Some analysts suggest China’s vast network of underground tunnels is evidence it is undertaking a massive build-up of its nuclear arsenal. Actually, China has reason to worry about the US.
It’s tempting to dismiss the story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal suggesting that China may have around 3,000 nuclear warheads as the kind of reporting that could only be considered ‘fair and balanced’ on Fox News, and so just ignore it. After all, as long ago as 2004, Jeffrey Lewis tracked down the origin of media reports cited by the Journal that China has 2,350 nuclear weapons. Embarrassingly, the source is an online essay based on bogus US intelligence information that was posted by a Singapore University student.
Moreover, it hardly seems worth wasting time explaining why it’s invalid to estimate the size of China’s contemporary arsenal by taking a 1960s US intelligence report that predicted how many warheads China would have in 1973, and then assuming that it has built up at a constant rate since then. What does make the article worth engaging with, however, is its inability to even try to understand China’s strategic challenges, and why it might go to some fairly extreme lengths to try to solve them.
The purpose of the Journal article is to raise awareness of China’s nuclear modernization and the ‘immense strategic leverage’ it would supposedly give China in a war. Now, I certainly don’t claim to know why China is modernizing its nuclear force. China’s modernization may be offensively orientated. Perhaps Beijing really does wish to change the status quo in its favour by force of nuclear arms. The ‘facts’ collected by the Journal, however, provide no evidence—for or against—these propositions.
The article focuses on the vast network of underground tunnels, the ‘Underground Great Wall,’ which China has built to protect its nuclear forces. ‘For decades,’ writes Bret Stephens in that knowing tone adopted by the Journal’s finest, ‘nuclear experts have understood that the key to “winning” a nuclear exchange is to have an effective second-strike capability, which in turn requires both a sizable and survivable force.’
Wrong. A survivable second-strike capability is the key to not losing a nuclear exchange. It ensures that an adversary can’t disarm you and then use nuclear threats to bend you to his will. Even if China had 3,000 warheads all mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles—which it doesn’t—it could still not disarm the United States. Apart from the inability of inaccurate Chinese missile to destroy hardened American silos, the four or more US submarines (each of which is armed with about 100 warheads) that are at sea at any given time ensure the invulnerability of the US deterrent.
By contrast, China does have reasonable grounds to fear that the United States is seeking a war-winning nuclear capability. The United States deploys something just shy of 2,000 strategic warheads, with more in reserve. Its delivery systems are exquisitely accurate. It’s developing conventional weapons designed to hunt down mobile missiles. And, on top of that, Washington has consistently refused requests from Beijing to explicitly state that the United States isn’t seeking the ability to eliminate China’s nuclear forces.
Photo Credit: Flickr / Watchsmart
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China Wong
The US with its thousands of nm can easily blow up China. The fact is China,must like NK,not be allowed to have even a handful of nm as a deterrent.China aint going to be the first to launch a nuclear strike or conventional attack on the US.They want to make sure the US won't be operating in the Korea war environment or even Vietna,m where the US homeland is a sanctuary.
With the US having an ti missile shield and armed to the mouth/teeth,is it any wonder the PLA will increase its offensive nm?The US would do likewise if it wereChina.If China were weak like in Mao's time and up to 2008,the US could have said Taiwan were an independent country and the Chinese could do nothing.
In fact when Rumsfeld was Ds,a special envoy was despatched to Taiwan to goad CSB into declaring independence. Powell heard of it and threw a spanner in the works ,thereby preventing the destruction of VChina and millions of US casualties.The latter is a pragamtic guy who knows the PLA could give a vicious blow to US forces in a Taiwan war.
There are more challenges awaiting the PLA> Needless to say they are prepared for any forced showdown and make 100% sure any US attack will be met with a counter strike unlike Vietnam where the US homeland was off limits.That si the stark reality of 2013.
Chuck Snow
Chuck Snow
I've never read such a muddled mish mash of crap in my life!
China Wong
So what should China do?Do nothing and be like the opium era China or Mao’s China with people’s war tactics?The US doesn’t have to occupy China. All it has to do is destroy China’s military power in the past.
