Is China Changing its Nuclear Strategy?

In a recent article for Foreign Policy Magazine, Tong Zhao, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program and China Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that in spite of its passive diplomatic posture regarding nuclear weapons (which was recently reemphasized in May during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin), some of China’s recent military behaviors indicate that it is changing its nuclear strategy in subtle ways. Primarily, he argued that its “Launch Under Attack” (LUA) strategy is showing signs of moving towards a more aggressive deterrent stance. 

China tested its first nuclear bomb in 1964, and its first thermonuclear weapon three years later. But ever since, China has adopted a remarkably passive policy regarding nuclear weapons. It is party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and acclimated to both the Convention on Biological Weapons and Chemical Weapons. While Cold War suspicions between Russia and the United States edged generals and policymakers towards the construction of sophisticated first-strike capabilities, China has long held an explicit no-first-use policy—in fact, China does not even attach its nuclear warheads to missile delivery systems during times of peace. Chinese diplomats have thus demonstrated resistance to a LUA strategy in toto, even though it would only be used if China was under imminent nuclear attack. 

But recent trends suggest that Chinese policymakers are reexamining the value of deterrence. Zhao begins by observing that China is building a comprehensive early warning system of “infrared satellites and large ground-based radars, to detect potential attacks.” He then suggests that those working in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “increasingly endorse the LUA concept,” and are “presenting detailed discussions of LUA design and execution.” Such a buildup of early warning and detection systems implies some anticipation or anxiety about missile incursions over China, and gradual endorsement of LUA could indicate the direction in which Chinese leaders feel the winds of tension are blowing through the Indo-Pacific.

These developments have several implications, first among which is that increased nuclear posturing, or opaque discussions about said posturing, are overwhelmingly likely to stimulate anxiety among neighboring states. Those countries could come to anticipatory aggression or proliferation as defensive options. The recent Israel-Iran war has informed the world of the potential costs of nuclear procurement, and though China is already a nuclear power, any further advancements it makes in procurement and posturing could shift the balance closer to conflict. 

China’s present security situation makes things riskier for decisionmakers, as Zhao writes. When weighing the decision to respond, China will have to take into account the missile facilities that North Korea and Russia are presumed to maintain near the Chinese border: if the United States were to launch an attack on these sites, Chinese military leaders would have to determine both whether the missile was carrying a nuclear warhead and whether the missile was directed towards China or to one of these border facilities. The world has never come as close to the brink of nuclear war as it has when such ambiguity or risk of misidentification are at play: in one instance, the world had only the choice of one man, Stanislav Petrov, to thank for the avoidance of all-out nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

The international community and nuclear watchdog organizations will have to monitor this phenomenon very closely to ensure that the risk of heightened nuclear proliferation in the Indo-Pacific is mitigated, especially as tensions between the United States and China rise over dominance in the region. Technology is fallible, and where the destructive power of a nuclear weapon is involved, the consequences of a bad decision could mean life or death for entire nations. Analysts must also consider the possibility that these initial developments, though strictly defensive in nature, could be the opening moves of a China that is increasingly willing to brandish its nuclear weapons as tools of coercion while simultaneously allowing its historical passivity to be eroded by opaque decisionmaking. China faces the choice between disavowing the “Cold War mentality and zero-sum games” it warned against last May and increasing its strength amid rising tensions in the region; whatever it chooses, the consequences will be monumental.