechter argue that Russia's nuclear arsenal and its nuclear signalling have shaped NATO decisions from the start of the war, limiting the alliance largely to indirect support and avoiding direct combat with Russian forces (Goldstein and Waechter, 2023). China can therefore observe how nuclear risk can constrain Western escalation in a conflict touching core interests. It can also observe that nuclear threats do not guarantee operational success or international legitimacy. Russia has suffered large personnel and equipment losses and faces a more unified Western bloc, despite its nuclear advantages.

These mixed lessons help explain why Russia is better treated as a contrasting model than as a template China copies. China may learn that survivable nuclear forces can complicate intervention decisions and shape escalation expectations in a crisis. At the same time, the Ukraine war highlights what China has strong reasons to avoid: frequent, early nuclear threats that amplify reputational costs, intensify sanctions coalitions, and raise fears of uncontrolled escalation. In this sense, Beijing can be attentive to the deterrent shadow Russia casts without embracing Russia's style of brinkmanship. It continues to affirm a No First Use policy and frames its modernisation as defensive, even while expanding the size and sophistication of its force.

China's approach also differs from Pakistan's in important ways. Pakistan developed nuclear weapons under conditions of acute conventional inferiority and has used them to offset India's advantage while supporting sub-conventional activities under that shadow. China, by contrast, already holds significant conventional power in its region and is closing gaps with the United States in several domains. It seeks a more resilient second-strike capability and combines that with conventional anti-access systems and grey-zone campaigns. Nuclear weapons in this setting function more as a backstop that conditions crisis bargaining and shapes third-party expectations once a crisis is underway, rather than as tools for routine brinkmanship (Tkacik, 2023).

Geography and political objectives matter as well. Russia fights on the territory of a large neighbour that borders NATO states. Pakistan's main disputes with India involve contiguous land and contested borders. China's main flashpoint with the United States is across a body of water, around an island that hosts a capable local military and lies near U.S. allies such as Japan and the Philippines. Any large war there would involve complex joint operations, long supply lines, and significant risks for all involved. These conditions encourage strategies that emphasise coercion, blockade, and crisis pressure, backed by nuclear deterrence, rather than repeated nuclear threats as a routine instrument of statecraft.

In short, the Ukraine war reinforces for Beijing that nuclear weapons can limit outside intervention and shape the choices of third parties. It also illustrates the economic and political costs that accompany visible nuclear brinkmanship and protracted conventional war. China's nuclear modernisation and its behaviour in the Taiwan Strait so far align more closely with the classic stability–instability pattern: strengthening a more resilient nuclear ceiling while pressing claims through grey-zone coercion and conventional signalling below that ceiling. Russia and Pakistan reflect a different pattern in which leaders lean more directly on nuclear instability and overt threats. China may learn from those cases, but it is not simply following their path.

Implications for U.S. Strategy and Crisis Management

The analysis points to a clear pattern. China is building a more survivable nuclear force and pairing it with strong regional anti-access systems and sustained grey-zone pressure around Taiwan. Deliberate strategic nuclear war between the United States and China remains unlikely under these conditions. At the same time, the frequency and intensity of lower level coercion and military activity in the Western Pacific have increased. U.S. strategy therefore has to operate in a “stable ceiling, unstable floor” environment.

First, U.S. policy should treat a more secure Chinese second-strike capability as a durable feature of the landscape. Attempts to restore large nuclear superiority over China are likely to be costly and could intensify Chinese fears about the survivability of their deterrent, feeding arms racing and crisis instability. A more workable approach is to sustain a credible U.S. second-strike capability, invest in secure and redundant command, control, and communications, and avoid peacetime postures that appear designed for disarming attacks on Chinese nuclear forces. Declaratory clarity that distinguishes conventional operations from counterforce aims, combined with restraint in targeting infrastructure that China views as essential to its deterrent, can reduce incentives for early escalation in a crisis.

Second, the United States will need to place more weight on crisis management tools. Grey-zone encounters in the Taiwan Strait and nearby seas already involve frequent close air and naval interactions, and as the balance grows more contested, the risks of accidents and miscalculation rise. Practical steps include reliable and tested hotlines between military commands, agreed procedures for handling air and maritime incidents, and regular working-level contact between theatre commanders. Past U.S.–Soviet and U.S.–Russian agreements on incidents at sea and in the air provide templates that can be adapted to the U.S.–China context. Such arrangements do not resolve underlying disputes, but they reduce the chance that a routine intercept or unsafe manoeuvre turns into a major crisis.