Now wait a minute.It aint as easy as it looks. China is bilding up the capability to give the US a stinging rebuff or a bloody nose. Granted China will lose but its better to inflict some pain if the US wants to prevail.That is what is bothering the Pentagon.You see US forces are used to operating in a sfae environment with the risk od enemy attack in the zero range.
Heck the Us is ten thousand miles away and want to operate in waters near China. Now what would the US do if PLA nuclear submarines paterol off the US coast?You can’t have it both ways.
Btw if the US wants to attack China with minimum cost it’s now as on Jan 11 2012.
As time goes on the damage to the US will be significant and will get costlier.The PLA aint itching for fight with a bully but like a good scout the motto is: be prepared.
flyboi
Yay, we have yet another neo-liberal egalitarian pro-globalizationist on the Middle Kingdom’s patrol. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
ginal
I’ve taken an interest in the developement of Chinese nuclear delivery systems for many years now and read Yang Zheng’s paper in about 1997. Made a lot o sense to me, but it has always been considered an outlier in mainstream discussion.
I’ve also followed for at least fifteen years the speculation on the number of warheads and missiles available to China. I spent a few hours trolling the net in 2001 following the US spy plane incident at Hainan island. I was living in Japan at the time and there was a bit of a panic on.
One of the things that really strikes me is how few weapons have been added to the Chinese nuclear arsenal over the last ten years. That is if you beleive the conventional US analysis. I find it incredible that the consensus is that China has only marginally increased its weapons stockpile over the last ten years whereas my intuition (based on their enormous economic growth) suggests that by now they should have enough deliverable Nukes to turn every major city and medium sized town in the US (and quite a bit of the rest of world too) into glass.
In fact sometimes I have my suspicions that the US defence establishment is deliberately downplaying Chinese missile numbers so as not to alarm their population and to maintain the myth of US nuclear invincibility.
Oh well, we’ll find out when both countries, and probaly quite a few others, cease to exist. I hope to be in a target free zone but that’s diffiult to arrange with certainly nowadays. I have visons of Mexican scavengers wandering around the radioactives wasteland of the former US. Satisfying visions I must say. But I think it’s inevitable given current US polcy.
Lung Sha Shou
I wouldn’t get too full of pride if I were you. China steals around 50 billion worth of innovation from Germany each year and is highly adept at theft.
Of course, if you are mindlessly “pro-china” anything and everything they do is OK including killing defenceless “political” prisoners and selling their organs for transplants (David Kilgour’s report)
Similarly you may be proud “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” which, according to a Chinese Goivt commissioned study showed that the income inequality there is even greater than in the United States.
Still, I suppose it is a function of Chinese patriotism that they must consider (perhaps for reasons of faith) every aspect of what they identify with as superior to tohers and even manipulate science to fill their narrow goals. The Nazis patheic racial idologydescribed them as the Master Race, which seems very similar to Franks conributions alluding to his belief in a unique separate origin of the chinese (whoever they are)- a theory which has been discredited and rejected because, even for the rabid nationalists it distorted science a bit too much.
Why can’t you people at least try to engage reality and/or establish some foundational principles instead of forever using post hoc rationalizations. I know the famine cause by Mao’s gross incompetence in management of the state which killed tens of millions is insignificant next to the dreadful excesses of colonialism. I know white colonialism which caused Chinese to suffere and be mistreated is far far worse than, say supporting dictators and propping up regimes who regularly engage in Crimes against Humanity.
What I really find offensive is the failure of rabid nationalists (by that I mean those who constantly bleat on about either their so called superiority or express a believe that somehow they are better and worth more than others) to treat others in the way they clearly would have wished their people were treated and who are now intent on ,or itching for, some expression of aggression or superiority over other peoples, thereby demonstrating that despite their supposedly ancient civilisation, they are really just as miserably human as evey other horrid little person who wants to oppress others and benefit at others expense.
If all you have is a beleif in your own superiority and strength,and a preparedness to act without morals, you are no better than, and indeed identical to ordninary men witho all there base desires.
My observation is that all peoples are racist,and the Chinese are no exception. They certainly seem to have little concern fot their own kind – the fact that an idiot judge presumed that a bystander who helped must have done so only because of his guilt (when he was just compassionate), is no excuse not to help a dying child and yet this sort of behaviour is typical of the Chinese as a people these days – nothing superior about that.
