In the last few years, the world's arms-control architecture has been falling apart, especially as Russia has turned it back on treaty obligations. So why did China change its mind on talks now? After decades of Beijing refusing to talk about arms control, U.S. and Chinese officials held discussions on the topic in Washington, D.C. last week.
As an initial matter, it's not clear the Chinese in fact did change their view. Yes, the meeting, from official accounts, was a success. Both Washington and Beijing called the discussions "constructive." That's not exactly what insiders say, though. As an informed source, speaking anonymously, told me, "The U.S. spoke in platitudes while the Chinese said there was no reason for them to agree to limit their nukes, because they had so few."
The U.S. has, pursuant to its obligations to Russia under the New START Treaty, limited its number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550. (Technical counting rules in fact allow the United States to possess a few more and the U.S., like Russia, has thousands more nukes in storage.) Russia has stopped complying with New START and has purportedly suspended the pact.
At the Monday meeting, China representatives said that their rapid buildup is the result of the American buildup, per my source. The number of deployed American weapons has substantially declined during the post-Cold War era, however, falling from about 10,000 then to under 2,000 today. China, on the other hand, is now on a tear adding to its arsenal.
China has never publicly confirmed the number of its nuclear weapons. The Pentagon in a November 2022 report forecast that China would quadruple nukes from about 400 then to 1,500 by 2035.
"For decades, they were quite comfortable with an arsenal of a few hundred nuclear weapons, which was fairly clearly a second-strike capability to act as a deterrent," Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said in testimony in March, referring to China. "That expansion that they're undertaking puts us into a new world that we've never lived in before, where you have three powers—three great powers, essentially—with large arsenals of nuclear weapons."
China is no longer content with a "minimal deterrent"—an arsenal only big enough to prevent an attack. With its rapid build-up, it is apparently looking for a "war-fighting" capability. In other words, Beijing wants a larger arsenal to intimidate adversaries, so that its threats to launch first strikes would be credible. The ability to completely annihilate another country could, for instance, get that country to back down on defending Taiwan.
In fact, China, which has pledged to never use nuclear weapons first, has throughout this century made threats to do just that. In 2021, for instance, it warned that it was prepared to incinerate Japan and Australia, two nonnuclear states.
At first glance, then, Beijing's discussion of arms control seems insincere. There are reasons for China to string the Biden administration along with talks. Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center thinks China's reversal of its decades-long no-talks position is "a very tactical maneuver to create a minimum-positive 'vibe' for Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to the U.S. for the APEC summit."
The People's Republic of China, he believes, agreed to the talks to "divert" the Biden administration at a crucial moment. President Joe Biden and Xi are now scheduled to meet Wednesday in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC summit. As James Fanell and Bradley Thayer, long-time China watchers, write in American Greatness this month, "The fact that the PRC and the U.S. are in arms control talks only serves to sustain the illusion of engagement."
The Communist Party needs continued American engagement perhaps more than ever. The regime is facing continuing debt defaults, crumbling property prices, a falling currency, accelerating capital flight, worsening food shortages, a deteriorating environment, and failing local governments. Many Chinese have given up on their society, fleeing to the U.S. and other countries.
China's most fundamental problem at the moment is a stagnating economy, which, from reliable indicators, is not growing at the 5.2 percent pace Beijing has claimed for the first three quarters of this year. China may not even be growing at all, as the country has officially returned to deflation.
Partially as a result of the cratering economy, foreign business is now fleeing China, something highlighted by the recent announced withdrawals of Gallup and Vanguard Group. In the third calendar quarter of this year, foreign businesses withdrew more investment from China than they added to it, the first time this has happened since Beijing began keeping statistics on this metric in 1998.
Xi Jinping needs to create an appearance of American support for his regime to stem the outflow from China. Beginning arms-control talks with Washington is an important way to conjure such an appearance. Yet any success in creating that illusion will almost certainly only be temporary, because an arms-control deal with China is almost inconceivable.
"China has never disclosed what nuclear weapons it has or where they are located," Peter Huessy of the Omaha-based National Institute for Deterrence Studies told me. "That information for U.S. forces is available in the Congressional Record. China, however, has never allowed any inspection to verify anything, so it is impossible to have a deal."
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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