Third, U.S. conventional posture in the region requires adjustment in light of Chinese anti-access capabilities. Biddle and Oelrich show that land-based missiles and sensors near defended coasts can severely constrain air and naval operations in adjacent seas and skies (Biddle and Oelrich, 2016). Anderson and Press find that U.S. theatre airpower in a Taiwan conflict would suffer very high losses under current basing patterns unless the United States and its allies invest heavily in hardening and missile defence at airfields (Anderson and Press, 2025). These findings suggest prioritising base resilience, dispersal combined with real protection, resilient logistics, and a larger role for submarines and other survivable platforms rather than relying on a small number of exposed hubs. This posture also fits the logic emphasised in this article: if U.S. forces can withstand early conventional blows without threatening China's nuclear deterrent, leaders on both sides face less pressure to escalate rapidly under crisis conditions. Investments in hardened shelters, active and passive defences, and resilient command systems can therefore strengthen deterrence while supporting crisis stability.

Fourth, U.S. policy toward allies must combine reassurance with restraint. Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others face growing Chinese coercion in an environment shaped by both conventional and nuclear dynamics. Their responses already include higher defence spending, new strike capabilities, and closer security cooperation with Washington. The United States can support these moves by emphasising capabilities that improve denial and resilience, such as air and missile defence, anti-ship missiles, undersea warfare, and distributed command-and-control, rather than pushing for large offensive forces that could heighten Chinese threat perceptions. This approach helps allies raise the local costs of coercion without making nuclear escalation more likely.

The debate over nuclear sharing in East Asia highlights these trade-offs. Proposals to introduce formal nuclear sharing arrangements with Japan or South Korea draw on the NATO experience and concerns about allied confidence in U.S. extended deterrence. Lind and Press argue that some form of nuclear sharing could strengthen alliance cohesion and hedge against pressures for independent nuclear programs in South Korea (Lind and Press, 2025). Byun and Lee, however, point to the limited military value of shared nuclear weapons in a largely maritime theatre and the risk that such arrangements would provoke strong Chinese reactions and strain regional politics (Byun and Lee, 2021). Given these arguments, U.S. strategy should treat nuclear sharing as a costly and conditional option rather than a near-term goal. Strengthening consultative mechanisms, clarifying nuclear guarantees, and using visible but reversible signalling during crises are less escalatory tools for reassurance.

At this point, a hawkish line of argument often follows. If a more secure Chinese second-strike capability can widen space for lower level pressure, one response is to narrow that space by expanding U.S. theatre nuclear options, forward-deployed nuclear capabilities, or more explicit escalation threats. Advocates argue that limited nuclear options or more prominent nuclear signalling could restore credibility and deter grey-zone coercion by convincing Beijing that escalation dominance is unattainable. The logic is internally consistent under one reading of the paradox, but it is dangerous under the framework developed here. It risks worsening the insecurity that drives Chinese modernisation by reinforcing Beijing's fears of disarming attack and decapitation, which could push China toward faster expansion, higher alert postures, or tighter coupling of conventional and nuclear systems. It also increases the chance that conventional incidents become entangled with nuclear forces and command-and-control assets, raising risks of misperception and inadvertent escalation. Finally, it can create alliance and crisis management problems by encouraging partners to act more boldly under the assumption that U.S. nuclear tools can manage escalation, when the true effect may be to compress decision time and reduce space for controlled de-escalation. For these reasons, strategies that rely on theatre nuclear escalation as a primary answer to grey-zone coercion are more likely to intensify arms racing and crisis instability than to produce durable deterrence.

There remains a role for targeted arms control and risk reduction, even in a period of rivalry. Comprehensive agreements are unlikely in the short term, but limited measures may still help. These could include transparency steps on selected parts of the nuclear force, discussions on avoiding interference with early warning and command systems, or informal understandings on tests and deployments that both sides view as especially destabilising. Dialogue will be difficult, but the alternative is to let technological change, worst-case planning, and mutual suspicion set the pace.

Taken together, these steps will not produce a quiet Indo-Pacific. They offer a way to manage an environment in which China has a more secure nuclear deterrent and competition below the threshold of major war is likely to persist. U.S. policy that accepts this basic structure, works to keep the nuclear ceiling solid, and focuses on limiting and managing instability below that level is more consistent with the stability–instability paradox than strategies that chase absolute superiority or treat theatre nuclear escalation as a routine tool of crisis management.

