In July 2005, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Major General Zhu Chenghu provoked considerable controversy when he declared that China should respond with nuclear weapons if the United States intervened with powerful conventional military forces in a confrontation over Taiwan. [1] In the intervening year, however, high-level Chinese military officials have disavowed any change to the country’s long-standing no-first-use policy, which states that China will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. [2] Nonetheless, Zhu’s remarks highlight an ongoing debate in China on the issues of nuclear doctrine and the no-first-use policy, reflected by growing and more public discussion of these topics in the Chinese media and academic literature.

A review of these writings suggests that these discussions fall largely into three lines of argument:

1. Those who stress that the no-first-use doctrine must remain the guiding principle of China’s nuclear weapons policy for moral and political reasons;
   
   
2. Those who argue that the no-first-use doctrine remains the correct approach for China because conventional deterrence is more credible than the threat of first nuclear use; and
   
   
3. Those who are prepared to debate whether China’s no-first-use doctrine should remain unchanged, especially if it appears that because of the preemptive capabilities of U.S. conventional forces, upholding the traditional doctrine would undermine China’s limited nuclear retaliatory capabilities.

Morality and Politics
Following its first nuclear test in 1964, Beijing announced that it would adhere to a policy of no-first-use (NFU) of nuclear weapons and called for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Alone among the five nuclear-weapon-states recognized in the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, China adopted a minimal deterrent strategy relying on a small number of nuclear weapons to deliver punitive, counter-value responses to an adversary’s first strike. The Chinese government has persistently upheld this position over the past 32 years and has reiterated this stance on a number of occasions. The majority of Chinese analysts discussing the no-first-use issue argue that this position has served Chinese strategic interests well since the 1960s giving Beijing the moral high ground and lending credence to its commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. For these analysts, nuclear weapons serve only one purpose: to retaliate against nuclear attacks.

Writing in late 2005, for example, retired Major General Pan Zhenqiang, a former director of the Institute of Strategic Studies at the PLA National Defense University, openly criticized General Zhu’s remarks as the “wrong theme at the wrong place and the wrong time.” He went on to list five reasons why the no-first-use position should be maintained, namely because it: upholds the underlying principle that nuclear war should be avoided; promotes strategic stability; reinforces international arms control efforts; enhances China’s international reputation; and fosters less contentious relations with Taiwan. [3]

Similarly, Major General Peng Guangqian, a renowned analyst of nuclear and military strategy at the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, echoed General Pan’s comments in an August 2005 article when he stated that the principle of no-first-use conforms to the global nuclear taboo, which has made nuclear weapons essentially unusable except under the most extreme conditions. Indeed, Peng argued, the first use of nuclear weapons by any country would be unthinkable today. He believes that China should not change its existing policy, which emphasizes: the defensive nature of China’s nuclear arsenal; China’s doctrine of no-first-use; the limited size of Chinese nuclear forces; China’s efforts to promote nuclear disarmament and international nuclear arms control; and China’s commitment to the ultimate goals of “total elimination and thorough destruction” of nuclear weapons. [4]

Sound Strategy
The second group of scholars suggests that nuclear weapons are essentially symbolic tools to advance political and strategic goals, rather than military weapons to be used in conflict. For these analysts, discarding no-first-use would not enhance China’s security, which depends on the credibility of its resolve to use maximum conventional force to meet any conventional attack. Even threats to China’s fundamental security interests, such as U.S. military intervention to support Taiwan in a cross-Strait conflict, would be better deterred by strong conventional forces, this group stresses. [5]

Li Bin of Tsinghua University, a well-known Chinese analyst of arms control and nuclear strategy, argues in a forthcoming article that China has adopted a no-first-use policy because its nuclear strategy is first and foremost to counter nuclear coercion. In particular, Li argues that any suggestion of first use during a conventional conflict is neither morally acceptable nor credible. Indeed, he suggests that even when nuclear weapons states are suffering defeat in conventional wars against weaker, non-nuclear weapon states, use of nuclear weapons has, at most, been contemplated but has never been undertaken. This also explains China’s no-first-use policy, he concludes, since it would never be credible for China to declare it will use nuclear weapons first. [6]

Li also indirectly challenged General Zhu’s argument that first use of nuclear weapons might make sense in a situation where China faced conventional defeat by an adversary like the United States. He argued that, given the small size and limited sophistication of China’s nuclear arsenal in comparison to that of the United States, for China to use nuclear arms—even after suffering severe damage from an enemy’s conventional forces—would only invite further destruction. In effect, it could transform a mere military defeat into a national catastrophe. What can and should be done, he concluded, is to strengthen China’s conventional capabilities, while improving the survivability of China’s limited nuclear deterrent force. Li further noted that China’s discarding its no-first-use doctrine could heighten the insecurity of some non-nuclear weapon states and provoke them to pursue nuclear arms of their own. Thus, abandoning no-first-use would provide no advantages and could carry significant costs. [7]

