Nineteen days after assuming power as China's leader, Xi Jinping summoned the generals who oversaw the country's nuclear missiles and issued a forceful demand. China had to be prepared for a possible confrontation with a formidable adversary, he said, indicating that it wanted a more powerful nuclear capability.
His force, he told the generals, must promote “strategic plans to respond in the most complicated and difficult conditions to the military intervention of a powerful enemy,” according to an official internal summary of his speech in December 2012, which was verified. by The New York Times.
Publicly, Xi's comments on nuclear issues have been few and predictable. But his comments behind closed doors show that anxiety and ambition have driven his transformative buildup of China's nuclear arsenal over the past decade.
Now, China's military strategists see nuclear weapons not only as a defensive shield, but also a potential sword—to intimidate and subjugate adversaries. Even without firing a nuclear weapon, China could mobilize or brandish its missiles, bombers and submarines to warn other countries against the risks of escalation.
“Whoever masters more advanced technologies and develops strategic deterrent weapons that can leave others in the dust will have a powerful voice in peacetime and the initiative in wartime,” wrote Chen Jiaqi, a researcher at the National Defense University. from China, in an article in 2021.
Xi has expanded China's atomic arsenal faster than any previous leader, bringing his country closer to the big leagues of the United States and Russia. He has doubled China's arsenal to about 500 warheads and, at this rate, by 2035, it could have about 1,500 — about as many as Washington and Moscow currently deploy, U.S. officials said. (The United States and Russia have thousands more warheads in storage.)
China is also developing increasingly sophisticated missiles, submarines, bombers and hypersonic vehicles that can deliver nuclear strikes. It has upgraded its nuclear test site in Xinjiang, clearing the way for possible underground tests, perhaps if an arms race breaks out between the superpowers.
A major change in China's nuclear power and doctrine could deeply complicate its competition with the United States. China's expansion has sparked intense debate in Washington over how to respond and cast greater doubt on the future of major arms control treaties. Meanwhile, the antagonism between the United States and Russia is also raising the prospect of a new era of nuclear rivalry.
Xi and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have calmed the rancor since last year, but finding nuclear stability may be elusive if Beijing stays out of arms control treaties as Washington clashes with Beijing and Moscow. .
Critically, China's growing nuclear options could shape the future of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory and which relies on US security support. In the coming years, Beijing could develop confidence that it can limit the intervention of Washington and its allies in any conflict.
China's “ace” could be a “powerful strategic deterrent force” to warn that “any external intervention will not succeed and is impossible to succeed” in Taiwan, wrote Ge Tengfei, a professor at the National University of Defense Technology in Taiwan. China, in a Communist Party magazine in 2022.
In 2015, Xi presided over a ceremony in which the Second Artillery Corps, custodian of China's nuclear missiles, was reborn as the Rocket Force, elevated to service alongside the Army, Navy and Air Force. In a matter of a few years, the Rocket Force added at least 10 new brigades, an increase of about a third, reveals a study by the US Air Force's China Institute for Aerospace Studies. China has also added more road- and rail-mobile missile launchers to try to outwit US satellites and other detection technologies.
In a confrontation over Taiwan, Washington could face difficult decisions about whether potential attack targets in China could include nuclear-armed missile units and whether an incoming DF-26 missile could be nuclear.
By: CHRIS BUCKLEY
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7114682, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-02-14 20:48:04
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