Political Drivers of China’s Changing Nuclear Policy: Implications for U.S.-China Nuclear Relations and International Security

During the first virtual summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2021, the two leaders discussed nuclear issues and, according to U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, agreed to “look to begin to carry forward discussion on strategic stability.”¹ This outcome was hardly surprising; as both American and Chinese experts had pointed out, reducing the risk of nuclear weapons use was the countries’ most obvious common interest. Yet, previous U.S. efforts to kick-start a nuclear or strategic stability dialogue with China have been unsuccessful.

Nearly three years after the summit, the countries appear to have made little progress in official dialogues, and unofficial discussions are also less frequent and substantive than before. The message from Chinese officials has become increasingly clear: the United States and China should first stabilize their political relationship before taking on nuclear issues.

For decades, China has sought to build and maintain a credible nuclear second-strike capability (that is, to be able to launch a devastating nuclear retaliation after absorbing a disarming first strike). It has done so to secure a relationship of mutual vulnerability with the United States. Many Chinese nuclear experts have largely accepted the Western term of “strategic stability” to describe such a relationship. They believe that mutual vulnerability reduces both the risk of a nuclear arms race (arms race stability) and nuclear use in a military crisis (crisis stability).

But Chinese political leaders have never accepted the Western definition of strategic stability. Rather, they use the term to refer to the overall stability of a bilateral relationship. To Chinese political leaders, a stable U.S.-China relationship means, first and foremost, a U.S. willingness to accept the legitimacy of China’s political system, coexist peacefully with China, and respect China’s so-called core interests.

Because of this confusion, this report eschews the use of the term strategic stability. Instead, it uses the term “political stability” to describe the broad meaning of strategic stability as understood by Chinese political leaders. From their viewpoint, the core issues plaguing the overall bilateral relationship are political—an aspect that this report will delve into. The report uses the term “nuclear stability” to describe the narrow and classical meaning of strategic stability that is often used in Western literature.² Nuclear stability includes both arms race stability and crisis stability.

After China tested its first nuclear device in 1964, Mao Zedong and other first generation leaders emphasized the role Chinese nuclear weapons could play in deterring nuclear attacks.³ In the following decades, China maintained a modest nuclear strategy that prioritized achieving nuclear stability with the Soviet Union and the United States. However, its recent nuclear expansion, increasing interest in new nuclear postures such as launch-under-attack, and its declared ambition to build a “powerful strategic deterrent capability system” ⁴ raise urgent questions about whether China still commits to the traditionally limited goal of maintaining nuclear stability with the United States.

As U.S.-China relations deteriorate and China embarks on a large-scale buildup of its nuclear forces, the security risks are rising. Partly contingent on what countermeasures the United States takes, an escalation of U.S.-China nuclear competition could have far-reaching implications for international security. Addressing this growing danger will require a thorough understanding of Chinese motivations and the thinking behind the country’s changing policy.

Today, international experts are divided over whether China’s nuclear expansion is a response to perceived new military threats, such as U.S. missile defense systems and conventional precision weapons, or whether it is driven by a revisionist security agenda.⁵ The latter perspective includes the belief that China is systematically shifting away from its traditional nuclear strategy toward a much more aggressive approach, including greater reliance on the first use of nuclear weapons. This might compel the United States to substantially augment its nuclear capabilities.

This report contends that neither perspective fully captures the intricate internal dynamics driving China’s nuclear expansion, positing that the current shifts in the country’s nuclear policy are mainly rooted in changing political considerations. Contemporary Chinese leaders, particularly Xi, have elevated the political importance of nuclear weapons. Coupled with significant changes in China’s domestic political system in recent years, this has led to a nuclear policy that is less cohesive, less coherent, and less aligned with China’s specific security requirements than before. These complex political dynamics remain largely ignored by international policymakers and analysts.

The conventional view among the international policy community that emphasizes protecting the U.S.-China nuclear relationship from the adverse effects of deteriorating bilateral political relations is not without merit.⁶ However, it is becoming increasingly challenging to maintain nuclear stability separately and independently from the escalating geopolitical rivalry.

Considering the potentially catastrophic consequences of a significant U.S.-China military conflict—which could involve nuclear escalation—the most impactful approach for reducing nuclear risks requires serious efforts from the United States, China, and other countries and civil society actors in the global community to truly comprehend and address the root political issues between the two major powers.

In this context, this report provides a comprehensive examination of China’s prevailing nuclear perspectives and policymaking mechanisms, shedding light on the underlying political challenges and potential strategies for managing them. To strive for an objective examination, the report presents and evaluates Chinese perspectives and, to the extent possible, refrains from injecting the author’s personal judgments about them. The report’s descriptions of Chinese (and American) perspectives should not be interpreted as an endorsement.

The report begins with an introduction of the growing role of political considerations and the declining importance of technical factors in China’s nuclear policymaking. Chapter 1 traces the chronology of China’s recent decisions to expand its nuclear capabilities, detailing how Xi’s anticipation of escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing prompted an initial decision to augment Chinese nuclear forces. The subsequent decline in bilateral relations further solidified the Chinese leader’s perception of an existential threat, resulting in a further acceleration of the nuclear buildup. The chapter underscores how both insecurity and ambition drive Xi’s belief that China needs a greater nuclear capability to influence U.S. perception of the international balance of power and to shape the United States’ overall approach toward China.

Chapter 2 delves into domestic decisionmaking processes in China, scrutinizing domestic actors’ varied influences on the country’s nuclear expansion strategy. As Xi has consolidated power, China’s traditional nuclear policy experts have become increasingly sidelined in a policymaking system that is more closed-off and secretive. Concurrently, Xi has overturned previous leaders’ constraints on the military’s nuclear modernization, giving the military an important mandate to fast-track nuclear development. This shift has had profound effects on the coherence of China’s nuclear policy: the high-level political endorsement shields China’s military—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—from external oversight while it makes operational-level decisions. The PLA’s growing interest in acquiring escalation management capabilities, partly driven by the heightened security situation in the Taiwan Strait, carries significant implications for U.S.-China nuclear stability.

Chapter 3 explores the intricate relationship between nuclear stability and political stability in the U.S.-China context, highlighting the challenges posed by the two nations’ divergent goals. It conducts a critical analysis of the underlying logic of China’s attempt to enhance political stability by building up its nuclear capabilities. It also examines the political roots of China’s increasingly acute perception of the United States as an existential threat, emphasizing the significant impact of information and perception gaps between U.S. and Chinese societies. In doing so, the report highlights the obstacles Beijing encounters in its effort to foster political stability through a top-down approach and illustrates why separating bilateral nuclear and political issues would be far more challenging than generally anticipated. It then explores how the growing entanglement between bilateral nuclear and political relations influences both arms race stability and crisis stability between the United States and China.

In the last chapter, the report offers recommendations to mitigate both technical and underlying political challenges in U.S.-China nuclear relations. Though these challenges are extraordinarily severe and solutions elusive, the colossal stakes demand exhaustive efforts. The recommendations are summarized below.

The conventional wisdom, shared by both American experts and many Chinese scholars, is that China has been modernizing its nuclear capabilities primarily to offset the anticipated impact of new U.S. military capabilities on the credibility of Beijing’s nuclear deterrent.¹

Ongoing improvements in U.S. nuclear and non-nuclear strategic capabilities have indeed informed China’s thinking over past decades. In recent years, U.S. nuclear weapons have become more accurate. The country has made steady improvements to its strategic missile defense capabilities, including by testing an SM-3 block IIA interceptor against an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)-class target.² In addition, it withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 and indicated an interest in deploying conventional land-based missiles near China, which has raised Beijing’s concern about conventional counterforce strikes.³ The advancement of U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, especially the country’s space-based components, could also increase the vulnerability of Chinese nuclear weapons.

But these operational-level factors are unlikely the main drivers of China’s current nuclear buildup. Many experts have noted that the decisions a country makes regarding its weapons and military policy, including strategic deterrence, often are not solely influenced by rational, technical considerations. Political and organizational factors also play a crucial role.⁴ The following four factors indicate that this theory holds true for China.

The Declining Importance of Technical Factors

Over the past few decades, U.S. efforts to improve nuclear and non-nuclear strategic capabilities have largely been incremental and relatively transparent; recent administrations have adopted few dramatic changes to the U.S. nuclear or strategic missile defense posture. Given that China did not significantly expand its nuclear capabilities after the Ronald Reagan administration rolled out the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983 nor after the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, the recent growth of China’s nuclear forces has occurred at a speed and scale that is disproportional compared with the gradual and relatively predictable U.S. improvement of nuclear and non-nuclear strategic capabilities. Even if the current Chinese modernization programs were first conceived of during the Bush administration in response to the United States’ ABM Treaty withdrawal, it does not explain why China now needs to engage in massive buildup programs, such as the simultaneous construction of three large ICBM silo fields. The commitment to significant quantitative expansion of capabilities within a short period of time is new. (China’s traditional nuclear modernization approach had been to introduce new capabilities step-by-step, which gave it the freedom to test and constantly improve.)

Second, if U.S. homeland missile defenses continue to be, as they were generally believed to have been in previous decades, the most important concern for Chinese nuclear planners,⁵ China’s current investment in silo-based ICBMs is not the best way to address this concern. The large number of new silo-based ICBMs in the northwestern region and other parts of the country will likely become the new backbone of China’s strategic nuclear capabilities once they come online. Although large-scale silo-based ICBMs may be particularly helpful to prevent an enemy from launching a preemptive, disarming strike, they are not the most cost-effective way to address the threat from missile defenses, especially when compared with alternative options, such as developing more maneuverable missile systems or unconventional delivery systems that can circumvent missile defense systems, building better penetration aids, and launching missiles from locations and directions not well covered by U.S. radars and long-range interceptors. Russian nuclear planners, who have also been seriously concerned about U.S. missile defenses, chose to develop new types of delivery systems—exploring exotic long-range delivery technologies in some cases—instead of massively expanding silo-based ICBM capabilities. The constraints from the New START nuclear arms treaty and Russia’s already sizable nuclear arsenal are probable factors in Russia’s choice, but the Russian approach demonstrates the existence of alternatives that do not entail significant expansion of the overall arsenal.

Even many Chinese nuclear policy experts did not appear to anticipate the recent nuclear buildup or understand its rationale.

Third, even many Chinese nuclear policy experts did not appear to anticipate the recent nuclear buildup or understand its rationale.  Shortly before the revelation of large-scale silo construction by foreign scholars, senior Chinese experts—including leading military experts—had been arguing that China’s nuclear deterrent remained largely credible, implying that only modest and incremental modernization was needed to counter U.S. technological developments.⁶ There was no indication that they expected a fast nuclear buildup or thought it was necessary. Even today, private conversations indicate that many Chinese nuclear policy experts still do not understand the current buildup’s military rationale. For decades, Chinese nuclear strategists faithfully adhered to foundational principles of the nation’s nuclear policy established by Mao and his revolutionary peers, including the maintenance of a small nuclear arsenal. The recent departure could not have occurred without direct intervention from the highest level of leadership.

Fourth, the official Chinese response to the silo construction revelation was silence followed by denial. Chinese state media dismissed the reported missile silos as windmills, whereas the government refrained from commenting.⁷ Later, Chinese officials rejected the claim that China was expanding its nuclear forces significantly, although they acknowledged that “China has taken measures to modernize our nuclear arsenal, not for other reasons, but for reliability and safety reasons.”⁸ It is challenging to understand how a larger nuclear arsenal enhances “safety.” More critically, if improved U.S. military capabilities were the main driver behind China’s recent buildup, the Chinese government had every reason to say so directly and put pressure on the United States.

The Political Role of Nuclear Weapons as Strategic Counterbalance

Most existing literature portrays China’s traditional nuclear policy as primarily guided by achieving the minimum level of nuclear capability necessary for a credible second strike. While military-technical calculations have surely played a significant role in shaping China’s nuclear development goals over the years, nonmilitary and nontechnical factors have also been crucial. The political dimension of China’s nuclear weapons program has been consistently emphasized by Chinese leaders since the beginning. Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all Chinese paramount leaders have attached great significance to the political value of nuclear weapons and their role in shaping international perceptions and attitudes toward China. This long-standing, high-level emphasis on the political significance of China’s nuclear weapons has received insufficient attention in the existing literature.