Sun Xiangli, a nuclear arms control specialist with the Beijing Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, has taken a similar stance. Writing at the end of 2005, she argued that for China, nuclear weapons are largely considered to be political and strategic deterrent weapons and that this fundamental underpinning of Chinese policy has not changed since 1964. Nor is it likely to be altered in the near future, she stressed, even though the security circumstances confronting China have dramatically changed in the last decade, including the U.S. development and deployment of a national missile defense system and its research on new low-yield nuclear weapons. [8] (Editor’s note: The Bush Administration’s request for funds to support research and development on new low-yield nuclear weapons was rejected by the U.S. Congress in November 2004.)

New Strategic Calculus
The third group of analysts argues that China’s no-first-use policy, while morally appealing and politically useful, should not be allowed to impose undue—and indeed dangerous—constraints on China’s strategic nuclear options, especially at a time when China’s nuclear and conventional forces are limited and comparatively unsophisticated compared to those of its potential adversary. Representing this school, in addition to General Zhu, are scholars such as Shen Dingli of Fudan University.

In an article that appeared in late 2005, Shen argued: “If China’s conventional forces are devastated, and if Taiwan takes the opportunity to declare de jure independence, it is inconceivable that China would allow its nuclear weapons to be destroyed by a precision attack with conventional munitions, rather than use them as a true means of deterrence.” [9] What Shen is arguing here is not that the no-first-use doctrine should necessarily be abandoned, but rather that a more serious discussion is needed regarding how China can most effectively protect its core national security interests. If no-first-use continues to serve China’s needs, it should be maintained and upheld; however, if this doctrine becomes a moral and philosophical straightjacket that undermines China’s national security, then, Shen argues, it should be modified.

But the broader question that Shen’s and, for that matter, General Zhu’s arguments, have implicitly raised, is whether the ends, even if ultimately defensive, will always justify the means. The current discussions on no-first-use harken back to PLA debates in the 1980s on the strategy of active defense, where the issue was whether some forms of offensive actions might be necessary in the face of impending enemy attack. In a separate article, Shen suggests that in the past, only nuclear weapons could destroy the other side’s nuclear arsenals; however, today, this could be achieved by using precision-guided conventional munitions. China’s silo-based early-generation strategic nuclear weapons, and China’s national security for that matter, could face serious risks should the enemy launch such attacks with precision conventional munitions. These would be tantamount to low-yield nuclear first strikes. [10] The implication is that, fearing such an attack was imminent, China, even as it endorsed the principle of no-first-use, might be entitled to employ its nuclear forces before the other side did.

The need to reconsider China’s no-first-use doctrine in order to preserve the credibility and survivability of China’s nuclear deterrent is also receiving support from some Chinese commentators on the Internet. One proposed variation, which would be more in keeping with the principle of no-first-use than Shen’s, but which would be difficult to implement in practice, is the strategy of launch on warning or lingqian huanji [counter attack prior to zero hour]. This envisions the launch of Chinese nuclear missiles once China has determined that the enemy has launched its own nuclear attacks, but before these have struck their targets on Chinese territory. [11]

Status Quo Continues
For now, no-first-use remains in place as official Chinese policy. Indeed, reports of the PLA Strategic Missile Force (SMF) exercises strongly hint that the country would not only refrain from using nuclear weapons first, but would also delay a counter-attack until after it had absorbed the in-coming nuclear strike (houfazhiren). [12] Despite this seeming continuity in Chinese doctrine, the pronouncements of retired Chinese military figures and academics suggest that a serious debate on the future of this posture is likely to continue and even intensify in the months and years ahead.

The above discussion offers a number of new insights into how Chinese military strategists and security analysts perceive the role of nuclear weapons in the country’s defense posture and the continued relevance of its no-first-use policy. While the fact that such debates have been allowed—albeit still within a relatively small circle of analysts—can been seen as evidence of growing openness and transparency within Chinese society on such a sensitive issue, one must also note that these analysts’ influence on official policy remains quite limited. Decisions on and implementation of official policy in this area continue to be
the exclusive prerogative of China’s party and military leadership at the highest level. However, the fact that China’s nuclear use policy is being debated publicly implies that it has also been the subject of internal discussions and that, while it remains unchanged for the moment, the door has been left open to further official examination of the policy. [13]

Jing-dong Yuan – Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies