Is China Abandoning Its “No First Use” Nuclear Policy?
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) shapes itself into a “world-class force,” it is also modernizing its nuclear weapons stockpile. Keeping one’s nuclear deterrent in good repair, maintaining strict control, and clearly communicating its purpose is the mark of a responsible actor. China, however, is doing much, much more while keeping the rest of the world in the dark. Now, some observers even suggest China may abandon its longstanding “No First Use” (NFU) nuclear policy, which would signal China’s intent to stand alongside the United States and Russia as a nuclear power capable of inflicting destruction beyond ordinary catastrophe.
During the September 2015 World War II Victory Parade in Beijing, the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) unveiled China’s DF-26 intermediate range ballistic missile, capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads throughout the western Pacific. The PLA is further continuing to develop its DF-41 ICBM, which Western analysts suspect may carry multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs).
Furthermore, China is developing a sea-based nuclear deterrent with its Jin class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (Type 094 SSBN). The PLA will begin building a new class of SSBN in the early 2020s: Type 096, equipped with the JL-3 next-generation submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).
China’s nuclear deterrent is also increasing in size: between 2015 and 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense reported an increase in China’s ICBM forcefrom between 50 and 60 missiles to between 75 and 100. Xinhua in 2010 and again in 2013 reported China’s first successful tests of missile defense technology under what it calls Project 863. Although China’s air expeditionary capabilities currently lag those at sea, one wonders whether an air-based nuclear deterrent can be far behind.
Although these advances are significant, particularly in light of stagnant U.S. defense spending, most striking is China’s de facto acknowledgment that its DF-5C missile is equipped with MIRVs, as reported by China’s official military newspaper. If China’s nuclear force remains the “countervalue” force that it claims — possessing only the capability to deliver a punitive second strike after another power has struck it — it has yet to explain why it is increasingly taking on the profile of a great nuclear power.
Is it possible that China is simply modernizing its arsenal while upholding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s stated goals of “cessation of the nuclear arms race” and undertaking “effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament?”