The first paramount leader, Mao, said in1964 that imperialist countries “look down upon us because we don’t have atomic bombs and only have grenades . . . therefore China should have atomic bombs and develop hydrogen bombs as soon as possible.”⁹ The second paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, claimed in 1988 that “if China had not had atomic and hydrogen bombs and launched satellites since the 1960s, it would not have been able to be called a major power with significant influence and would not have had the international status it has now.”¹⁰ He also said that if China aimed to have a higher status in the future world order and more influence in international affairs, it must be backed by a strong nuclear capability.¹¹ The third paramount leader, Jiang Zemin, stated that China should “strive to build a lean and effective strategic nuclear force commensurate with China’s great power status.”¹² The fourth paramount leader, Hu Jintao, used a very similar language, saying that China should build a strategic missile force commensurate with China’s major power status.¹³

The emphasis placed by the current paramount leader, Xi, on the political role of nuclear weapons aligns with the traditional thinking of previous paramount leaders. His acknowledgment in 2016 of nuclear weapons as a “strategic pillar” of China’s “great power status” reflects a shared vision with previous leaders.¹⁴

To Chinese leaders, the political value of nuclear weapons amounts to more than enhancing China’s international status or prestige—it also encompasses their potential role in helping resolve China’s broader strategic challenges

However, to Chinese leaders, the political value of nuclear weapons amounts to more than enhancing China’s international status or prestige—it also encompasses their potential role in helping resolve China’s broader strategic challenges.  Specifically, nuclear weapons are viewed as useful to counterbalance against unfavorable strategic environments and positively shape China’s “internal and external environment.”¹⁵ They are also expected to help compel a “strong enemy”—a term Chinese officials often use to refer to the United States—to accept a peaceful and stable relationship with China, a situation this report calls political stability.

Authoritative military writings such as the Science of Military Strategy (National Defense University edition) clearly view strategic weapons as useful for playing both a military role of “containing war” and a broader political role of “creating a good internal and external environment.”¹⁶ On the latter, the 2020 Science of Military Strategy stresses that “strategic deterrence is a method of military conflict to achieve a political goal based on military strength” and that “under certain conditions, it can directly achieve political goals.”¹⁷ The reference to shaping not only the external environment but also the internal one is noteworthy. This report will later analyze how Chinese leaders view internal stability and external stability as intrinsically interlinked and how they think nuclear weapons can help address both.

The 2013 Science of Military Strategy (Academy of Military Sciences edition) also distinguishes wartime “dynamic deterrence” from peacetime “static deterrence.” Dynamic deterrence during wartime refers to the classical concept of deterring military conflicts in Western literature, whereas static deterrence in peacetime means the use of “comprehensive national power, and especially strategic (military) power” to “maintain strategic balance with the enemy during a relative long period of time.”¹⁸ The latter refers to the broader political role of nuclear weapons.

China’s Preventive Response to Anticipated Strategic Challenges

The political role of nuclear weapons as a strategic counterbalance against the United States and to help secure political stability in the U.S.-China relationship has become more important in recent years. Xi came to power in 2012, at a time when China was concerned about U.S. president Barack Obama’s rebalance to Asia and the United States’ potential adoption of a more hostile strategy toward China.

Xi’s writings and speeches indicate his adoption of the perspectives of structural realism. Early on, he anticipated troubles increasing between the United States and China, as China’s economic growth continued shifting the international balance of power in China’s favor. Indeed, he believes China’s international power and status have grown significantly, saying, “We are closer than ever before to the center stage of the world, closer than ever before to achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and possess unprecedented ability and confidence to realize this goal.”¹⁹ According to Xi, this elevated status comes with new challenges, particularly in the U.S.-China relationship; he thinks that the United States will not relinquish its dominance without resistance. Xinhua News Agency, one of the most important state media outlets, explained Xi’s thinking on this issue in a high-profile report on his efforts to strengthen the military: “The more we develop and grow, the more resistance and pressure we will encounter, and the more external risks we will face. This is a challenge that cannot be avoided in the process of development of China from being big to becoming strong; and is a task that cannot be bypassed to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”²⁰

Partly influenced by Xi’s thinking, Chinese foreign policy experts also see the changing international balance of power as a crucial structural force that shapes the United States’ overall approach toward China.²¹ Until recently, China’s remarkable development over the past four decades did not elicit strong containment measures from Washington. Beijing attributed this to the substantial power gap between the two nations, which had been significant enough to not raise serious concerns in the United States.

However, according to Beijing, the situation has changed as China has progressively closed the power gap, approaching a potential power transition; this would result in the United States seeking to contain, disrupt, and destabilize China in an effort to impede China’s growth and preserve U.S. dominance in the international system.

Xi Emphasizes Strategic Military Power

Xi believes the demonstration of stronger strategic military power, including a more impressive nuclear capability, can provide a strategic counterbalance against anticipated turbulences by dissuading the U.S.-led Western countries from conducting severe provocations and forcing them to behave more cautiously when dealing with China. Shortly after assuming power in 2012, Xi argued that the “Dream of a Strong Armed Force” is essential for achieving the “Dream of a Strong Nation,” as a strong military is critical to protecting China’s overall development goal.²² Since then, Xi has consistently emphasized the need for China to develop a “world-class military” to realize the “Chinese Dream” of “national rejuvenation.” Under his leadership, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted a historic resolution, only the third of its kind in the party’s hundred-year history, that officially declared that building a strong military is crucial for building a strong country. The resolution emphasized that national security and development interests can only be ensured with a consolidated national defense and a strong army commensurate with China’s international status.²³

For Xi, the objective of building a world-class military is not solely about addressing specific external threats but also about sending a broad political message to China’s adversaries. Such a military would signify that China has emerged as a leading global power whose interests and status demand recognition and respect.

Xi’s belief that nuclear weapons are a strategic pillar of China’s great power status suggests that he views China’s nuclear capability as a crucial indicator of the country’s strategic power. He likely believes that a formidable nuclear arsenal has a profound psychological influence on U.S. and Western perceptions of the international balance of power. In contrast, “China’s inferior nuclear capability could only lead to growing U.S. pressure on China,” according to a source close to Xi, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.²⁴

During his tenure, Xi has consistently strived to persuade China’s adversaries that the international balance of power is inexorably shifting in China’s favor. He appears to reason that if China’s ascension is proven an inevitable reality, its adversaries might be more inclined to abandon containment efforts and instead adopt a more conciliatory stance to accommodate China’s interests. Reflecting this perspective, shortly following Xi’s 2016 visit to the headquarters of the PLA Rocket Force, the PLA Daily released an editorial emphasizing that the force represents “the symbol of China’s military power” and “the trump card to awe and intimidate adversaries.” The editorial further asserted that the stronger the Rocket Force, the more capable China is of “strategically counterbalancing against strong militaries” and offering “more reliable safeguards for China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.”²⁵

This view is unsurprising and consistent with the prevailing Chinese view that the United States and other nuclear powers have been using nuclear weapons to achieve geopolitical goals beyond deterring military threats.²⁶ Li Bin, a leading Chinese nuclear expert, has long pointed out that the United States’ perception of its nuclear superiority over China could embolden Washington’s overall attitude toward Beijing, leading to more aggressive U.S. foreign and security policies. As a result, he has observed that even China’s traditional nuclear policy was significantly driven by a desire to contain the “emboldening” effect of the U.S. perception of nuclear superiority, in what he calls China’s “counter-nuclear coercion” strategy.²⁷

Professor Sun Mingfu from the Rocket Force Command College provided a similar description of Xi’s views on nuclear weapons. According to him, in a meeting with Chinese missile force officials in 2012, Xi emphasized that the fundamental nature of nuclear weapons as strategic, deterrent, and political weapons would remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Xi further stated that the strategic role of nuclear weapons in political, diplomatic, and military struggles is constant, and their deterrent role is absolute.²⁸

It is useful to note that Xi referenced the importance of nuclear weapons in the order of their political, diplomatic, and then military roles. He also drew attention to the case of Russia. He commented that Russia made the right decision to prioritize the development of its nuclear capabilities, even though Russia’s economy was in decline in recent decades and it had to “tighten its belt and do nothing else” as a result.²⁹ Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin has similarly claimed that Russia’s “nuclear triad” has played a significant role in addressing not only military threats but the emergence of new “political risks.”³⁰

Xi Upgrades China’s Missile Force

Against this background, Xi appears to attach greater importance than his predecessors to building up China’s nuclear capabilities, arguing that “[we] need to strengthen ourselves in all aspects, especially to strengthen deterrent capabilities.”³¹ As early as December 2012, Xi held a meeting with senior officials from the Second Artillery Corps—China’s main missile force that operated both conventional and nuclear missiles—during which he instructed them to “strive to construct a powerful informatized strategic missile force.”³² Previous Chinese paramount leaders rarely used the word “powerful” to describe the development goal of the Second Artillery. Articles subsequently published by Second Artillery leaders indicate that they have given great significance to this new instruction.³³ Three years after coming to power, in December 2015, Xi upgraded the Second Artillery from a military branch to a full military service and renamed it the PLA Rocket Force. In 2016, he inspected the force’s headquarters and delivered important instructions, including to “expedite the pace of development.”³⁴ And in 2018 he instructed PLA Navy officials that “our sea-based nuclear capabilities need to massively develop.”³⁵ This level of direct and public instruction on nuclear development strategy is unprecedented for a Chinese leader since Jiang Zemin.

Based on Sun’s 2014 article, which highlighted Xi’s internal comments on nuclear weapons, China was already in the process of considering important changes to its nuclear development policy by 2014. The upgrading of the Second Artillery to the PLA Rocket Force in 2015 signified a desire to substantially strengthen China’s nuclear forces. Xi’s visit and his delivery of an important internal speech at the force’s headquarters in 2016 likely marked a key milestone in China’s nuclear expansion decisionmaking, with military media reports emphasizing the visit’s historical significance.³⁶

China’s significant enhancement of its nuclear capabilities coincided with the country’s increasing identification of “strategic counterbalance” as a mission for its missile forces in general.

China’s significant enhancement of its nuclear capabilities coincided with the country’s increasing identification of “strategic counterbalance” as a mission for its missile forces in general,³⁷ and for the nuclear missile forces specifically. ³⁸ Sun’s article suggested that the Rocket Force’s internal adoption of the term originated in the early phase of Xi’s tenure, following Xi’s internal speeches. On December 31, 2015, the day when the Rocket Force was formally established, Xi’s speech to the newly founded service included an instruction to “enhance strategic counterbalance capabilities.”³⁹ Since then, official documents, senior military leaders, and state media increasingly use strategic counterbalance to describe the role of the Rocket Force. In 2019, China’s defense white paper added Xi’s instruction on strategic counterbalance to the Rocket Force’s mission.⁴⁰ Along with the growing emphasis on strategic counterbalance, the People’s Daily declared in 2017 that the Rocket Force would make itself a “world-class strategic force.”⁴¹

Perception of Existential Threats Leads to an Accelerated Buildup

Xi made the choice to strengthen China’s strategic capabilities early in his tenure, not mainly driven to address specific military threats but by a broad, somewhat nebulous initiative to mold China’s strategic environment in anticipation of potential challenges. Ironically, Xi’s ambition and proactive approach resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy, ultimately reinforcing his belief that China is indeed confronting increasing existential threats.

Striving to achieve the Chinese Dream, Xi has concentrated power under himself, tightened ideological control, and stressed the importance of ensuring domestic stability through heavy-handed methods.⁴² These policies have led the United States and other Western countries to criticize China’s increasing authoritarianism, domestic repression, and human rights violations, including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Western countries were also alarmed by China’s increasingly assertive foreign and security policy approach, such as China’s militarization of man-made islands in the South China Sea—a move that broke Xi’s own nonmilitarization pledge—and by China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy.⁴³ These moves together changed the nature of the threat that many Western leaders saw from a rising China. Since at least Donald Trump’s administration (2017–2021), senior U.S. officials increasingly worried about ideological confrontations with an authoritarian China. This led to a significantly higher level of concern about the implications of China potentially replacing the United States as the dominant world power.

