A major U.S. strategic report has revealed that China’s nuclear posture is shifting from a restrained, defensive stance toward a more ambitious and offensive one.
Its expanding arsenal, reconsideration of its no-first-use principle, and increasingly aggressive external strategy pose a direct challenge to Japan’s security.
For Japan, which faces constant pressure around the Senkaku Islands, China’s growing nuclear strength is an undeniable and grave threat.

2019-05-29
The third reason, it says, is that China’s external strategy has become more ambitious and more offensive than before…
For Japan, which now faces the prospect of the Senkaku Islands being seized, it is self-evident that China’s nuclear buildup constitutes a grave threat.

The following is from an essay by Yoshihisa Komori published yesterday in the Sankei Shimbun under the title, “Signs of Rising Chinese Nuclear Power.”
These are facts that people who merely read the Asahi Shimbun and the like, and watch commercial television news programs or NHK, are never told.
On the contrary, what NHK reported yesterday was, as usual, footage of more than 10 left-leaning citizens gathered in Hiroshima raising their voices against the United States over its conducting a subcritical nuclear test.
Yet why is it that I have never seen such citizen groups raise their voices in protest against China’s nuclear arsenal, or against China’s lawless behavior in the South China Sea, or against its repeated intrusions into the contiguous zone around the Senkaku Islands.
It would not be an exaggeration at all to say that NHK, knowing that this article would appear in the Sankei Shimbun, hastily aired the above report.
“China is changing its long-standing defensive nuclear strategy, and there are signs that it is substantially strengthening both the quantity and quality of its nuclear weapons and enhancing its offensive capability.”
A research report carrying such grave implications for Japan’s security was released in mid-May by the major Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, or CSBA.
The report, titled “Understanding Strategic Interaction in the Second Nuclear Age,” offered a detailed analysis of the current nuclear strategies of nuclear powers such as the United States, Russia, and China.
It was prepared by a group of four specialists, including CSBA President Thomas Mahnken, who has long handled nuclear strategy across successive U.S. administrations.
In the section most noteworthy for its analysis of changes in China’s nuclear strategy, the leading role was played by Toshi Yoshihara, a senior fellow at CSBA and a leading authority on Chinese strategic studies.
The report states that the recent worsening of U.S.-China relations was one reason CSBA devoted such attention to research on China’s nuclear strategy.
The report first explained that since 1960, under the slogan of “active defense,” China’s nuclear force had remained relatively small and restrained compared with those of the United States and the former Soviet Union.
As for deliverable nuclear weapons and warhead-carrying systems, it said that China possesses about 90 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the United States, 160 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), 120 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), in addition to strategic bombers and ballistic missile submarines.
The report estimated that China had about 100 nuclear warheads for intermediate-range weapons alone, but did not specify the total number of warheads.
Estimates by U.S. government agencies have offered figures such as 280.
According to the report, the reason China had long kept its nuclear forces far smaller than those of the United States and the Soviet Union was the defensive and retaliatory strategy inherited from the Mao Zedong era, namely that “nuclear weapons are the final means of retaliation if an enemy nation threatens or attacks China with nuclear weapons.”
Wars, in this view, were to be decided strictly by non-nuclear conventional forces, while nuclear weapons were to serve as a deterrent preventing a nuclear-armed enemy from using nuclear arms.
That is why China had declared that it would not use nuclear weapons first even in war, and would not use them against non-nuclear states.
However, the report warned that China has recently shown signs of fundamentally changing this restrained nuclear strategy, centering on improved weapons performance and increased numbers, and turning in a more offensive direction.
As evidence, it cited analyses by U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as official and unofficial papers by senior figures at China’s National Defense University and Academy of Military Sciences.
As the first reason for the change in China’s nuclear strategy, the report pointed to “the dramatic improvement in the U.S. military’s global precision-strike capability to destroy enemy nuclear weapons with conventional arms,” and noted China’s concern that its nuclear weapons could be destroyed by non-nuclear attacks, thereby making nuclear retaliation impossible.
Because of this concern, China has even come to reexamine its long-standing principle of “no first use” of nuclear weapons.
The second reason, it says, is the improvement in U.S. missile defense capabilities.
In other words, even if China were to launch nuclear missiles in retaliation, concern has increased that they would be unable to penetrate the missile defense network of the United States and its allies.
The third reason is that China’s external strategy has become more ambitious and more offensive than before.
It is said that the need has grown to increase nuclear intimidation against other nuclear powers such as the United States and India.
For these reasons, the report concluded, China has begun taking measures to improve the survivability of its nuclear weapons and its ability to penetrate enemy missile defense systems.
For Japan, which now faces the prospect of the Senkaku Islands being seized, it is self-evident that China’s nuclear buildup constitutes a grave threat.
(Guest Correspondent in Washington)