What Threat?

China has been a nuclear weapon state since its first atomic test in 1964. In 1980, it tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and two years later, its first submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).

And yet, a nuclear-armed China did not become a political, technological, or security issue in the United States until the mid-1990s–and particularly not until early this year, as the latest round of allegations that China has stolen U.S. nuclear secrets began to flood out of Washington.

What is China's current strength as a nuclear power? And what about the future–has China achieved a great leap forward in the nuclear sphere because of widespread and successful nuclear espionage, as alleged by the Cox report, released last May? Most important, will China become a nuclear threat to the United States in the next decade or two?

Before attempting to answer these questions, a caveat: Truly solid information about China's nuclear forces and nuclear doctrine is hard to obtain. What follows is based on talking to a variety of knowledgeable people in the West and in China over the past five years, as well as consulting material from a variety of sources, including China Builds the Bomb, by John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai; Taking Stock: Worldwide Nuclear Deployments, 1998, by William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Joshua Handler; and Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998, by Rodney W. Jones and Mark G. McDonough.

Beijing, 1995: Two security men take a look at models of Long March satellite launchers. The Long March and strategic missile programs have close connections.

Raw numbers

China conducted 45 nuclear tests between 1964 and 1996, when it signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Its nuclear triad–land-based missiles, bombers, and SLBMs–is armed with about 450 warheads, only a few of which can reach the United States. China has given no indication that it has deployed multi-warhead missiles. China's current strategic nuclear arsenal is composed of the following:

▪ About 20 DF-5 ICBMs with a range of 13,000 kilometers, a payload of 3,200 kilograms, and a warhead yield of 4-5 megatons.

▪ At least 10 DF-4 missiles with a range of 4,750 kilometers, a payload of 2,220 kilograms, and a warhead yield of 3.3 megatons.

▪ About 38 DF-3 missiles with a range of 2,800 kilomeers, a payload of 2,150 kilograms, and a warhead yield of 3.3 megatons.

▪ Some 30 DF-21 missiles with a range of 1,800 kilomeers, a payload of 600 kilograms, and a warhead yield of 200-300 kilotons.

▪ One nuclear-powered Xia-class submarine, equipped with 12 JL-1 sea-launched ballistic missiles with a range of 1,700 kilometers, a payload of 600 kilograms, and a warhead yield of 200-300 kilotons.

▪ Some 100 H-6 bombers with a range of more than 3,000 kilometers, and about 20 H-5 bombers with a range of 1,200 kilometers. (Western intelligence sources believe that the H-6 can carry one gravity bomb with a pay-load of 4,500 kilograms. H-5 bombers are no longer in front-line service; they are mainly used for training and other backup functions.)

▪ Some 200-300 DF-15 missiles believed to be nuclear capable, road mobile, and powered by solid fuel. They are believed capable of carrying a payload of 500 kilograms with a range of 300 kilometers. It is not known if China has armed DF-15s with nuclear warheads.

▪ China also has DF-11 missiles with a payload of 800 kilograms and features similar to the DF-15. But DF-11s are not yet part of the Chinese military inventory, according to a Pentagon report. 1

Beyond the numbers

China's nuclear weapons are few in number and obsolete in quality compared to the other four “declared” nuclear powers–the United States, Russia, Britain, and France.

China's intercontinental missiles are deployed with their fuel tanks empty and their warheads detached and stored.

The DF-5 missiles, for example, are silo-based, non-mobile, and liquid-fueled. They are deployed with their fuel tanks empty and their warheads detached and stored.

The Xia-class submarine, launched in 1981, seldom leaves port; because of excessive noise, it is vulnerable to antisubmarine warfare.

While the H-6 bomber can reach all Asian countries, its capability to penetrate air-defense systems is poor. Its maximum and cruising speeds are both subsonic, and its service ceiling is about 42,000 feet. Its slow speed and older electronics, among other weaknesses, mean it cannot survive modern warfare. In June, however, Russia agreed to sell 72 of its state-of-the-art Su-30 fighter-bombers to China.

Overall, China's nuclear forces are few and primitive compared to those of the United States, which has 2,000 land-based ICBM warheads, 3,456 submarine-launched warheads, and 1,800 bomber weapons, including cruise missiles. U.S. weapons are modern, highly accurate, and many–particularly the submarine-based missiles–are relatively invulnerable.

The Cox report

It is clear that China is not content with its current arsenal and will not remain wedded to technologies rooted in the 1950s and 1960s. The Cox report, which almost surely exaggerates many matters and consistently paints a worst-case scenario, does underline an essential fact: China has almost certainly enjoyed some degree of success in obtaining militarily useful technology from a variety of U.S. sources, classified and unclassified. The degree of success is impossible to determine.