To Xi, the escalating tensions vindicated his anticipation of increasing strategic hostility from Western countries as China closed the power gap. Beijing perceives Washington’s accusations toward China on human rights, internal repression, and global aggression merely as pretexts for the United States to contain China, with the underlying intent to hinder China’s ascent and obstruct its increasing challenge to U.S. supremacy. Beijing increasingly suspects that Washington is not as committed as before to maintaining a peaceful coexistence with China and that it now has a stronger inclination toward seeking regime change.⁴⁴ Such concerns were particularly strong during the second half of the Trump administration. In recent years, Beijing’s fears have also been exacerbated by perceived efforts of the United States to deny China’s right to development through policies such as tightened export controls. As a result, Beijing has at times perceived itself as facing an existential threat.

The Ministry of State Security reportedly warned Chinese leaders in 2020 that anti-Chinese forces had already led to the worst international environment for the country since 1989, when the Chinese government believed it faced an existential threat because of the Tiananmen Square protests. The ministry concluded in a 2020 report that China needed to prepare for the worst-case scenario of armed confrontation with the United States.⁴⁵ This concern is clearly shared by Xi, who has repeatedly argued that China’s external environment is experiencing profound and fundamental changes—changes of a magnitude that are unprecedented for at least the past hundred years.⁴⁶ In fact, China appears to believe that it faces an even worse security environment today than in 1989 because the United States and many of its allies have only recently focused on China as their primary strategic rival.

Believing that the “all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China” by the “U.S.-led Western countries” have “brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,”⁴⁷ Xi has stressed to party officials that “we must adhere to bottom-line thinking and extreme-scenario thinking, be prepared to withstand significant tests of high winds and rough waves, even daunting challenges.”⁴⁸ Xi frequently uses the phrase “bottom-line thinking” to urge Chinese officials to always think about and prepare for worst-case scenarios.

From its structural realist perspective, Beijing suspects that, regardless of the domestic or foreign policies it adopts, the United States will seek to contain, disrupt, and destabilize China due to the anticipated international power transition; furthermore, the closer China edges to catching up with the United States in relative power, the more desperate Washington will become and will resort to extreme measures, such as inciting what Beijing calls a color revolution or initiating a war. In this view, Chinese efforts to communicate its benign intentions will have little impact on mitigating the rivalry.⁴⁹ Instead, China sees further acceleration of the power transition process as the most viable solution.⁵⁰ Perceptions of grave threats lead Chinese leaders to believe that they must utilize all available means, such as accelerating the country’s conversion of economic potential into actual military power, including nuclear weapons, to address this existential challenge. From Beijing’s viewpoint, China’s development and demonstration of a world-class strategic capability could help compel the United States and its Western allies to accept the new reality of China’s rise and adopt a more accommodating approach toward Beijing.⁵¹

From Beijing’s viewpoint, China’s development and demonstration of a world-class strategic capability could help compel the United States and its Western allies to accept the new reality of China’s rise and adopt a more accommodating approach toward Beijing.

This perspective among China’s leaders led them to accelerate the expansion of China’s strategic capabilities, including nuclear weapons. In fall 2020, when the Central Committee of the CCP unveiled its proposal for the “14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) for National Economic and Social Development,” as well as the “Visionary Goals for 2035 of the People’s Republic of China,”⁵² it emphasized the need for “the construction of high-level strategic deterrent” systems. This language was also reflected in the published text of the formal “Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan” and the “Visionary Goals for 2035.”⁵³

However, during a key annual political conference in March 2021, when Xi met with the delegation of the PLA and the armed police, he issued an instruction to “accelerate the construction of high-level strategic deterrent” systems. The inclusion of the word “accelerate” in Xi’s instruction, which was absent in the 2020 proposal and the formal outline published in early 2021, underscored the increased sense of urgency felt by the paramount leader as he witnessed the rapid deterioration of China’s relations with the U.S.-led West between 2020 and 2021.

As the situation continued to worsen in 2022, Xi announced an even more ambitious goal of “developing a powerful strategic deterrent capability system” in his official report to the CCP’s Twentieth Party Congress in October 2022.⁵⁴ This again highlights Xi’s heightened sense of urgency and recognition that China needs to demonstrate stronger strategic capabilities in the face of escalating tensions with the United States and the West.

Ambition and Insecurity: Two Sides of the Power Politics Mindset

What links the growing perception of an existential threat with the leadership’s decision to substantially expand China’s nuclear capabilities is the prevailing power politics mindset. The power politics mindset refers to the belief that a nation must rely on its own material power to protect its interests and address perceived injustices through the exertion of coercive influence, rather than relying on the soft power of international rules, norms, and institutions.

In addition to perceiving the structural change in the international balance of power as the fundamental driver of perceived U.S. hostility, China’s power politics mindset has become stronger in recent years due to Beijing’s growing belief that the strategic culture of the United States is inherently hegemonic. The reasons behind this view will be explored in more detail later, but this perspective underpins China’s growing disillusionment regarding the value of reasoning, persuasion, and diplomacy in improving bilateral relations.⁵⁵

Chinese state media, experts, and influential public opinion leaders commonly attribute the perceived discrimination in U.S. policy against China to the United States’ troubling internal attributes, frequently referred to as its strategic culture.⁵⁶ This perspective is shared by senior Chinese officials. For instance, Cui Tiankai, who served as the Chinese ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021 and is considered less hawkish than his peers, has publicly asserted that U.S. hostility toward China stems from deep-rooted racism against non-White people. Consequently, he concludes, “the United States will inevitably go to all lengths, spare no effort, and even act without any bottom line in oppressing, containing, dividing, and encircling and besieging China.”⁵⁷ Wang Jisi, a leading Chinese foreign policy expert at Peking University, observes that “the most common Chinese understanding about U.S. strategy toward China is that unless and until China’s national power exceeds that of the United States, there will be no way to modify Washington’s arrogant, aggressive approach.”⁵⁸ The Chinese leadership has become much less confident in the efficacy of good-faith diplomacy with Washington and sees the buildup of China’s material power as the only effective means to deter an inherently hostile adversary from engaging in provocations.

The leadership’s current power politics mindset can be traced back to the thinking of previous paramount leaders. For instance, Mao famously expressed his view on the United States by stating that “American imperialists are very arrogant. Wherever they can act unreasonably, they will definitely do so. If they show a little bit of reason, it is only because they have been pushed to a point where they have no other choice.”⁵⁹ These sentiments, although less prominent during the period of China’s reform and opening, have regained popularity in recent years. Echoing these sentiments, Chinese policy experts today often assert that Beijing’s recent demonstration of military power has prompted other countries to adopt more accommodating approaches toward China.⁶⁰ Even international experts have openly argued that China’s bigger nuclear arsenal has made Western countries soften their positions toward China on a range of issues.⁶¹

Like how Xi has praised Russia’s prioritization of nuclear capabilities, Chinese nuclear experts and public opinion leaders have also maintained that Russia’s nuclear modernization and assertive nuclear posture have made Washington more cautious in dealing with Moscow.⁶² They therefore conclude that a larger Chinese nuclear arsenal would discourage the United States from blocking China’s rise and promoting regime instability. They believe that an expanded nuclear arsenal would compel Washington to accept peaceful coexistence with Beijing and treat it with a true sense of equality and “respect.”⁶³

The power politics mindset drives a strong internal sentiment that it is imperative for China to prioritize development of its strategic military power instead of considering restraint. In this view, Beijing attributes the source of instability solely to perceived U.S. aggression and believes that its own military capability development is inherently stabilizing. While Beijing has been publicly denying its nuclear buildup to deflect international pressure and buy time, it is confident that its rivals, particularly the United States, will detect its rapid growth in strategic capabilities through national intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and that this will lead to more accommodating approaches in U.S. policy toward China.

Beijing does not consider its growing power politics mindset a problem, because it blames the United States’ “hegemonic” behaviors for making Beijing adopt this viewpoint even though this does not reflect China’s preferred worldview and moral principles. This line of thought suggests that the U.S. obsession with and reliance on brute power means that China, in response, must focus on building its own material power to compel the United States into accepting peaceful coexistence. The deepening sense of existential threats and the development of a fatalistic concern that a narrowing gap in power will lead to an eventual showdown between Beijing and Washington have contributed to China’s perceived need to take quick, radical countermeasures, including accelerating its nuclear expansion.

The deepening sense of existential threats and the development of a fatalistic concern that a narrowing gap in power will lead to an eventual showdown between Beijing and Washington have contributed to China’s perceived need to take quick, radical countermeasures, including accelerating its nuclear expansion.

China is becoming convinced that defending its legitimate interests is increasingly infeasible unless global power dynamics are rebalanced in its favor, and it perceives this objective as attainable only by proactively contesting U.S. dominance and systematically asserting its influence on the international stage. In turn, China’s ambition to reshape the international order has risen to an unprecedented level.

On nuclear issues, China is showcasing a greater ambition to position itself as a strong nuclear power than in the past. The public promotion of its nuclear triad capability—something China had long criticized as a symbol of U.S. and Soviet nuclear hegemonism—is an example of a visible departure from its traditionally low-profile approach to nuclear modernization. Its recent proclamation of its goal to develop “powerful strategic deterrent” capabilities stands in stark contrast to its earlier and more modest aim of upholding a “lean and effective” nuclear force.⁶⁴

China’s nuclear buildup should be read in the context of the country’s demonstrated ambition across many areas. China is actively engaged in comprehensive efforts to erode the United States’ global dominance and influence in non-nuclear and nonmilitary areas. Examples in recent years include promoting dedollarization in international financial systems, asserting Chinese geopolitical influence in regions where the U.S. presence is declining,⁶⁵ and establishing competing international institutions such as the International Organization for Mediation in Hong Kong. That said, underlying these efforts is China’s intensifying sense of insecurity, which instills a belief that it must rectify its power disadvantage to attain what it perceives as a defensive aim. Due to the power politics mindset, insecurity and ambition are essentially two sides of the same coin in China’s current strategic mentality.

The connection between insecurity and ambition has yet to be fully grasped in Washington and other Western capitals. Many American experts suspect that under Xi, China has developed an ambition to achieve nuclear parity with the United States. Some are concerned that China may even aim for acquiring a superior nuclear capability compared to the United States.⁶⁶ However, statements by senior Chinese political and military leaders do not provide evidence to support such speculations. Xi reportedly made comments in 2012 about the need to enhance “asymmetric strategic counterbalance capabilities” against a strong enemy (the United States),⁶⁷ comments that were repeated by senior military leaders and military experts and that appear in the 2020 Science of Military Strategy.⁶⁸

The meaning of “asymmetric” is vague, but in the context of Chinese leaders’ comments, it seems to mean two things: first, China should employ strategic capabilities in an asymmetric manner—such as across military domains and against the enemy’s most vulnerable military nodes—to achieve disproportionate effect, and second, China does not necessarily have to pursue numerical or quantitative symmetry vis-à-vis a strong enemy. On the latter point, Professor Sun Mingfu of the Rocket Force Command College, whether recounting Xi’s remarks on China’s strategic deterrent capabilities or expressing his own views, has stated that “as long as we possess equivalent strategic means and credible combat capabilities, even if there is no numerical and quantitative equivalence, it would be enough to make a strong enemy hesitate, refraining from lightly initiating hostilities, let alone launching a large-scale war against us.”⁶⁹ In 2022, then vice chairman of the Central Military Commission General Xu Qiliang stated, “The strategic deterrent system serves as the ‘ballast’ in major powers’ struggles, and we must adhere to asymmetrical counterbalancing, as well as the principle of selective development.”⁷⁰ The phrase “selective development” also indicates a different strategy than pursuing comprehensive parity with the United States.

