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Updated March 2009
Nuclear Overview
On 16 October 1964, China exploded its first nuclear weapon, officially becoming the world's fifth nuclear weapons state—after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. Since that day, China has stated that its nuclear doctrine is based on the concept of "no-first-use" (NFU) and that it serves strictly as a minimum nuclear deterrent against nuclear attacks. Although the exact size of its nuclear stockpile is impossible to know given the amount of secrecy that surrounds China's nuclear weapons program, analysts have estimated the size of China's nuclear stockpile by the end of 2007 to be approximately 240 warheads, with 176 deployed. Recent estimates from the U.S. Department of Defense have stated that Beijing appears to be increasing its nuclear capacity at the rate of about 25 percent per year. China is thought to have a stockpile of fissile material (highly enriched uranium and plutonium) sufficient to double or triple its current nuclear arsenal.
Since its inception, China's nuclear weapon program has relied on a mixture of foreign assistance, indigenous know-how and espionage to steadily develop and modernize its nuclear arsenal from its first implosion device to the development of tactical nuclear weapons in the 1980s. As a result of this program, China is assessed to have at least six different types of nuclear weapons: a 15-40 kiloton (kt) fission bomb; a 20 kt missile warhead; a 3 megaton (Mt) thermonuclear missile warhead; a 3 Mt thermonuclear gravity bomb; a 4-5 Mt missile warhead; and a 200-300 kt missile warhead. China is also thought to possess a total of some 150 tactical nuclearwarheads on its short-range ballistic, and possibly cruise, missiles.
In its 2008 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China, the U.S. Department of Defense noted that "China is qualitatively and quantitatively improving its strategic missile force," which could "provide a credible, survivable nuclear deterrent and counterstrike capability." The report identified a number of nuclear-capable missile delivery systems: Approximately 20 silo-based, liquid-fueled DF-5A (CSS-4) ICBMs; approximately 20 liquid-fueled DF-4 (CSS-3) intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs); 15-20 less capable, liquid-fueled DF-3A (CSS-2) IRBMs; and upwards of 50 DF-21 (CSS-5) road-mobile, solid-fueled medium range ballistic missiles. China also possesses at least 1,000 and possibly more than 1,400 DF-11 and DF-15 (CSS-7 and CSS-6, respectively) short range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and perhaps 200 cruise missiles. The Department of Defense assesses that all Chinese SRBMs are deployed near Taiwan.
There is an ongoing effort to shift from liquid-fueled missiles to more solid-fueled ones which, among other advantages, can be launched more rapidly. China has also continued to develop new missile launch sites and underground storage facilities in remote inland regions, including the Gobi Desert and the Tibetan highlands. As there is no evidence of long-range missiles being deployed to these new locations, the launch sites appear to be intended primarily as forward bases for potential launches against Russia and India.
Even as it continues to develop its arsenal, however, China has also slowly moved towards increased openness in its willingness to share a limited amount of deployment information and strategy. For example, the January 2009 China Defense White Paper details Beijing's non-first-use policy and roughly outlines several stages of nuclear alert. While admittedly vague, the confidence-building disclosure is a small step towards transparency.
History
China's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program came in response to nuclear threats from the United States. In July 1950, at the very beginning of the Korean War, U.S. President Harry Truman ordered ten nuclear-configured B-29s to the Pacific, and "warned China that the U.S. would take 'whatever steps are necessary' to stop Chinese intervention and that the use of nuclear weapons 'had been under active consideration.'" In 1952, U.S. President-elect Dwight Eisenhower publicly hinted that he would authorize the use of nuclear weapons against China if the Korean War armistice talks continued to stagnate. In 1954, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, General Curtis LeMay, voiced his support for the use of nuclear weapons if China resumed fighting in Korea. LeMay stated, "There are no suitable strategic air targets in Korea. However, I would drop a few bombs in proper places like China, Manchuria and Southeastern Russia. In those 'poker games,' such as Korea and Indo-China, we... have never raised the ante—we have always just called the bet. We ought to try raising sometime." Not long after, in January 1955, U.S. Navy Admiral Arthur Radford also publicly advocated the use of nuclear weapons if China invaded South Korea.