For my own “side” I see many problems with western democracy which is cheapened and debauched by commerce and the effects of plenty on a complacnet populace. The Chinese may get the beter of us in the long term as Chi Haotian who sees “war as the midwife of the chinese century” believes and intends.. He dscribes Chinese expansion like a fist thrusting outward and like the Nazis wants lebensraum – living room stating that America Australia and Europe are where the Chinese people should expand to. He has advocated development of race-specific weapons to kill caucasians. Sounds good does it Frank?
What I will be interested in is when the so called communists attempt to steal the Taiwanese land from them and the possilbe involvment of a US carrier which may even be sunk. The loss of 5000 US service personel might be a very interesting (and dreadful)event – maybe then we will be in interesting times.
I see the PRC as the most evil organisation on the face o this earth
a_canadian_observer
@Lung Sha Shou: Well said!
Drive by
Digging a few thousand miles of tunnels is no biggie for China. Just look at their civil construction projects in the past 20 years: all those highways, bridges, tunnels, railroads and high speed railroads, and airports, not to mention power stations and the big dam.
Tunnels are not easy to destroy. Remember NORAD is in a tunnels. There must be tens of thousands real and fake launch wells and entrances in the tunnel system. Won’t be easy to destroy all of them. Furthermore, I am sure the Chinese are still digging. These are essentially “shovel-ready” projects, and can be used store many things safely, and accommodate many personals, not only nukes.
Matt
Using Jeffery Lewis, who is unprofessional and agenda driven, does not bode well for the quality of this article.
Here is how Singapore University data (Source 28) was originally used by the Heritage Foundation and referenced by Jeffery:
Congress should question the confidence that the Clinton Administration and the defense intelligence community place on their own assessments of China’s current missile force. Some reports that appeared in 1996 suggest the United States may be underestimating China’s missile force. For example, during the 30th anniversary celebration of China’s Second Artillery (its specialized missile force) in 1996, China’s military press reported the completion of a decade-long project to build what is speculated to be a large missile base inside a mountain range.27 A curious report that also appeared in 1996 estimates that China may have over 120 to 150 DF-5 missiles, which could be modified to carry as many as six one-megaton nuclear warheads.28 If China is concealing ICBMs in a mountain base, then even marginal improvements to its ICBMs derived from U.S. technical know-how would contribute to a greater potential missile threat.
Source 28:
28. Yang Zheng, “China’s Nuclear Arsenal,” at http://www.bme.med.ualverta.ca/~fwang/nuc-ch, October 10, 1996. The real name and credentials of this analyst are not known. This analysis far exceeds conventional estimates for China’s nuclear and missile forces, but one U.S. government expert told this author that its estimates are plausible.
I think this clearly makes Jeffery Lewis agenda driven – to make a conservative analyst look stupid. But we really don’t know who Yang Zheng is.
Jeffery’s own estimate of China’s nuclear arsenal is massively on the low end.
“since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, China’s defense expenditure started rising dramatically, a growth of 14 times from 25.146 billion yuan in 1989 to 355.39 yuan in 2007.”
So we are to believe that China’s military spending has increased 14 times since 1989, but it really hasn’t done all that much to increase its nuclear arsenal? Then why all the secrecy concerning China’s nuclear arsenal?
Leonard R.
As someone else pointed out, the author’s reference to Fox News is unprofessional. After paragraph one, every reader should question his credibility. He mocks the WSJ & Fox. That’s fine in an article about his personal opinions. But it demonstrates the political advocacy nature of his argument.
Not only that, by virtue of his employment, readers should note a conflict of interest.
He works for a ‘peace’ foundation. It is in his employer’s interest to skew the facts in order
to claim China’s intentions are peaceful.
Defense contractors must exaggerate a military threat. Peace foundations must do the opposite.
Neither can be trusted. Their conclusions must always be questioned and compared with observed facts.
But the author of this article lost any claim to credibility with his snarky & unprofessional reference to Fox News.
No need to even reach the inherent conflict of interest posed by his employer.
peter slovik
Mr. Acton I loved this article because of your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Pray thee, prepare another article on Global Warming.