Such thinking is generally consistent with China’s traditional emphasis on asymmetry in its nuclear deterrence relationship with the United States—the belief that a Chinese nuclear arsenal that is smaller than the United States’ could still provide credible deterrence. It is likely that Chinese leaders are taking a step-by-step approach in their nuclear expansion decisionmaking; rather than committing to attaining nuclear parity with the United States, China is seeking to hedge against future uncertainties and maintain flexibility by periodically reevaluating its strategic environment and security needs and making subsequent decisions about the next steps. If this holds true, it suggests China’s nuclear development is not fixed or predetermined, and international engagement with China on nuclear issues could play a more influential role than many international analysts commonly assume.

If this holds true, it suggests China’s nuclear development is not fixed or predetermined, and international engagement with China on nuclear issues could play a more influential role than many international analysts commonly assume.

The logic embraced by Xi to expedite China’s nuclear development to meet broader geopolitical needs, rather than specific national defense requirements, is not new in China’s history. Mao adopted a similar rationale as he oversaw China’s first nuclear test in 1964.

At that time, Mao was presented with two options regarding the timing of the nuclear test: one option was to conduct the test as soon as the technical preparations were ready, and the other was to wait until further progress was made toward weaponization of the existing nuclear device. From a technical standpoint, the second option seemed more sensible; once the first nuclear explosion was conducted, China’s nuclear weapons program would immediately garner public notice, potentially rendering it susceptible to enemy attacks or acts of sabotage. Conversely, opting for a more extended period to finalize weaponization endeavors and produce more fissile materials for additional weapons would narrow the window of vulnerability between the public exposure of China’s nuclear program and the achievement of a relatively viable existential nuclear deterrent. Nonetheless, Mao emphasized the psychological importance of nuclear weapons by arguing that the primary role of nuclear weapons is to “scare people.” He de-emphasized the importance of technical-level considerations about the military credibility of China’s nuclear capabilities and decided to conduct the test early, as he thought the geopolitical environment at that time required China to make its enemies feel “scared” sooner rather than later.⁷¹

Today, a similar logic drives China’s accelerated nuclear buildup, with Xi having an underlying sense of urgency to alter the U.S. perception of the balance of power and address perceived U.S. strategic hostility against China. This aligns with China’s growing demand in recent years that the United States should not speak with China from a position of strength and must treat China as an equal power.⁷² Beijing sees Washington’s hesitation to do so as a fundamental problem undermining the overall stability in the bilateral relationship, a situation that Beijing believes should be rectified by swiftly showcasing its enhanced power. This is consistent with China’s broader dissuasion strategy to counter perceived U.S. containment of China. In the economic field, for example, China has sought to impress the United States with its indigenous technological prowess to persuade Washington that export control measures would be futile to blunt its technological progress.⁷³

China’s choice to prioritize the development of silo-based ICBM capabilities is indicative of this sense of urgency to demonstrate enhanced power. Compared to other types of nuclear delivery systems, such as nuclear ballistic missile submarines and strategic bombers, the construction of ICBM silos can be completed relatively quickly, particularly given China’s advantage in large-scale infrastructure construction. This choice suggests that the need for a rapid increase in total numbers outweighs the survivability advantages of mobile nuclear forces. The recently reported quality control issues in China’s missile programs, including “missiles filled with water” and missile silo lids that cannot open,⁷⁴ could be caused by reported corruption but might also reflect the tremendous pressure faced by the Rocket Force and related defense industrial entities to meet intense development goals within a tight time frame.

The profound internal changes within the country over the last decade have been critical to molding the recent shifts in China’s nuclear policy. These changes have wielded more significant influence than external changes, including explicit military threats. The previous chapter discussed how changes in the Chinese leadership’s thinking have led to adjustments of China’s nuclear policy. This section will analyze how various domestic actors have contributed to the shifts.

The Diminishing Role of Chinese Experts

Xi’s establishment of a highly centralized power system and consolidation of key decisionmaking authorities under his control mark a departure from the efforts of his predecessors—Deng, Jiang, and Hu—who sought to decentralize power and promote intraparty democracy. This has profound implications for China’s nuclear policy. With Xi’s unchecked power and repeated demand for “absolute loyalty,” civilian and military officials face strong incentives to align with and amplify his policy vision. Dissent or even raising questions has high costs in such a power system.

In situations where Xi’s original vision lacks specificity—which is often the case because Chinese political leaders tend to provide general and directional instructions on national defense issues—officials at the operational level are likely to advocate for policies that exceed their anticipation of Xi’s expectations rather than falling short.

In contrast, in the 1980s, Deng emphasized to Chinese officials that economic development should be prioritized over military advancement.¹ His high-level instructions shaped an era characterized by China’s active engagement with the international community on arms control and disarmament issues. During this period, China demonstrated self-restraint in its nuclear modernization efforts, embracing quantitative restrictions and opting not to deploy specific new technologies, such as the neutron bomb.

However, more than three decades later, the current paramount leader has inherited elements of China’s traditional nuclear philosophy, such as asymmetric deterrence and no first use (NFU), while also developing his own emphasis of nuclear weapons as an instrument of strategic counterbalance. Xi possesses more power than many of his predecessors, making it easier for the Chinese bureaucratic system to implement swift and significant operational-level changes that go beyond what is nominally achievable by a less powerful civilian leader.

Xi possesses more power than many of his predecessors, making it easier for the Chinese bureaucratic system to implement swift and significant operational-level changes that go beyond what is nominally achievable by a less powerful civilian leader.

In this context, the role of technical and policy expertise in offering checks and balances to official policymaking has diminished. Experts are marginalized due to two factors. Firstly, they face strong incentives or pressure to amplify Xi’s vision and avoid questioning his policy thinking. Secondly, growing secrecy surrounding decisionmaking limits their ability to influence policy deliberations at the official level.

Xi’s demand for absolute loyalty and his instruction against “baseless criticism of the central authority” have pushed the expert community to carefully align themselves with Xi’s policy perspectives.² Xi’s personal interest in building a stronger nuclear capability made irrelevant a modest domestic expert debate around 2016 about the necessity and wisdom of China expanding its nuclear forces.³ His inclination to develop greater strategic military capabilities incentivizes Chinese military strategists to advocate for significant nuclear expansion programs.⁴ Such military expert advocacy, met with skepticism by previous Chinese leaders, is now received much more favorably and serves to further reinforce Xi’s existing inclinations. Xi’s repeated emphasis on “self-confidence” and “fighting spirit” also motivates Chinese experts to focus their policy analysis on the wrongdoings of Western countries and advocate assertive policy responses for China. More often than before, Chinese experts write and publish commentaries that criticize each new policy of China’s competitors but rarely reflect on China’s own policies or practices.⁵

This is part of a broader trend in other areas of China’s strategic decisionmaking. One example is the country’s controversial Zero COVID policy, which led to severe humanitarian consequences and significantly contributed to China’s ensuing economic quagmire. Although those consequences were privately acknowledged by most policy elites, China’s public health experts could not question or challenge the policy because of Xi’s personal endorsement. Within a system that emphasizes absolute loyalty, members of that system ultimately come to understand that one’s loyalty is better demonstrated when one’s active alignment with the paramount leader’s policy preferences is challenged, rather than supported, by logical reasoning and empirical evidence. Over time, the value of scientific expertise and logical analysis diminishes.

During the early stages of China’s nuclear program, prominent nuclear weapons scientists in China held significant influence over senior political leaders’ nuclear thinking due to their direct access to the leaders. Many of these scientists also had opportunities to engage with their Western counterparts on arms control and nonproliferation issues during China’s reform and opening up era. Partly due to these experiences, many senior nuclear scientists have been proponents within the Chinese system of measures of self-restraint and cooperative security like arms control.

However, their internal influence seems to have decreased, while the military’s influence has increased. For instance, in limited domestic debates regarding the expansion of silo-based ICBM capabilities, military perspectives prevailed, despite some senior civilian experts expressing doubts about the wisdom of massive investment in silo-based ICBMs and raising concerns about the impact of pursuing such capabilities on strategic stability, particularly if each missile is equipped with multiple warheads. Recognizing the changing domestic atmosphere, dissenting voices eventually became quiet.

Over time, the thinking within China’s policy expert community has become increasingly rigid. This has created a positive feedback loop that tends to validate and strengthen the assertive policy preferences of the political leadership. Very few domestic actors have the will or capacity to stand in the way of this self-reinforcing force.

At the same time, Beijing has implemented stricter rules on secrecy and confidentiality, driven by China’s perception of existential threats.⁶ These measures have constrained the access of many Chinese nuclear policy experts to internal information and policy discussions, unless they have close associations with official decisionmaking bodies. Consequently, many experts were unaware of China’s efforts to expand its nuclear capabilities until foreign researchers revealed them.⁷ This highly restrictive domestic political climate discourages Chinese nuclear experts from privately exchanging even publicly available information and personal thoughts about China’s nuclear development and policy. The lack of internal transparency and information-sharing leaves many Chinese nuclear experts less informed than their foreign counterparts on certain aspects of China’s nuclear issues.

The situation is even more pronounced among China’s general security policy experts, who are not necessarily well informed about nuclear policy matters. Even after foreign researchers publicly disclosed China’s construction of three ICBM silo fields, many of these experts dismissed the reports as Western disinformation campaigns. The isolation of many Chinese experts from internal nuclear policy deliberations has reduced their capacity to contribute to policy debates and help perform checks and balances.

The isolation of many Chinese experts from internal nuclear policy deliberations has reduced their capacity to contribute to policy debates and help perform checks and balances.

The marginalization of experts occurs at a time when China’s military-industrial complex is gaining strength. Previously, the top leadership directly intervened to contain these actors’ influence. Mindful of the costs of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, both Mao and Deng provided clear instructions to develop a modest nuclear force; Deng explicitly prioritized economic development over military expansion. However, Xi’s emphasis on strengthening the military, particularly strategic capabilities, provides the military and defense industry with increased opportunities to promote assertive policies and influence China’s nuclear policy.

As China develops a nuclear triad,⁸ more domestic actors, such as the PLA Rocket Force, Navy, Air Force, and various defense industry entities, have a vested interest in promoting the nuclear enterprise.⁹ Furthermore, the government’s patriotic education campaign contributes to the glorification of the military and defense industry, making it even more difficult for experts or the general public to exercise checks and balances on military-related matters.

Internal Policy Incoherence

The marginalization of experts has intensified the problem of internal incoherence in China’s nuclear policy thinking and decisionmaking. An intriguing example of this is the increasing focus in official narratives on warfighting capabilities within the nuclear branches of the PLA.

For decades, China’s official nuclear narratives emphasized deterrence rather than warfighting. Nuclear warfighting was labeled as a symbol of offensive nuclear policies pursued by the United States. It was widely believed that China did not view nuclear weapons as usable or relevant in actual battlefield scenarios. However, in recent years, there has been a noticeable shift in the Chinese military’s public discourse. Since the military reform at the end of 2015, and particularly since 2017, the Rocket Force has increasingly used slogans that deviate from the traditional avoidance of warfighting references. It has highlighted the objective to “deter war, fight war, stop war, and win war,” as well as the need to “direct all our thoughts toward fighting wars, focus on all tasks with the mindset of fighting wars, and accelerate the enhancement of our strategic strike capability.”¹⁰

The emphasis on warfighting is not limited to the conventional missile forces that the Rocket Force also operates. For instance, China is now explicitly calling its DF-41 nuclear ICBM a key capability for achieving “strategic counterbalance, strategic deterrent and control, and strategic decisive victory”—a phrase that is increasingly used to describe the role of China’s nuclear forces.¹¹ Although Chinese officials have not provided authoritative definitions of the key terms in this statement, it is possible, as analyzed in the previous section, that “strategic counterbalance” refers to the general idea that nuclear weapons shape China’s national security environment at the strategic level by affecting the overall balance of power among major nations. While “strategic deterrent” is self-explanatory, “strategic control” could be a vague reference to the growing importance of the escalation management role of China’s nuclear weapons—a topic that will be addressed in the next section. Notably, the term “strategic decisive victory” is distinctively new but aligns with the recent trend of emphasizing the goal of “winning wars” with China’s nuclear forces. In 2023, China’s ballistic missile submarine forces made a pledge to Xi that they will “firmly adhere to the supreme leader’s instructions, strengthen the training and preparation for war, and improve the ability to fight and win.”¹²

There has been extremely limited expert-level discussion in China regarding the role of nuclear weapons in warfighting or war-winning, and there is little clarity on the operational and employment strategies associated with slogans like “fight and win.” It is possible that these issues have not been thoroughly examined or debated, and internal agreements on the meaning of the new slogans may not have been achieved. The increasing warfighting discourse from China’s nuclear forces may stem from Xi’s broader emphasis on military preparedness and combat readiness, which applies to all branches of the PLA.¹³ The creation of new slogans could therefore be an effort by the Rocket Force to demonstrate its “absolute loyalty” and adherence to Xi’s general directives on war preparation. Without further evidence, it would be premature to conclude that China has completely abandoned its long-held nuclear philosophy and fully embraced a nuclear warfighting doctrine at the operational level.