Since 1995, China has taken advantage of President Clinton's decision to de-regulate technology exports by purchasing about 100 American-made supercomputers. These high-performance computers could help Chinese scientists and technicians build missile-guidance systems and conduct simulated nuclear tests necessary for designing smaller and more efficient nuclear weapons.

In February 1996, Loral Space and Communications Corporation and Hughes Electronics Corporation assisted China in an investigation of why a Chinese space launch failed.

The two firms, according to the Cox report, transferred sensitive technology to the Chinese rocket program without obtaining clearance from U.S. officials. Presumably, this information–if the transfer indeed happened–could be used to improve China's space-vehicle guidance-and-control systems, and eventually the accuracy of its nuclear missiles.

Although there is ambiguity as to precisely what data China may have obtained, the consensus in the intelligence community is that at the least it got some information about the W88, one of America's most advanced warheads, which allows a large yield to be packaged in a small container. (Theoretically, 10 W88s can be fitted atop one U.S. Trident II submarine-launched missile.)

It is also possible, though far from certain, that China may have gained access to “legacy codes,” which were allegedly downloaded into a non-secure computer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (See “Call China's Hand” in the July/August Bulletin.) If true, the codes would have provided China with a wealth of nuclear weapon design information, particularly validated data on the blindingly fast and complex nuclear reactions that occur at detonation.

While the allegations in the Cox report suggest that Chinese espionage has been continuing since the early 1980s, there is still no clear evidence that China has made a qualitative revolution in its nuclear weaponry.

Modernization

China's current longrange missile, the DF-5–eight more of which may have been produced last year–is based on old designs of the 1950s and 1960s. Western analysts believe the DF-4 and the DF-5 will be phased out gradually, to be replaced by solid-fuel DF-31 and DF-41 missiles.

The DF-31–apparently flight-tested for the first time in early August–will have a range of 8,000 kilometers and a warhead yield of 100-200 kilotons. The DF-31 may be deployed with multiple warheads. It will presumably replace the DF-4 in the first decade of the new century.

China is also developing the DF-41 with an expected range of 12,000 kilometers, which will replace the DF-5. Both the DF-31 and the DF-41 are designed to be road-mobile.

The Middle Kingdom is also believed to be developing a new strategic submarine, called Type 094 by the Chinese, which will carry 16 Julang-2 missiles. The Julang-2 will be the sea-launched version of the DF-31, with a range of 8,000 kilometers. Chinese news reports suggest that the missile will be tested this year.

Many uncertainties remain, however. Is China developing multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs), which the other four nuclear powers have deployed on their missiles for a generation? Or will it remain content with single-warhead missiles?

China's one and only Xia-class nuclear submarine.

The truth may fall in between. MIRVed warheads are counter-force weapons. It would be expensive and useless to develop them. They are a relic of the old U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Multiple reentry vehicles–MRVs–are another matter. They are countervalue weapons that spread the damage.

Recent U.S. claims that the DF-31 incorporates secrets stolen from the United States have been strongly denied by China. Last May, China launched a civilian rocket, the Long March 4-B, which carried two research satellites.

The Long March series, the linchpin of China's commercial-launch program, has close connections with ICBMs. The May launch, a Hong Kong newspaper said, was undertaken to demonstrate that China's indigenous ICBM capability was real; it did not need to steal secrets from the United States.

China's development of a new missile-launching submarine is also going slowly. Western experts believe that China has not mastered nuclear reactor technology or underwater ballistic-missile-firing technology. Chinese weapons typically take an enormous length of time to research, develop, test, produce, and deploy. Today, 18 years after China commissioned its first nuclear strategic submarine, there is still no sign of the Type 094 submarine–or of any other.

Ten years down the road, according to publicly available data, the Chinese nuclear arsenal may possess MRVed warheads, and it may grow from today's 20 ICBMs (with warhead yields in the megaton range) to perhaps 50 or 100 ICBMs with multiple warheads with yields in the kilotons.

The United States will retain for the foreseeable future more destructive nuclear power in one Trident submarine than China will have in its entire long-range missile fleet.

Even then, however, China will not have attained a first-strike capability against the United States. The United States will retain for the foreseeable future more destructive nuclear power in one Trident submarine than China will have in its entire long-range missile fleet. (Each Trident currently carries 24 missiles and up to 192 warheads.) Even the Cox report concedes that “the United States retains an overwhelming qualitative and quantitative advantage in deployed strategic nuclear forces.”

Nuclear calculations then and now

During the Korean War and the crises in the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s, the United States threatened to use–under certain conditions–nuclear bombs on Chinese targets. The Chinese thought of it as “nuclear blackmail.” Meanwhile, by the early 1960s, the Sino-Soviet alliance, established in 1950, had taken an antagonistic turn.

