By Anthony H. Cordesman
The current focus on China's expanding influence, conventional forces, missile forces, emerging ASAT and cyber capabilities, and its role in the South China Sea, has led much of the analysis of Chinese military developments to ignore key uncertainties. This includes China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the fact that China is developing all the elements of a far more advanced Triad along with improve theater delivery systems and missiles defenses. What used to be a U.S-Russian strategic and theater nuclear arms race is now radically changing, and the nuclear balance, arms control, and the risk of actual nuclear warfare between the superpowers is becoming a contest between three superpowers and not just two.
The study concludes that the lack of attention to fundamental changes that are now taking place in the most critical elements of the military balance that shaped the Cold War, and the U.S.-Russian rivalry to the present, has several explanations. It is partly the result of the fact that the other symbols of China's emergence as a superpower – like the situation in the South China – are currently far more visible and seen as far more urgent. It is partly the result of the fact that for more than a decade, China was very slow to expand its nuclear missile forces and create a real Triad. Last, it is partly a result of the fact that past estimates of its total holdings of nuclear weapons were so low – roughly at the level of British and French forces – and far below the levels held by the United States and Russia.
The new U.S. strategies, announced in 2017 and 2018, did acknowledge the growing importance of China’s nuclear forces, however, and the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review issued in early 2018 focused on the emerging Chinese threat. Similarly, the latest Department of Defense report on Chinese military forces makes it clear that China is completing the development of new ICBMs, SSBN and SLBMs, and bombers that will give it all the elements of a Triad that is directly competitive with that of the U.S. and Russia, as well as the potential to create far more capable tactical and theater nuclear forces and missile defenses. Some of these systems are already being deployed and all seem likely to enter service in significant numbers during the coming decade – where China may become a peer competitor in conventional forces to the U.S. in the Pacific, outpace Russia's other military forces, and emerge as a true economic superpower.
At the same time, there are still serious gaps in open-source reporting. The public estimates that indicate China has a low stockpile of nuclear weapons have always been uncertain and are based largely on a limited amount of now dated open-source reporting by the U.S. intelligence community. They also have never been fully explained and defined and have provided only the most limited detail.
Much of the open-source material provided by intelligence sources on delivery systems also focuses on the types of strategic delivery systems – not technical performance or probable use in warfare. Such reporting usually does not clearly identify theater and tactical systems that may use nuclear weapons. Similarly, almost all open-source material on Chinese strategy only addresses China's official statements about nuclear doctrine and strategy, and not China's probable actual warfighting needs and capabilities.
The need to give China’s emerging nuclear forces more attention is reinforced by the fact that they are becoming far stronger at a time when major changes are taking place in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. Both countries have moved away from efforts to reduce nuclear weapons and forces. Both the U.S. and Russia have announced major nuclear weapons and delivery system modernization programs that impact every element of their triads of ICBMs, SLBM, and air-delivered weapons – as well as the ability to use lower-yield nuclear weapons against theater military targets.
The U.S. now needs to fully reassess Chinese nuclear forces as the forces of a future peer competitor – both for military and arms control purposes. Recent reporting on Chinese military forces by the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense shows that China is already emerging as a far more serious nuclear weapons power than in the past, and is improving the design of many of its nuclear delivery systems in ways that will make them competitive with U.S. and Russia systems. What is far less clear is how much of a build-up will take place in Chinese nuclear weapons and delivery systems, what new capabilities and weapons China will acquire, and how its nuclear posture and strategy will evolve as China approaches parity in other aspects of military power with the United States.
This analysis addresses these issues, and the major uncertainties involved. It draws heavily on official reporting by the U.S. intelligence community and Department of Defense, but also on analysis by a range of sources, including the Federation of American Scientists, Arms Control Association, IISS, SIPRI and analysts like Hans M. Kristensen and Robert Norris.
It concludes that the open-source data available on China's efforts are too limited and uncertain to provide an adequate basis for estimating China's current and future nuclear strategy, nuclear weapons holdings, and warfighting capabilities. At the same time, it concludes that U.S. government open source reporting needs major improvements, that the ongoing emergence of China as a global superpower means that the U.S. must give the same priority to deterring China's nuclear forces as Russia's, and that U.S. arms control efforts must break out of their current focus on U.S.-Russian nuclear forces and address those of China as well.
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