Nonetheless, the current rhetorical emphasis on warfighting within China’s nuclear discourse creates tensions with its traditional focus on nuclear deterrence.¹⁴ For now, the gap between the official narrative on warfighting and the lack of clarity on substantive changes of the nuclear doctrine and posture at the operational level highlights a growing risk of internal policy incoherence. Such incoherence may grow as China’s nuclear policy is increasingly torn between meeting practical external security threats and adhering to internal political directives from the top leadership. It is inadvisable for the international community to presume flawless internal policy logic or coherence when attempting to comprehend China’s nuclear strategy.

It is inadvisable for the international community to presume flawless internal policy logic or coherence when attempting to comprehend China’s nuclear strategy.

Taiwan, Nuclear Signaling, and Escalation Management

The increasingly realistic risk of a major military conflict over Taiwan has resulted in the nuclear issue shifting from the periphery to a more prominent position in the U.S.-China security relationship. Political factors are the primary source of rising tensions over Taiwan. Foremost among these factors is Xi’s personal sense of mission to advance unification and realize his Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. Portraying himself as a key figure in Chinese contemporary history on par with Mao, Xi seems to harbor aspirations of leaving a significant historical legacy. Having run the country for more than ten years and removed constitutional term limits, he is the first paramount leader in recent decades to serve a third term. But he will face an increasing challenge to justify a fourth or even fifth term—leaving observers to wonder whether he will push for progress in unifying Taiwan to fortify his domestic position. By contrast, the general public and policy elites would like to see unification with Taiwan eventually but are not pushing for a near-term resolution.¹⁵ For the most part, they have been following Xi’s lead.

Xi’s sense of urgency to make progress on the Taiwan issue might have been tempered by the Russia-Ukraine war and China’s growing internal challenges, but his instruction to the PLA to become militarily prepared by 2027 profoundly shapes the direction of national deliberations on future policy options. At the same time, the apparent reversal of China’s decades-long liberalization process has elicited significant concern and opposition in Taiwan toward unification. Faced with a growing gap between Xi’s interest in unification and the difficulty of achieving Taiwan’s voluntary unification, Chinese military strategists recognize the need to develop coercive measures for Taiwan. Inevitably, extreme military scenarios where nuclear weapons might play a role have become less unimaginable. In fact, considering Xi’s personal investment in the Taiwan issue, PLA officials understand the necessity to thoroughly consider the potential role of nuclear weapons when formulating military strategies; failing to do so would be seen as negligent. With Xi’s blessing, officials in the Chinese military and civilian sectors at the operational level possess considerable discretion in determining the specific nuclear development and employment policies they think make sense for China.

There is growing international concern that, if China tried to invade Taiwan but miscalculated and ended up facing a catastrophic defeat, it might resort to using nuclear weapons.¹⁶ For many Chinese officials and experts, the country’s long-standing NFU policy is a serious commitment; in their view, Beijing has assessed that nuclear first use would not be in China’s interests and would be politically damaging. That said, what constitutes nuclear first use is not always clear. Authoritative Chinese military writings disclosed in the mid-2000s show that the Rocket Force was prepared to threaten the use of nuclear weapons in response to major conventional attacks. The Chinese military has a phrase to denote such a temporary alteration of China’s NFU policy during a crisis: “lowering the nuclear coercion threshold.” Moreover, Chinese military writings discuss specific measures to try to make China’s threat of nuclear first use appear credible to the enemy.¹⁷ This suggests that the Rocket Force does not see the threat of nuclear first use as a violation of China’s NFU policy, so long as it does not actually initiate first use.

The Ukraine war might have enhanced such thinking. Chinese experts carefully watched Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling during its war against Ukraine. Many of them seem to have concluded that Putin’s nuclear signaling—issuing implicit nuclear threats by conducting nuclear exercises, testing nuclear-capable delivery systems, making references to nuclear weapons, and showing off the presidential nuclear suitcase—skillfully and effectively limited the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s military support for Ukraine and moderated the imposition of economic and political pressure on Russia.¹⁸ Therefore, although the risk is relatively low that China would blatantly violate its NFU pledge and use nuclear weapons first if it were losing a conventional war over Taiwan, it is increasingly likely that China could engage in explicit nuclear signaling tactics—some of which may be deliberately bold, ambiguous, or inconsistent to maximize fear and impact. If true, this would represent a broadening of the role of Chinese nuclear weapons, as China’s traditional nuclear strategists were believed to have focused solely on deterring nuclear threats rather than leveraging nuclear weapons to achieve broader security goals.¹⁹

On this matter, Putin has shown a readiness to diverge from official nuclear doctrine during times of crisis and expand the role of nuclear weapons as he deems necessary. His public statement that “nuclear weapons are designed to ensure our security in a broader sense” went beyond the narrowly defined existential threat outlined in Russia’s official nuclear doctrine as a prerequisite for nuclear use. As a personalistic political leader, Xi might similarly reject being constrained by technicalities established in official nuclear doctrine and be tempted to expand the role of nuclear weapons in a major military crisis, especially given his demonstrated belief in the righteousness of China’s security goals. If this happens, it is questionable whether Chinese officials at the operational level could effectively influence Xi’s decisions.

That said, a more significant way in which Chinese nuclear strategists may respond to a Taiwan conflict is to seek escalation management capabilities. China’s fast-growing conventional military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region, and especially within the First Island Chain, give Chinese military and civilian strategists confidence that the country will grow increasingly capable of achieving military success at the conventional level and have a decreasing need to threaten nuclear escalation in a Taiwan conflict.²⁰ On the other hand, many Chinese experts worry that the United States, which is gradually losing its conventional military advantage vis-à-vis China in this region, may be tempted to threaten nuclear escalation.²¹ Indeed, some American experts have made the argument that the United States may have to give more serious thought to this possibility.²² Chinese experts also believe Washington has been putting more emphasis on nuclear warfighting capabilities and has sought to deliberately lower the threshold of nuclear conflict by developing and deploying low-yield nuclear weapons, such as on its global fleet of strategic submarines. The emphasis on low-yield nuclear weapons in the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review and the introduction of the “integrated deterrent” concept in the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review have contributed to such Chinese perceptions.²³

Xi’s emphasis on “bottom-line thinking” also encourages Chinese military officials to take unthinkable worst-case scenarios seriously, including the risk that China’s enemies may make the most daring moves imaginable to challenge its core interests.²⁴ In this spirit, the Chinese military may see the need to address the perceived growing risk of U.S. nuclear escalation—especially in a Taiwan conflict—by developing China’s escalation management capabilities.²⁵

China’s second-strike capabilities—the ability to inflict massive retaliation—are likely to be effective at deterring a large-scale U.S. nuclear attack. However, they may not be sufficiently nimble to deter a limited U.S. nuclear attack against isolated military targets in a regional conflict, especially if such an attack did not cause massive civilian casualties. Chinese nuclear strategists noted this potential weakness in the 1980s,²⁶ but they seemed to have decided against investing heavily to address it because they assessed that a serious military conflict with the United States was unlikely.²⁷ However, growing tensions over Taiwan and the perceived need to seriously plan for a major conflict with U.S. forces are prompting a rethink. In this regard, China may now be seeking the capability to respond in kind or in proportion to a limited U.S. regional nuclear attack or, if deterrence fails, to help end a nuclear conflict quickly and on terms acceptable to Beijing.

This represents an important departure from China’s traditional nuclear thinking. For decades, China seemed to believe that a conventional conflict was extremely unlikely to escalate to the nuclear level, but once the nuclear threshold was crossed, it would be extremely hard to control its further escalation and a low-level nuclear conflict would quickly escalate all the way to an all-out nuclear exchange.²⁸ However, Chinese strategists appear to have developed serious doubts about both elements of its traditional belief and have become more interested in escalation management capabilities.

If Beijing seriously pursues escalation management capabilities, this will have the most profound impact on China’s nuclear strategy and U.S.-China nuclear relations in decades.

If Beijing seriously pursues escalation management capabilities, this will have the most profound impact on China’s nuclear strategy and U.S.-China nuclear relations in decades. The specific escalation management capabilities required by China are influenced by how high it is willing to climb the escalation ladder—and hence how much of a risk of an all-out nuclear war it is willing to run—should the United States escalate by increasing the intensity or range of its nuclear attacks. Arguably, increasingly accurate Chinese theater-range nuclear missiles—such as DF-21 and DF-26, which are also more maneuverable and effective at penetrating U.S. missile defenses than their predecessors—could be useful for escalation management. To advance further, China might want to acquire longer-range nuclear systems that are very accurate and effective at defeating missile defenses so that it could credibly threaten limited retaliations against more distant targets such as Hawaii and the continental United States.

China was able to maintain a small arsenal for decades because a basic second-strike capability against the U.S. homeland was relatively easy to build and not particularly sensitive to the evolving size, composition, or targeting strategy of U.S. nuclear forces.²⁹ But if the new Chinese term of “strategic deterrent and control” for nuclear weapons indicates a shift toward acquiring escalation management capabilities, the planning of China’s nuclear development and employment strategy will become significantly more complex. In fact, it will become much more difficult for Chinese strategists to assess how many nuclear weapons China needs because this will depend on their assessment of the precise details of Washington’s nuclear strategy.

To further complicate the situation, Washington is likely to suspect that China’s development of escalation management capabilities reflects Beijing’s growing intent to use nuclear weapons first—perhaps in a limited manner—in a future conflict.³⁰ The United States may respond by enhancing its damage-limitation capabilities with the goal of eliminating remaining Chinese nuclear forces should China use nuclear weapons first. However, to Chinese nuclear strategists, enhanced U.S. damage limitation capabilities could also be used in a preemptive disarming strike against China and undermine the overall credibility of China’s deterrent. In such circumstances, China would be concerned that a more confident United States would be more likely to initiate a limited nuclear attack, thereby intensifying China’s resolve to further develop escalation management capabilities.

This section has illuminated the PLA’s increasing interest in developing escalation management capabilities. But this focus does not fully explain the extent of China’s recent nuclear expansion. Beijing’s construction of a significantly larger arsenal of intercontinental-range nuclear weapons, including over 300 new silo-based ICBMs and additional road-mobile ICBM units, does not have a direct role to play in managing nuclear escalation in a potential regional conflict with the United States over Taiwan. Following Xi’s political mandate to bolster nuclear capabilities, the PLA has diversified its nuclear arsenal. Some elements of this expansion seem particularly useful to enhance second-strike capabilities; others are more directly tied to strengthening escalation management, while additional components appear to serve the primary goal of demonstrating strategic power. Collectively, these efforts enhance China’s credentials as a rising global power, aligning with Xi’s plan to achieve strategic counterbalance against the United States and improve political stability between the two nations.

Notes

Building on the discussion of changes in China’s nuclear policy, this section explores the consequences for U.S.-China nuclear relations of China’s intertwined objectives of political stability and nuclear stability. A broad look at the bilateral political relationship is necessary, as China’s overall threat perceptions—critical in guiding nuclear policy choices—are largely shaped by bilateral political discord.