These threats prompted the Chinese to begin developing nuclear weapons in the winter of 1954. The Third Ministry of Machinery Building (renamed the Second Ministry of Machinery Building in 1957 and then in 1982, the Ministry of Nuclear Industry) was then established in 1956. With Soviet assistance, nuclear research began at the Institute of Physics and Atomic Energy in Beijing, and a gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant in Lanzhou was constructed to produce weapons-grade uranium. On 15 October 1957, the U.S.S.R. agreed to provide China with a sample atomic bomb and manufacturing data. From 1955 to 1959, approximately 260 Chinese nuclear scientists and engineers went to the Soviet Union, while roughly the same number of Soviet nuclear experts traveled to China to work in its nuclear industry. However, by 1959 the rift between the Soviet Union and China had become so great that one year later in 1960 the Soviet Union discontinued all assistance to China. After 1960, China was forced to go it alone.
China successfully tested its first atomic bomb on 16 October 1964—with highly enriched uranium produced at the Lanzhou facility—and just 32 months later on 17 June 1967, China tested its first thermonuclear device. This achievement is remarkable in that the timespan between the two events is substantially less than the other nuclear powers. By way of comparison, 86 months passed between the United States' first atomic test and its first hydrogen bomb test; for the U.S.S.R., it was 75 months; for the U.K., 66 months; and for France, 105 months.
On 27 October 1966, China launched a Dong Feng-2 (DF-2) medium range ballistic missile (MRBM) from the Shuangchengzi missile test site in Gansu province, which struck its target in the Lop Nur test site. The missile carried a 12 kiloton nuclear warhead, marking the only time that a country has tested a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile over populated areas.
Starting in the mid-1960s, China adopted a policy known as the "Third Line," which was an effort to construct redundant facilities for strategic interests such as the steel, aerospace, and nuclear industries in the interior of China to make them less vulnerable to attack. "Third Line" nuclear facilities include a gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment facility at Heping, a plutonium production reactor and extraction facility at Guangyuan, the Nuclear Fuel Component Plant at Yibin, and a nuclear weapon design facility at Mianyang. The "Third Line" was conducted during China's Third (1966-70) and Fourth (1971-1975) Five-Year Economic Plans.
Nuclear Modernization During the 1980s and Beyond
China's nuclear tests in the late-1980s and 1990s were geared toward further modernizing its nuclear forces. Although China officially declared in 1994 that these tests were for improving safety features on existing warheads, they were also likely intended for the development of new, smaller warheads for China's next-generation solid-fueled ICBMs (e.g. DF-31 and DF-31A) and possibly to develop a multiple warhead (MRV or MIRV) capability as well. Some speculate that China wanted to delay an international test ban until it could complete its latest round of tests and only announced a testing moratorium after all the tests necessary for the next phase of nuclear modernization were completed. China's last test was on 29 July 1996, and less than two months later on 24 September 1996, Beijing signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The National People's Congress, however, has yet to ratify the treaty.
China's 1996 signing of the CTBT was the latest in a series of policy shifts on nuclear nonproliferation issues. In fact, it was during the 1980s that China's position on nuclear proliferation first started to change. During the 1980's, Beijing continued to criticize the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as an imbalanced, discriminatory treaty, but also indicated that it accepted in principle the norm of nuclear nonproliferation. In 1984, China joined the IAEA and agreed to place all of its exports under international safeguards; that same year a senior Chinese official, during a trip to the United States, provided Washington with verbal assurances that China did not advocate or encourage nuclear proliferation. In 1990, though still not a member of the NPT, China attended the fourth NPT review conference and, though it criticized the treaty for not banning the deployment of nuclear weapons outside national territories and for not including concrete provisions for general nuclear disarmament, also stated that the treaty had had a positive impact and contributed to the maintenance of world peace and stability. In August 1991, shortly after France acceded to the NPT, China also declared its intention to join, though it again expressed its reservations about the treaty's discriminatory nature.
China formally acceded to the NPT in March 1992 as a nuclear weapon state—the last nuclear weapon state to do so. In its statement of accession, the Chinese government called on all nuclear powers to issue unconditional no-first-use pledges, to provide negative and positive security assurances to the non-nuclear weapon states, to support the development of nuclear weapons free zones, to withdraw all nuclear weapons deployed outside national territories, and to halt the arms race in outer space.
Since its accession, China has praised the NPT's role in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and also supported the decision to indefinitely extend the NPT at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference. However, China has continued to state that it views nonproliferation not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to the ultimate objective of the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons. Despite this, China was embroiled in nuclear proliferation scandals throughout the late 1980's and early 1990's, particularly with respect to its sale of ring magnets to Pakistan in 1994. Most recently, it was learned that China provided Pakistan with a nuclear bomb design (used in China's October 1966 nuclear test). These designs were passed to Libya by the A.Q. Khan network and discovered by IAEA inspectors in 2004.
