China’s Rejection of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in the late Cold War

• In Event: Arms Control

Abstract

After the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict, China never deployed a tactical nuclear weapons capability to halt a Soviet invasion across its northern borders. Existing scholarship on nuclear strategy indicates that nuclear-weapon states deploy tactical nuclear weapons if they face the threat of a stronger military invading their territory. China’s decision not to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to halt a Soviet invasion is therefore frequently attributed to its leaders’ distinctive beliefs that nuclear weapons are not useful on the battlefield. New Chinese-language sources indicate, however, that Chinese leaders gave much more serious consideration to the option of deploying tactical nuclear weapons than is recognized in the existing literature. Furthermore, these sources reveal that Chinese leaders decided not to deploy those weapons for strategic reasons. This paper offers the most complete account of the elite decision-making processes in China related to tactical nuclear weapons in the late 1970s and early 1980s, drawing on new primary and secondary sources. Deng Xiaoping, whose beliefs in the limited battlefield utility of nuclear weapons are often cited, personally supported the initiation of a research and development program for a neutron bomb in 1978. That year, Chinese leaders also canceled an air-launched tactical nuclear weapons program. In addition, they were developing short-range ballistic missiles that could have been used to deliver nuclear weapons. By the early 1980s, however, Chinese leaders decided to rely on conventional military options, rather than tactical nuclear weapons, for halting a future Soviet invasion. They rejected the tactical nuclear option to avoid increasing the risks of escalation to the use of city-destroying strategic nuclear weapons, difficulties in implementing China’s nuclear No First-Use policy, and the accidental and unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.

Author

• Fiona Cunningham, George Washington University