Mismatched Goals: U.S. Pursues Nuclear Stability, While China Pursues Political Stability

For decades, when it came to protecting the homeland, U.S. and Chinese mainstream thinking on the core role of nuclear weapons was not fundamentally different. Both countries generally sought to use nuclear weapons to deter the most serious military threats, especially existential military threats. In the Chinese case, the first generation of political leaders focused on existential military threats posed by nuclear weapons. They believed that a conventional war would not pose an existential threat to China because of the effectiveness of a “people’s war” of attrition and China’s advantage with a large territory that provided strategic depth.¹ As China’s conventional military power has grown in recent decades, a conventional existential threat has become even less likely.

Similarly, the United States has generally tried to use nuclear weapons to deter the most severe military threats to itself and its allies. At the practical level, the U.S. understanding of what could pose such a threat has changed somewhat across administrations. For example, the Obama administration adjusted U.S. policy to indicate that chemical and biological weapons do not always pose as serious a threat as nuclear weapons and do not necessarily require a nuclear threat to deter their use.² The Trump administration, on the other hand, implicitly broadened the scope of military threats that might have required a nuclear response. Its Nuclear Posture Review, for instance, indicated that certain “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” could pose a threat so serious that it could only be deterred by nuclear weapons.³ Biden has long held the view that only nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the country, although his administration’s Nuclear Posture Review maintained similar ambiguity in its wording as previous administrations. Nonetheless, the U.S. understanding of existential threats has been and still is focused on military threats.

China has always concerned itself with a mixed set of military- and political-level threats. However, in the past decade, there has been a noticeable shift in China’s security priorities toward a greater emphasis on political-level threats. This change is exemplified by Xi’s focus on regime security within his “holistic approach to national security.”⁴ Now that Beijing believes that anti-China sentiment among Western countries has reached its highest level in decades, the Chinese leadership wants nuclear weapons to play a bigger role in countering perceived political threats.

Historically, political stability and nuclear stability were inseparable. The Cold War and post–Cold War experience between the United States and the Soviet Union raised the hope that two nuclear rivals could maintain nuclear stability despite a turbulent political relationship. In fact, there is widespread agreement among international experts that as political relations between two countries become more confrontational, increased efforts are required to compartmentalize the nuclear relationship in an effort to facilitate collaborative initiatives aimed at diminishing the dangers of a nuclear conflict and an arms race. However, the challenge today is that China is at a stage where it thinks political problems are more threatening than nuclear escalation risks; it therefore rejects separation of nuclear stability from political stability. According to this view, if Washington wants to maintain nuclear stability, it must first settle bilateral political problems on terms acceptable to Beijing, such as to demonstrate “respect” for China’s core interests.

Chinese nuclear experts traditionally championed nuclear stability as a valuable objective in its own right. Over the past decades, the Chinese government was reluctant to have an official dialogue with the U.S. government on nuclear stability—reportedly due to concerns about sharing sensitive information or being taken advantage of by a more powerful nuclear rival—but it was willing to engage through track 1.5 exchanges. Today, many of these nuclear experts have maintained an interest in nuclear stability, but senior Chinese officials have increasingly hinted that a strategic dialogue that addresses the broader political relationship is a precondition for discussing nuclear stability.

Perceiving an urgent need to enhance political stability, China has re-emphasized its traditional approach of managing U.S.-China relations in a top-down manner. This involves establishing a strategic framework agreement prior to addressing practical-level disputes. From Chinese leaders’ perspectives, strategic stability has always been about the overall political stability of a bilateral relationship. The narrow definition of strategic stability that originated from Western literature—what this report terms nuclear stability—is not necessarily accepted by senior Chinese political leaders, including the current paramount leader. For Xi, maintaining nuclear stability is primarily a means to achieve political stability. Given the importance of his views within the Chinese system, experts who prioritize nuclear stability may become less relevant. Moreover, declining official support for discussing U.S.-China nuclear stability makes semiofficial and unofficial exchanges harder to organize, as such exchanges increasingly require government blessing or approval.

Evaluating the Underlying Logic in Chinese Thinking

Underlying China’s nuclear policy changes is Beijing’s belief that stronger Chinese nuclear capabilities will naturally help improve U.S.-China political stability, because such capabilities would compel Washington to adopt a more conciliatory approach toward China across a wide range of issue areas.⁵ However, senior officials never explicitly explain the logic behind this intuitive belief nor do experts thoroughly scrutinize it.

Enhanced Chinese nuclear capabilities might indeed serve as a stark reminder to the United States of the significant escalation risks inherent in engaging in conventional warfare with China, not to mention a nuclear conflict. This heightened awareness of such severe risks could potentially play a role in dissuading Washington from engaging in military conflicts with Beijing. This viewpoint is not necessarily outlandish, but the degree to which a larger nuclear arsenal bolsters deterrence against conventional military aggression, compared to a smaller arsenal, is a subject of intense debate in the Western policy and expert community.

Crucially, the Chinese leadership expects that an expanded nuclear arsenal will prompt Washington to adopt a more conciliatory approach toward Beijing in nonmilitary realms. However, the logic underpinning this expectation remains ill-defined and is often seen by American strategists as lacking empirical evidence. American experts are often puzzled over how, either theoretically or practically, a larger Chinese nuclear arsenal could compel Washington to dial down efforts to economically contain China or to halt political warfare that might jeopardize China’s regime security.⁶ It could be argued that during the Cold War, nuclear weapons helped deter direct military confrontations between Washington and Moscow, yet they did not avert proxy wars between the two, nor did they stop political confrontation or economic sanctions, which over time contributed to stresses on the Soviet system and ultimately hastened its collapse.

China still does not see a clear boundary between military conflicts and nonmilitary confrontations. To Beijing, a rising risk of military conflict can compel its adversary to ramp down political confrontations. On the issue of Taiwan, for example, China could drive up military tensions over the Taiwan Strait, which could force the United States to moderate its political positions and take measures such as reducing visits by senior U.S. officials to Taiwan or pressuring the Taiwanese government to avoid causing political “troubles.”⁷

There are other ways for Beijing to forcibly link military confrontations with nonmilitary issues and leverage its military—or even nuclear—capability to tame nonmilitary behaviors of Washington. For instance, China could retaliate against perceived political attacks against its regime by stepping up military activities along its periphery. This could be done by conducting aggressive interceptions of U.S. military aircraft and ships in areas near China or pushing forward Chinese military presence in areas disputed between China and U.S. regional allies. Beijing could also demand that Washington reduce perceived attacks against its political or economic system before it agrees to join arms control talks.

Seeing China as pursuing purely defensive objectives, the Science of Military Strategy implies that it is just and legitimate for China to use “strategic deterrence” capabilities to safeguard “development interests” and maintain a stable internal environment, among other things.⁸ Highlighting the importance of “the flexibility of the use of deterrence,” the document also asserts that “when national territorial sovereignty is violated, national unity is challenged, and national development interests are threatened, our country has the right to use military means at any time, and it can carry out active and effective strategic deterrence to obtain a military advantage.”⁹ This broad description of circumstances under which China can leverage its strategic deterrence capabilities leaves room for China to blur the line between military and nonmilitary confrontations.

In this light, China views the advancement of its nuclear capabilities as contributing to political stability—a logic that underpins the PLA Rocket Force’s strategic counterbalance mission but that has not been explicitly elaborated. The absence of explicit articulation and in-depth internal discussions of this rationale casts doubt on the effectiveness of achieving political stability by expanding China’s strategic military capabilities. Furthermore, the goal of bolstering political stability is inherently nebulous, complicating the establishment of operational benchmarks for assessing nuclear sufficiency compared to more tangible military aims like ensuring second strike capability. This ambiguity complicates efforts to curb excessive nuclear investment.

The Political Roots of China’s Threat Perceptions

China’s interest in utilizing its nuclear capabilities to influence its broader relationship with the United States, across both military and nonmilitary domains, is likely to raise Washington’s concerns about Chinese nuclear coercion. Even if Washington acknowledges that China’s nuclear expansion could be driven by a genuine perception of the United States as an existential threat, American strategists might still see Beijing’s escalating threat perceptions as stemming from internal domestic dynamics over which the United States has minimal influence. This perspective among American policymakers would then reduce the incentive for Washington to provide strategic reassurances to alleviate Beijing’s concerns.

To the United States, Chinese threat perceptions arising from these sources are neither legitimate security concerns based on objective facts nor within the United States’ responsibility or capacity to mitigate.

Indeed, Beijing’s growing perception of the United States as an existential threat coincides with China’s increasing domestic authoritarianism and its greater emphasis on safeguarding regime security over the past decade. Domestic authoritarianism and regime insecurity amplify perceptions of existential threat in at least two ways, firstly, by attributing international problems solely to external factors and, secondly, by fostering information and perception gaps between societies. To the United States, Chinese threat perceptions arising from these sources are neither legitimate security concerns based on objective facts nor within the United States’ responsibility or capacity to mitigate.

Internal Changes That Cannot Be Discussed Internally

To China, structural changes in the international balance of power are the cause of deteriorating U.S.-China relations. However, the United States has a somewhat different view. American experts do not rule out the potential role of structural forces, but many of them also attribute rising bilateral tensions to changes in China’s behavior and its strategic orientation.¹⁰ They point to structural factors that should have reduced American concerns about China: the growth of China’s material power remained incremental and largely predictable over the last decade, and China’s economic growth rate started to gradually decline in 2010. But U.S. perceptions of China as a threat have actually strengthened since around 2015. This cannot be explained by the trajectory of China’s material power growth alone.

International China watchers generally believe that the country started to turn more assertive after 2008, when China’s outstanding economic performance during the global financial crisis and its successful organization of the Beijing Olympics that year made China more confident and more inclined to question the Western model of development and governance.¹¹ Many experts believe this trend accelerated after Xi came into power in 2012 and has since developed into a major reversal of China’s decades-long process of economic, social, and political liberalization that began under Deng. They point to Xi’s concentration of power; admiration of Mao’s political ideology; insistence on the absolute rule of the party; imposition of “correct” and “patriotic” national narratives on history and current affairs; suppression of dissidents and free debates of government policy; strengthening of the Great Firewall; challenging of internationally accepted concepts of human rights, democracy, and rules-based order; and elimination of internal checks and balances, including the constitutional two-term limit. In short, they believe that China has become significantly more authoritarian than before.¹²

Seeing China turning into a more authoritarian power that is increasingly willing and able to challenge the fundamental and universal values cherished by Western countries, the United States has become much more alarmed about the implications of China’s rise. Publicly calling the U.S.-China rivalry a competition between democracy and autocracy,¹³ many American officials and experts are concerned about at least three potential consequences of China’s new strategic orientation for the bilateral relationship.

First, Beijing’s increasing domestic repression makes it harder for Washington to look away and keep silent. To Beijing, these public U.S. criticisms directly challenge and threaten its regime security. Second, Beijing’s promotion of nationalistic narratives within the country for the purpose of strengthening internal unity and stability has caused the country to adopt—intentionally or not—a more aggressive foreign policy that appears threatening to the United States and its allies. Third, the increasingly strong Chinese rebuttal against Western values and governance models has the effect of making it easier for authoritarian systems to gain legitimacy and momentum in other parts of the world, presenting a broader threat to the West.¹⁴ China’s expanding economic capabilities have empowered its growing investments in geoeconomic and geopolitical influence across the world, intensifying U.S. concerns about a broader competition between democracy and autocracy.

However, the Chinese system does not allow the acknowledgement of rising domestic authoritarianism and growing assertiveness in its foreign policy, neither in public discourse nor internal deliberations. Consequently, China attributes all international tensions exclusively to external factors, particularly the structural change in the international balance of power and the inherently hegemonic culture of the United States. China also perceives what it calls the black hand of the West in incidents of domestic unrest in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and other regions, amplifying China’s perception of an existential threat from the U.S.-led West. This has worked to widen the information and perception gaps between China and Western nations.

Information and Perception Gaps

For decades, the lack of free-flowing information between China and the outside world has created two separate information ecosystems where the Chinese and Western populations have systematically absorbed different information regarding domestic and international affairs. As a result, they have developed conflicting perspectives on a wide range of basic factual issues. This leads the two sides to increasingly talk past each other, preventing the development of genuine mutual understanding.