In the late 1990s, U.S. attention focused on the role of Chinese espionage in assisting China's nuclear weapon development. The U.S. Congress formed a Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military-Commercial Concerns with China (the Cox Committee). According to the Cox Committee Report, suspicion of China's nuclear espionage started after the U.S. government realized that information derived from Chinese tests in 1992-1996 were similar to U.S. nuclear designs. This similarity, combined with other information derived from classified sources, led the Cox Committee to claim that China had stolen several bomb designs, including the U.S.' most advanced W-88 design and a design for an enhanced radiation weapon (neutron bomb). Yet, the Cox Report has been severely criticized by both experts and officials in the United States as a political document that has several technical inaccuracies.
The Future of China's Nuclear Modernization
There is much speculation that China's nuclear modernization program may be geared toward developing the capacity to move from a strategy of minimum deterrence to one of limited deterrence. "Limited deterrence" entails the capability to deter conventional, theater, and strategic nuclear war, and to control escalation in the event of a nuclear confrontation. Under a "limited deterrence" doctrine, China would need to target nuclear forces in addition to cities, which would require expanded deployments. However, such a limited deterrence capability may still be a long way off. According to Alastair Johnston, "It is fairly safe to say that Chinese capabilities come nowhere near the level required by the concept of limited deterrence."
Regardless of the ultimate intent of these activities, through these modernization efforts, China continues to develop faster, sturdier, and more accurate missiles that may carry smaller second-generation nuclear warheads, multiple reentry-vehicles (MRVs) and various penetration aids. The deployments of the DF-31 (CSS-9) and DF-31A (CSS-9A)—the latest long-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles, respectively—combined with the anticipated introduction of the JL-2 (CSS-NX-4) long-range submarine-launched ballistic missile, begin a new phase in Chinese nuclear missile development. The introduction of these solid fueled missiles represents a shift to decreased reliance on their liquid-fueled predecessors, the DF-5 (CSS-4) and JL-1 (CSS-NX-3). This allows a much faster response time, among other advantages, as fuel trucks are not required to fill the missile prior to launch.
Why is China strengthening its nuclear arsenal? Three primary explanations exist. First, China may simply wish—as it claims—to update its aging weapons systems and replace them with more modern systems. Second, China may be seeking a new fleet of ballistic missiles to increase the survivability of its nuclear deterrent. As other countries (particularly the United States) continue to increase their military capabilities, China may feel more vulnerable. From Desert Storm through the 2003 war in Iraq, the United States continuously demonstrated its ability to use conventional forces to destroy fixed targets with tremendous accuracy. U.S. efforts to develop a ballistic missile defense system also threaten the deterrence capability of China's aging nuclear forces. China's leaders may fear that their older, immobile nuclear forces are vulnerable or ineffective as a deterrent, and should be replaced by newer, road-mobile nuclear forces and ICBMs such as the DF-21 (CSS-5), DF-31 (CSS-9) and DF-31A (CSS-9A) missiles. Finally, China's efforts to increase its nuclear capabilities may indicate an important, yet undeclared, shift toward a more assertive nuclear policy. Proponents of this explanation argue that "more Chinese missiles might signal a possible shift from a retaliatory countervalue posture to an offensive counterforce posture, particularly if accompanied by necessary improvements in accuracy." According to Paul Godwin, reaching a threshold number of weapons may allow China to wage limited nuclear war, since Beijing would hold enough forces in reserve to deter an aggressor from escalating a nuclear exchange.
Despite continuing concerns about China's nuclear buildup, however, cross-Strait tensions between China and Taiwan have subsided in the wake of the relatively pro-China Ma Ying-jeou's election in March 2008. Ma's predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, had drawn Chinese ire for a series of moves perceived as promoting Taiwanese independence. While the question of independence has not been resolved, the new Taiwanese administration has generally refrained from gestures which could be seen as inflammatory. Recent improvements in China-Taiwan relations have been well-received by the United States, which sees the issue as the most likely flash point for a military confrontation between China and the US. In the view of most analysts, this risk has now substantially declined. While China's decreased threat perception may not slow its nuclear modernization efforts, which are seen simply as the replacement of obsolete equipment, it does has the potential to slow acquisitions in key areas—for example, the buildup of short-range missiles. If sustained, the shift may also make both sides more amenable to nonproliferation efforts such as ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, though progress would be contingent upon a number of other factors. In combination with recent developments such as the resumption of regular military exchanges between China and the US, the Taiwanese administration change appears to have begun a significant de-escalation in US-China tension.
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This material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and
does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently
verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2009 by MIIS.