In 1957, the Soviet Union agreed to supply China with a prototype atomic bomb and sell industrial equipment for the processing and enrichment of uranium. Chinese nuclear scientists studied and worked at the Soviet labs. But the Soviets did not deliver the prototype bomb and refused to offer data on their nuclear-powered submarines. Although Sino-Soviet cooperation was substantial, it was short-lived.

Even as Mao Zedong publicly called both American imperialism and nuclear weapons a “paper tiger,” he was quietly worried about possible nuclear strikes by either the United States or the Soviet Union–or both. He concluded that China's nuclear-weapons program had to be put on a self-reliant road.

U.S. and Soviet power locked Beijing in a nuclear vise. By the late 1960s, partly because of their bloody border conflicts, the Sino-Soviet relationship had grown so tense that the Soviet Union threatened to perform “nuclear surgery” on China's nuclear facilities. An all-out war between the two countries seemed possible.

And, of course, there was India, on China's southwestern border. The two nations fought a short and limited border war in 1962, which led to an Indian defeat. When China set off its first nuclear device in 1964, India interpreted it as a threat and began developing a nuclear capability of its own. India detonated its first nuclear device in 1974. And in May 1998, after calling China India's number one threat, India conducted a series of nuclear tests.

Last April India also tested a longrange missile, the Agni II. The solid-fuel missile has state-of-the-art navigation, carries a payload of more than a ton, can be launched from mobile vehicles, and can reach Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

There are many uncertainties in Sino-Indian relations. If India goes ahead with nuclear deployment, and if it targets cities or facilities in China, China will certainly reciprocate. Beyond that, China would likely strengthen its nuclear forces to preserve a dominant position vis-à-vis India.

At present, however, both governments are seeking to repair the deteriorating relationship. Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh visited Beijing last June for the first high-level meeting since the May 1998 nuclear tests. Top Chinese leaders welcomed Singh and called the visit an improvement of Sino-Indian relations.

Looking eastward, tensions between China and Japan are chronically high. In 1937, Japan invaded and occupied parts of central and eastern China, causing massive suffering and staggering economic losses. Since the end of World War II, the two countries have been at peace. But mutual suspicion and fear have never gone away.

In addition to having the world's second largest economy and well-trained, high-tech conventional forces, Japan has accumulated a significant amount of civilian reactor plutonium that could be used in a weapons program, although civil plutonium presents some difficulties. Despite its 50-year “nuclear allergy,” Japan could gradually–or even quickly–build a sophisticated arsenal.

It could also deliver the weapons. Japan's space program could be converted into a missile development program. Its J-1 and M-5 solid-fueled rockets, for example, have payloads and ranges similar to U.S. Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles.

China's most pressing security concern, however, involves Taiwan, which it regards as a “renegade” province. The Taiwan issue is further complicated by America's long-time love affair with Taiwan's Nationalists. China claims it would use force to recover the island if Taiwan formally declares independence or if foreign forces–that is, the United States and Japan–gain control.

More recently, Beijing said that China would resort to the use of conventional force over Taiwan if Taiwan ever went nuclear. 2 In August 1998, China's Central People's Radio warned that developing nuclear weapons would be a very dangerous idea and action, absolutely harmful to Taiwan. 3

China, however, has said that it would not use nuclear weapons against Taiwan, which it regards as its own territory. According to Sha Zukang, senior Chinese official in charge of arms control, the nuclear weapons possessed by the central government will never be aimed at Taiwan. 4

It is likely, though, that China might use the implied threat of nuclear weapons to deter the involvement of the United States in promoting Taiwan's independence. The Chinese, presumably, understand the cautionary effect of “nuclear ambiguity” as fully as the Americans or the Israelis.

The Taiwan issue is in for an exceptionally rough patch. In July, Taiwan's outgoing leader, Lee Teng-hui, defined the China-Taiwan relation as a state-to-state relationship. This prompted the United States and other countries to reiterate their “one China” policy, which has been the cornerstone of China's foreign relations. China, as usual, reiterated its right to resort to any means, including military force, to defeat Taiwan's independence. In any event, Lee's statement provoked new tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

Finally, the United States has had a heavy impact on Chinese security thinking, mainly because of the potential for U.S. military involvement in a Taiwan-China crisis.

Chinese analysts see the U.S. engagement policy as inconsistent at best and as a hidden containment strategy at worst. The accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last May triggered nationwide anti-American demonstrations in China after years of U.S.-China friction over human rights, nuclear export controls, entry into the World Trade Organization, Taiwan, and most recently, nuclear espionage.

In June, U.S. special envoy Thomas Pickering went to Beijing to explain the unintentional bombing of the Chinese embassy. Rejecting the U.S. interpretation, People's Daily said it was technically impossible for the United States to make such a mistake.

Nuclear doctrine

What has not been much discussed in the continuing U.S. debate regarding the Chinese “threat” is China's relatively benign nuclear doctrine.