Conclusion

China's nuclear modernisation has changed how crises in the Indo-Pacific look and feel. The old image of China as a small, austere nuclear power operating in the shadow of the United States no longer fits. Beijing is building a larger, more diverse, and more survivable force. It now fields new missile silos, mobile ICBMs, sea-based systems, and dual-capable regional missiles that strengthen its ability to absorb pressure and still retaliate. At the same time, Chinese aircraft and ships have become more active around Taiwan and in nearby seas. Grey-zone pressure has become routine. Taken together, these developments are consistent with the logic of the stability–instability paradox: a more resilient nuclear backdrop can coexist with more frequent and sustained competition below the threshold of major war.

This article has argued that this pattern should be understood in conditional terms. It is not that nuclear modernisation “causes” coercion or that China becomes invulnerable. Rather, as China's retaliatory forces become more survivable and U.S. options for a clean disarming strike appear less plausible, crisis bargaining may occur under greater uncertainty about escalation pathways and intervention risks. Under those conditions, leaders may find it easier to sustain calibrated conventional and grey-zone pressure while still treating the nuclear threshold as a boundary to avoid. This “stable ceiling, unstable floor” logic is therefore offered as an analytical lens for layered competition, not as a deterministic prediction about behaviour in every crisis.

The comparison with Russia and Pakistan helps clarify what this argument does and does not claim. Russia's war in Ukraine illustrates a more overt model of nuclear brinkmanship in which leaders lean directly on nuclear danger and visible signalling in support of large-scale conventional operations. Pakistan's experience highlights how a weaker state can exploit nuclear risk to deter escalation while pursuing sub-conventional activity. China's approach appears different in emphasis. It continues to affirm a No First Use policy and generally avoids frequent, early nuclear threats. The relevant lesson is not that China is copying Russia's or Pakistan's playbook, but that survivable strategic forces can shape how regional coercion and crisis management are calibrated, especially when both sides have strong reasons to preserve a nuclear ceiling.

Empirically, three developments are central to the analysis. First, China's force has moved beyond minimal deterrence toward what many Chinese analysts describe as credible minimal deterrence, with stockpile growth, new silo construction, modernisation of delivery systems, and improvements in survivability. Second, Chinese forces have increased air and naval activity around Taiwan. Sorties into Taiwan's Air Defence Identification Zone, more frequent crossings of the median line, and exercises that simulate encirclement are consistent with a sustained grey-zone campaign rather than isolated signals. Third, the regional conventional balance has become more contested. Chinese anti-access and area-denial systems can impose serious costs on U.S. forces near the mainland, even though U.S. forces retain important qualitative advantages and China remains vulnerable if it attempts to project power far from home.

For U.S. strategy and crisis management, the implication is not that Washington must accept coercion, but that it should avoid strategies premised on restoring decisive nuclear superiority or on treating China's arsenal as a static minimum deterrent. A more realistic approach is to sustain a credible U.S. second-strike capability, strengthen secure and redundant command-and-control, and reduce incentives for early escalation by avoiding peacetime postures that appear oriented toward disarming attacks on China's deterrent. At the conventional level, this points toward base resilience, survivable platforms, and denial-oriented capabilities that complicate aggression without pushing crises toward rapid escalation. At the political level, it elevates the importance of crisis communication mechanisms, incident-management procedures, and targeted risk reduction measures. More hawkish approaches, including expanded theatre nuclear options or forward-based nuclear deployments, may follow from one reading of the paradox, but they also risk intensifying Chinese fears of counterforce and decapitation, accelerating arms racing, and tightening the coupling between conventional incidents and nuclear systems.

The analysis has limits. It relies on external estimates of Chinese capabilities and observable behaviour around Taiwan and in the Western Pacific, both of which are imperfect proxies for internal doctrine, command arrangements, and crisis intentions. The argument is qualitative and focuses on a single rivalry and region. Future work could test these relationships more systematically, explore variation across crisis episodes, and extend the analysis to other dyads and to a more clearly multipolar nuclear environment in which Russia, India, and others play larger roles.

Even with these caveats, the central takeaway is analytic rather than triumphalist. U.S.–China strategic competition may operate through a layered structure in which both sides seek to preserve a stable nuclear ceiling while conventional and grey-zone rivalry remains active below it. Understanding that structure, and designing policies that reduce the risks of miscalculation and inadvertent escalation within it, is essential to preventing future crises from sliding into catastrophe.