On the issue of Xinjiang, for example, the vast majority of Chinese people genuinely believe that the United States and other Western countries’ criticisms of reeducation camps and forced labor are disinformation fabricated to demonize and undermine China. The Chinese perception that the U.S.-led West has blatantly made up these horrible lies to advance its geopolitical interests leads to extremely negative observations about the internal characteristics of these nations. Many Chinese people conclude that these countries lack basic moral guidelines and that their anti-China policy is driven by highly unethical and hegemonic interests.¹⁵ Such convictions then lead to increased disillusionment about good-faith diplomacy and deepen the power politics mindset.

The systematic information control and public opinion management system within China has helped construct the prevailing national perception that China has an inherently benevolent and pacifist culture and is incapable of wronging others.¹⁶ During the first virtual summit between Xi and Biden in November 2021, Xi reiterated his often-made comment: “The Chinese people do not have the gene in their blood of invading others and pursuing hegemony.”¹⁷ Given China’s strong conviction that it cannot be responsible for any tensions between itself and other countries, it expects other countries to fully accept its peaceful intentions.¹⁸ As Harvard University’s Alastair Iain Johnston points out, “Because Self believes Other knows Self is not a threat and yet acts aggressively against Self, then Self is even more certain that Other’s intentions are aggressive. . . . As security dilemmas intensify further, and Other is considered an existential threat, security seeking may blur into relative power maximization through the destruction of Other. In other words, revisionist intentions can emerge from security dilemmas as socialization processes.”¹⁹

The growing information and perception gaps poison the U.S.-China relationship. Even in places where information flows freely, like within the United States, the spread of misinformation and disinformation is causing unprecedented social polarization and unrest. Such divisive forces are exponentially more destructive for the U.S.-China relationship due to strict restriction of information access and systematic management of public opinion by government agencies. The situation has steadily deteriorated in recent years, as heightened regime security concerns lead to increasingly stringent information controls.²⁰

Policy elites in China are similarly affected by information and perception gaps.

Policy elites in China are similarly affected by information and perception gaps. For instance, private conversations with Chinese foreign and security policy experts, including those working on issues of biosecurity and weapons of mass destruction, indicate that the majority of such experts seem to genuinely believe the United States has been conducting illegal biological weapons research at U.S.-supported biolabs in Ukraine and a large number of other countries. The consequences of such a systematic divergence of views between China and the West over basic factual issues cannot be overstated. In the above case, Chinese policy experts interpret the revelation of illicit biological weapons research and the subsequent U.S. denial as further evidence of the United States’ complete lack of credibility and its contempt for fundamental international laws and norms. To them, it exemplifies the United States’ ability to rally allies and friendly nations to distort global narratives and influence international organizations to its advantage. Consequently, they argue that China must prepare for extreme scenarios and focus on enhancing its strategic strength, including nuclear capabilities, as a means of self-protection.

Senior Chinese leaders are equally vulnerable to the impact of China’s tightly controlled information environment. Xi, having come of age within this system, seems to have been profoundly shaped by China’s official narratives and worldviews. Since assuming the country’s leadership position, he has intensified his commitment to advancing these sanctioned narratives, considering them the sole accurate lens through which to interpret society and the world. The assumption that classified internal news and intelligence products for senior leaders are protected from systematic selection bias should not be taken as a given. Even when provided with unfiltered and comprehensive information, senior leaders are prone to interpreting it through their preexisting ideological perspectives that face no challenge within the system. The powerful apparatus of state propaganda and information control agencies then amplifies this set of perspectives throughout the bureaucracy and populace.

As a result, the U.S.-China relationship faces a strategic predicament: U.S. efforts to defend what Washington perceives as basic facts, universal values, and essential principles are viewed by China as spreading disinformation, conducting public opinion warfare, and promoting color revolution, thus posing a grave threat to China’s regime security. In the Chinese system, regime security outweighs all other national concerns—an inclination that has been openly and emphatically underscored by Xi.²¹

The precarious stability offered by nuclear deterrence has inadvertently reduced the urgency to tackle deep-rooted political issues.

Over the past several decades, countries like the United States and China pursued nuclear weapons because the political struggles between them were too serious to manage, so they had to resort to nuclear deterrence as a temporary means to maintain peace. However, the precarious stability offered by nuclear deterrence has inadvertently reduced the urgency to tackle deep-rooted political issues. Over time, the entrenchment and amplification of each side’s narratives have led to the current state, where mutual understanding seems unreachable as though each side exists in a separate reality. The widespread support among the Russian populace for Putin’s geopolitical views and their sympathy toward his objectives in Ukraine highlight how information and perception gaps between societies can threaten peace and sustain conflicts. Given China’s more systematic and prolonged efforts to control information flow and mold public opinion than Russia, the information and perception gaps between China and the West are arguably more marked than those between Russia and the West. This situation further intensifies the U.S.-China rivalry in nuclear and broader security domains.

Increasing Chinese animosity toward the U.S.-led Western order also stems partly from the increasing divergence between prevailing Chinese and Western perspectives on social evolution. Despite internal debates between conservatives and liberals, Western societies on the whole have progressed more extensively in adopting liberal values and perspectives on issues such as individual freedom, minority rights, social tolerance, and diversity and integration. While a similar process of social evolution is also unfolding within China, senior Chinese leaders perceive a threat to China’s core values and identities from the so-called corrupt Western culture. Many otherwise normal social debates over issues such as marriage, reproduction, and gender identity are increasingly portrayed as fights between righteous traditional Chinese values and degenerate Western ones. It is no coincidence that anti-U.S. and anti-West sentiment in China in recent years has risen together with the government orchestrated campaign to uphold China’s traditional values, culture, philosophy, and lifestyle. There is a mounting apprehension that Western governments and institutions are intentionally advocating ideas of social equality, such as feminism and minority rights, within China to provoke social turmoil and potentially trigger a color revolution.

Admittedly, attributing internal divisions to deliberate manipulation by foreign forces is a tendency exhibited by politicians in numerous countries. Yet, in the context of China, this inclination takes on a more prominent and methodical character through a state-driven societal campaign. Government agencies like the Communist Youth League and state media have played a pivotal part in framing internal social conflicts in China as battles against Western influences.

As China moves rapidly toward becoming a modern society, internal social changes and conflicts are bound to increase. If the U.S.-China rivalry is understood to be about fundamentally irreconcilable values and ways of life, then there is little room for mutual accommodation. The heightened sense of existential threat further bolsters China’s conviction that a more robust strategic capability is imperative to compel the United States to exercise restraint and diminish its endeavors to influence or alter China.

Challenges to Promoting Political Stability Through a Top-Down Approach

Beyond Washington’s belief that Beijing’s increasing perception of existential threat is illegitimate and stems from internal dynamics, several additional factors complicate China’s attempts to pressure the United States into addressing Beijing’s concerns about political instability.

From the Chinese perspective, managing the broader relationship in a top-down process is the best, and perhaps the only workable, approach to resolving bilateral disagreements at the operational level. A high-level U.S. commitment to maintain stable political relations would create the necessary condition for lower-level, operational management of issues such as nuclear weapons.

In practice, however, the current Chinese strategy of treating the resolution of political issues as a precondition for operational-level cooperation has been counterproductive. Beijing’s reluctance to engage substantively in nuclear discussions—including on arms control, risk reduction, and transparency—has only intensified U.S. disillusionment with diplomatic efforts and bolstered U.S. resolve to develop military countermeasures. This approach has not brought Washington any closer to committing to stabilizing political relations with Beijing.

To make China’s preferred top-down approach of promoting U.S.-China political stability operable, at least three challenges need to be addressed.

First, Chinese expectations of what political stability means are not sufficiently clear. It is uncertain what China thinks bilateral political stability entails at the practical level. Indeed, there has been very little public discussion of this issue in China.

Based on often-heard Chinese complaints about U.S. policies, it is reasonable to assume that China’s understanding of political stability refers to a mutual commitment to peaceful coexistence or, to be more specific, a mutual commitment to respecting each other’s core interests.²²

However, China’s understanding of its core interests has evolved over time, with the scope of the interests expanding and their meaning increasingly nebulous. Core interests used to refer only to China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang.²³ But China’s most recent official declaration, published in 2011, defined its core interests as “state sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity and national reunification, China’s political system established by the Constitution and overall social stability, and the basic safeguards for ensuring sustainable economic and social development.”²⁴ According to senior Chinese officials’ statements, these core interests fall into three main categories: 1) ensuring China’s political and regime security, particularly the rule of the party and implementation of the socialist system; 2) ensuring China’s key security interests, which include state sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity, and national reunification; and 3) ensuring China’s development rights to become a more advanced and richer country.²⁵ Such a broad definition of core interests requires significant specification to render them practicable. The United States fears that a commitment to respect vaguely defined Chinese core interests would translate into ever-increasing Chinese demands without a clear understanding of what Washington would receive in return. This would be a bad deal in technical negotiating terms and an unsustainable deal in U.S. domestic political terms.

Second, it is unclear how the United States would fulfill a commitment to respect China’s core interests such as regime security and development rights. Is Washington expected to refrain from criticizing Beijing on issues such as human rights, the rule of law, and freedom of speech? Are U.S. export control policies that restrict some Chinese companies’ access to American technologies a violation of China’s development rights? (Chinese officials have suggested that the answer to both questions is yes, but they have not clarified exactly what they expect from the United States.)²⁶

Relatedly, what practical steps would China require as a credible signal of U.S. commitment to a stable political relationship? Would the United States be expected to endorse China’s traditional “five principles of peaceful coexistence,” the newer concept of a “new type of great power relations,” or the most recent slogan from Xi himself about building a “community of shared future for mankind?”²⁷ If declaratory policy is not enough, is China seeking a comprehensive political agreement on a wide range of security, economic, and technological policies to codify U.S. responsibilities? Does China want the United States to promise not to build a NATO-like multilateral alliance network in the Asia-Pacific and refrain from deploying strategic military capabilities within certain distances from China’s borders? Would any agreement have to be legally binding? How does China wish to address the fact that even if a U.S. administration were to accept such a deal, it could not bind Congress or successive administrations? China has not revealed its views on these issues, probably because it has not yet clarified its own thoughts.

Third, Beijing lacks a definitive response on how to offer reciprocal reassurances to alleviate Washington’s concerns regarding the long-term consequences and risks associated with accepting Beijing’s vision for political stability.

For Washington, committing to political stability with Beijing could mean conceding to Beijing’s revisionist ambitions. From the U.S. standpoint, a more empowered and confident China is already taking a more assertive stance, for instance, showing impatience toward achieving unification with Taiwan. If China gained parity with or surpassed U.S. capabilities, its assertiveness might grow and it might aim for broader expansionist objectives than currently observed.²⁸ Some experts are concerned that a more powerful China might result in Chinese hegemony in the Asia-Pacific and in developing regions, the dissolution of American regional alliances, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Japan and South Korea, the barring of U.S. naval activities in the West Pacific, and the settling of the Taiwan issue and other territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas through coercion.²⁹ These are significant concessions for Washington to consider.

More broadly, there is deep apprehension in the United States that an increasingly powerful China will more readily contest current regional and global institutions, possibly aiming to supplant them with alternatives influenced or even dominated by China.³⁰ Indeed, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has observed that Xi is “determined to . . . shap[e] international rules of the road as well as the international landscape to suit the Chinese leadership’s preferences.”³¹ For instance, in recent years, China has shown its readiness to openly disregard international legal decisions, such as the Hague Tribunal’s 2016 arbitration verdict against China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.³² It has directly contested the notion of universal values, criticized the prevailing rules-based international order, and initiated efforts to reinterpret democracy.³³ Even Chinese experts recognize the shift from China’s earlier stance: while it previously viewed itself as a beneficiary of the international system, it now perceives that it is “no longer accommodated by [that] order and it needs to work on how to build something new.”³⁴

China’s aspiration to shift the international balance of power by building up its strategic capabilities, including nuclear weapons, would be especially concerning to the United States. Some American China watchers have expressed concerns that China’s expanding nuclear arsenal could help China establish its dominant power in a “radically transformed international order.”³⁵ In this sense, the appearance that China could compel the United States to accept bilateral political stability by allowing Chinese strategic military capabilities to expand could send a problematic signal to other U.S. nuclear rivals. It might raise the public perception that other states could compel the United States to accept political stability by investing in the development of military strength, especially nuclear weapons strength. At the end of the day, the ultimate objective of countries such as North Korea or Russia is to make the United States accept peaceful coexistence and turn a blind eye to their governments’ troublesome domestic and regional behaviors.³⁶ If nuclear buildup is perceived as useful for advancing this goal, it would negatively affect U.S. and its allies’ security in the long run.