China is not attempting to reach nuclear parity with either Russia or the United States. To do so would mean spending itself into bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, there is no official Chinese confirmation of its doctrine; much of it must be inferred. In a 1998 white paper, for instance, China merely declared that it had a few nuclear weapons for self-defense. But at an unofficial level, it is clear that China has been following a strategy of limited nuclear deterrence.

▪ China has unconditionally pledged not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states and it supports efforts to establish nuclear-weapon-free zones.

In 1995, China reiterated its commitment to provide non-nuclear states and nuclear-weapon-free zones with negative security assurances and, for the first time, it promised to provide them with positive security assurances–active assistance to non-nuclear weapons states if they were subjected to aggression in which nuclear weapons were used.

▪ Insofar as nuclear weapon states are concerned, China adopted a no-first-use principle in 1964. It has long challenged the other nuclear weapon states to do the same–that is, nuclear weapon states should declare that they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances. (The other “declared” powers, United States, Russia, Britain and France, have not accepted the principle of no first use.)

▪ China has urged the United States and Russia to make deep cuts in their nuclear forces so that a new stage in nuclear disarmament talks can be opened. As a general policy, China advocates the comprehensive prohibition and destruction of nuclear weapons.

▪ China has opposed the development and deployment of weapons in space and missile-defense systems.

▪ Finally, China supports an early conclusion of a treaty banning the production of fissile material.

Critics assert that China's nuclear policy statements are smokescreens released to hide ambitious nuclear intentions. It is true that China has been slow to join various nuclear security regimes, and it is also true that there is ample evidence that China has in the past promoted nuclear proliferation. Pakistan's fission bomb might as well have “Designed-in-China” stamped all over it.

But China's nuclear doctrine is clearly in line with the concept of limited deterrence based on second-strike forces that would retaliate only if the nation suffered a nuclear attack by another country. Limited deterrence requires the survivability and flexibility of nuclear forces. China's nuclear modernization plan, which would eventually bring mobile missiles on line, is consistent with that.

Further, China is not attempting to reach nuclear parity with either Russia or the United States. To do so would mean spending itself into bankruptcy. After all, its main goal is to avoid having China subjected to 1950s-style nuclear blackmail. China's nuclear modernization has always played a distant second fiddle to the priorities of economic stability and increasing prosperity.

Ballistic missile defense

Currently, the most worrisome issue for China centers on various U.S. plans for missile defense systems.

First, a missile defense system for the United States would upset the global strategic balance by potentially neutralizing China's limited nuclear deterrent. Amb. Sha Zukang warned in January that “other countries will be forced to develop more advanced offensive missiles” if one country seeks both offensive and defensive strategic advantage unilaterally.

Second, a joint U.S.-Japan theater missile defense system would jeopardize East Asian security. As some American analysts point out, transferring theater missile defense systems to Japan would have strategic implications. China would see the collaboration as building a Japanese strategic shield; Japan could then develop both defensive and offensive nuclear capabilities.

Finally, the inclusion of Taiwan in U.S. missile defense plans will “meet strong objection from the Chinese people,” according to the Chinese government. It warns of “grave consequences if the missile defense system is implemented in Asia, and especially if Taiwan is allowed to participate in it.”

Partnership

Despite often bellicose rhetoric in the past, China has increasingly come to appreciate the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, especially as the country's economic life has improved. The United States and China now share the same basic concept of nuclear deterrence–that the purpose of deterrence is to prevent the escalation of conflict so that nuclear weapons are never used.

But is China a potential Soviet-style nuclear threat to the United States? The facts clearly point to a negative answer. The Chinese nuclear arsenal has always been far behind the United States, not only in quantity but also in quality. No amount of spying, if it occurred, will dramatically change that.

More important, limited nuclear deterrence does not require China to build nuclear forces equivalent to the United States to counter America's still-huge nuclear arsenal. A fact understood by all U.S. nuclear war-gamers is that it takes only a few survivable nuclear weapons to deter the United States. No president would risk losing an American city unless he feared that the country's very existence was on the line.

Will China become a nuclear threat to the United States in the next 10 or 20 years? Not likely. The U.S.-China nuclear relationship will continue to be vastly asymmetrical. Yet, if the United States adopts a Cold War-style containment policy as many advocate, China could eventually pose a threat.

In the worst-case scenario, China might reverse its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and other nuclear regimes. It might divert more resources from economic development to defense. In the end, the nightmare of a Chinese threat could be made a reality by an anti-China fantasy promoted in the United States.

But for now, China is not an enemy. It can even be a partner. Among the many common interests the United States and China have are nuclear non-proliferation, the test-ban treaty, and a fissile material cut-off treaty. Working together in these areas would be beneficial for both countries.

Treating China as a nuclear enemy would be unwise–a self-fulfilling prophesy neither nation should wish for. Instead, the United States and China should interact with restraint, sensitivity, and responsibility.