It is unlikely that the United States would commit to political stability with China without genuine Chinese efforts to mitigate U.S. concerns about its future actions. Yet, China appears unaware of how its current strategy negatively affects its objective to foster political stability with the United States, and it has not recognized the necessity to offer strategic reassurances to Washington. This partly results from the lack of internal clarity on China’s own strategic objectives and a coherent strategy to achieve them. Beyond declaring the abstract goal of fulfilling the Chinese Dream of achieving national rejuvenation by 2049, Beijing has not laid out what its goals entail.³⁷ In spite of Xi’s statement that “China will never claim hegemonism, never expand, and never seek spheres of influence,”³⁸ China’s track record has led some Chinese netizens to half-jokingly summarize their country’s foreign policy as the following: “when you are poor, you ‘shelve the disputes;’ when you are rich, you claim ‘your historical rights.’”

Part of the reassurance problem results from the growing internal dilemma China faces. Beijing’s priority has long remained to safeguard its regime security. However, given the fact that the simple existence of the Western political system and its values presents an increasing threat to China’s regime legitimacy, the Chinese government feels no choice but to defend its authoritarian system by actively contesting Western values, ideas, and narratives at international forums. Such aggressive behaviors that appear to be offensive attacks against the Western systems and way of life are actually driven by a self-perceived defensive goal of protecting China’s internal stability and regime security.³⁹ The internal priority of maintaining regime security also propels China’s escalating confrontation with the United States on a wide range of issues, including human rights, espionage activities, and hostage diplomacy, making it more difficult for Washington to commit to the type of stable political relationship Beijing seeks.

Challenges to Compartmentalization

If enhancing political stability via a top-down format proves difficult, is it feasible for the two nations to compartmentalize political stability from nuclear stability? The deliberate intertwining of nuclear and political stability in China’s current practice is a significant barrier. Nonetheless, should China eventually cease to condition nuclear stability on political relations, the persistent, high political tensions between the two countries would still constitute a significant obstacle to implementing compartmentalization.

One important factor behind China’s reluctance to compartmentalize and engage in separate discussions on nuclear stability with the United States is its skepticism of Washington’s true commitment to nuclear stability. From China’s perspective, the United States has applied double-standards to its own nuclear policy compared to that of China, referred to as a “differential” policy in this report, contributing to Chinese grievances that Washington aims for nuclear primacy rather than mutual nuclear stability. Political discord has been a major reason behind the U.S. differential nuclear policy toward China, and this has escalated in recent years. Consequently, Washington encounters increased difficulties in aligning with Beijing’s expectations for nuclear stability.

For a long time, Beijing looked for a clear U.S. acknowledgement of nuclear mutual vulnerability—a state where each nation accepts its susceptibility to devastating retaliation by the other’s nuclear forces—as an indicator of U.S. commitment to bilateral nuclear stability. However, at the political level, an explicit U.S. commitment to nuclear mutual vulnerability would send an unwelcome signal of political concession. As in the Cold War, the United States today faces growing domestic pressure not to appear too conciliatory to a geostrategic foe that openly challenges American values and interests. This domestic pressure has intensified because most analysts in Washington believe that growing Chinese assertiveness is a result of heightened Chinese revisionist ambition rather than a lack of U.S. reconciliation or reassurance efforts.⁴⁰

Another challenge for Washington to commit to bilateral nuclear stability is enduring U.S. and allies’ concerns about the conventional security implications of enhanced U.S.-China nuclear stability. China’s efforts to strengthen its nuclear capabilities help ensure that Washington and Beijing will be locked into an inescapable mutual nuclear vulnerability relationship, so that China can better leverage its growing conventional military power without fear of nuclear escalation by the United States. As a result, many U.S. allies worry that, as the theory of the stability-instability paradox predicts, China may feel emboldened to engage in more aggressive conventional-level military behavior. For this reason, some U.S. allies—especially Japan, which has territorial and maritime disputes with China—have consistently opposed any acceptance of nuclear mutual vulnerability with China by the United States. More recently, following the outbreak of the Ukraine war, a key American concern is that China’s nuclear buildup may give it more freedom to use conventional force, including in a conflict over Taiwan.⁴¹

U.S. differential policy is reflected in the fact that it sees China’s quest for military operational freedom as destabilizing, while viewing its own similar pursuits positively. This stance spans both conventional and nuclear operations. In the nuclear realm, Washington considers it stabilizing for itself to maintain the option of nuclear escalation in conventional conflicts, such as those over Taiwan, while viewing any attempt by Beijing to initiate limited nuclear use or threats as destabilizing. Washington is also deeply concerned about any potential Chinese development of nuclear counterforce damage limitation capabilities, even though the United States has maintained such capabilities for decades. Such disparity stems from fundamental political disagreements over which side’s objectives and actions are just. Regarding Taiwan, for instance, Washington contends that Beijing’s coercive push for unification, especially militarily, so threatens global norms and peace that expanded U.S. military latitude is warranted. Beijing, conversely, sees U.S. intervention interests as bids to contain China and preserve American hegemony—thus viewing Washington’s quest for operational freedom as particularly unsettling.

Such a divergence of views about the nature of bilateral military confrontations is widespread between the United States and its authoritarian nuclear rivals, such as China, North Korea, and Russia. Washington appears to hold the view that authoritarian countries are more inclined to initiate unjust wars and pursue revisionist objectives, more impulsive in their threats of nuclear first use, less reliable in adhering to international norms and ethical standards, and more unpredictable in their strategic decisionmaking. As a result, the United States sees valid grounds for adopting a different nuclear policy standard toward authoritarian adversaries, underpinned by these perceived distinctions in governance and international behavior.

Between Washington and Beijing, political disagreements not only contribute to U.S. reluctance to accept mutual nuclear vulnerability or sign a mutual nuclear NFU agreement with China but also enhance U.S. interest in developing homeland missile defense capabilities and maintaining an effective damage limitation capability against China. All of these are viewed by Beijing as evidence of U.S. rejection of bilateral nuclear stability.

In particular, the U.S. interest in seeking damage limitation through the development of counterforce capabilities reveals a deep-seated mistrust of its nuclear rivals’ intentions or abilities to reach agreement with the United States on essential mutual interests. The United States’ objective to neutralize as much of its adversaries’ nuclear forces as feasible highlights profound U.S. doubts about adversaries’ dedication to not initiating a nuclear war or to de-escalating once a nuclear conflict has begun. The U.S. nuclear targeting strategy’s emphasis on directly threatening adversaries’ leaders reflects a lack of confidence in achieving a fundamental mutual understanding of each other’s interests at the leader level, a critical requirement for avoiding a race to the bottom in nuclear escalation.

Such U.S. apprehensions seem justifiable when considering nuclear adversaries led by figures like Mao or North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, whose unique ideological beliefs and perspectives significantly differed from those of American leaders, thus severely undermining U.S. confidence in establishing essential mutual understandings. For instance, Mao explicitly stated, more than once, that if a full-scale nuclear conflict led to the demise of half, or even two-thirds, of the world’s population, “it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.” He believed “it would only take the span of several five-year plans to replenish the population” and that such a war “could completely eradicate capitalism and thus guarantee everlasting peace.”⁴²

Four decades after Mao’s passing, China finds itself once again governed by a leader aspiring to Mao’s level of absolute control and sharing many of Mao’s ideological perspectives, sparking apprehension in Washington. Some American experts worry that Chinese military aggression might not stop at disputed territories within the First Island Chain;⁴³ if China controlled these places, it would be in a better position to project military power further into the West Pacific and thus carve out a broader sphere of influence to the detriment of the United States, its allies, and other countries in the region. If concerns about China’s military aggression continue to grow, more American experts might conclude that maintaining nuclear stability is not an unalloyed good and that Washington should be prepared to threaten nuclear use in a high-stake conventional war with Beijing.⁴⁴

In recent years, growing American concerns about China’s geostrategic intent and its closer cooperation with countries such as Iran and North Korea have also led to some in the United States calling for the end of distinguishing China from so-called rogue states. Despite the persistent official policy that the United States relies on nuclear deterrence, rather than homeland missile defenses, to deter nuclear use by China or Russia, some American experts argue it is time to deploy ballistic missile defenses against China and Russia without any self-restraints.⁴⁵ This further contributes to China’s suspicion of the United States’ commitment to bilateral nuclear stability.

However, Beijing is not yet aware of the need to reassure Washington and its allies as a measure that could discourage Washington from maintaining its differential nuclear policy. For instance, China does not recognize the increasing tension between achieving U.S.-China nuclear stability and its coercive use of military power to change the region’s territorial status quo. Instead, Chinese experts attribute the U.S. reluctance to negotiate a NFU agreement or acknowledge mutual vulnerability with China almost entirely to a perceived hegemonic desire to maintain nuclear primacy and undermine China’s nuclear deterrent.⁴⁶ Fundamentally, China concludes that the United States’ differential nuclear policy is rooted in deep-seated political bias and animosity toward countries such as China. This conviction leads Beijing to doubt the efficacy of cooperative efforts to achieve nuclear stability with Washington. Instead, China views nuclear stability as attainable only after it forces the United States to abandon its political prejudices and prioritize establishing a more stable and equal political relationship.

While China’s nuclear expansion aims at helping achieve this goal, it instead heightens American skepticism about the feasibility of a cooperative approach to pursue bilateral nuclear stability. Because of Beijing’s lack of transparency about the motives behind its accelerated nuclear buildup and its desired end state, Washington increasingly worries that the buildup is driven by a more aggressive nuclear strategy, perhaps involving a stronger emphasis on first use of nuclear weapons.

Frustrated by repeatedly trying and failing to get Beijing on board with a nuclear dialogue, Washington is considering measures to address the perceived risk of Chinese nuclear escalation by strengthening U.S. nuclear capabilities and postures. These measures are likely interpreted by China as offensive moves to widen the existing U.S. nuclear advantage. For instance, the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review emphasized the capability to forward-deploy nuclear weapons and delivery systems to the Indo-Pacific region as part of a broader effort to reassure allies and strengthen extended deterrence.⁴⁷ U.S. interest in deploying theater-range, land-based conventional missile capabilities near China to complement air- and sea-based conventional strike capabilities adds to Beijing’s concerns about Washington’s pursuit of nuclear primacy.⁴⁸ In addition, current Chinese evaluations of American nuclear policy objectives largely ignore or dismiss new American concerns about the need to deter two nuclear near peers simultaneously.⁴⁹ Viewing Chinese and Russian nuclear arsenals merely as tools to counter American nuclear coercion, some Chinese experts privately suggest that the United States has invoked the nuclear trilemma issue as a pretext to abandon any remaining U.S. commitment to U.S.-China bilateral nuclear stability.

Implications for Arms Race Stability

With China relying more on military power and nuclear weapons to help address political instability, it has become harder to manage U.S.-China nuclear competition and prevent arms races. This is true even if Chinese leaders are taking a cautious, step-by-step approach to strengthening China’s nuclear forces.

The power politics perspective holds that once China completes its current round of nuclear buildup, its leaders will expect to see a reduction in perceived U.S. hostility toward China. However, the outcome is likely to be the opposite: China’s opaque nuclear expansion is more likely to heighten, rather than alleviate, the United States’ apprehensions about Beijing’s military and strategic aspirations. This, in turn, could prompt Washington to pursue more robust military countermeasures and potent