There seems to be a growing feeling in certain circles in America that a next nuclear arms race at the gates. In recent days, two American journalistic heavyweights, David Ignatius[1] and Fred Kaplan[2] pointed to the ongoing nuclear and missile rearmament process in China. The fundamental point is that according to opinion-makers China has acquired the capability of a second strike, of nuclear reaction.
This is a fundamental point in the balance of nuclear terror. The ability to react after a first nuclear strike means that even if an enemy were to attack first with a nuclear offensive, the attacked country would retain the capacity for a counterattack. So far only the US and Russia have officially such capabilities. If China has acquired it today or is about to acquire it, the global military and political dynamics change.
In fact, China reportedly has trucks always on the road that carry concealed, ballistic missiles capable of being operational in a short time. Given their number and the size of the country, some of them would survive a first strike and could launch their missiles at a possible first attacker.
America and Russia have acquired their arsenals over many years and at the same time have defined their political and military rules of engagement with increasing clarity over the same long period. Today, however, the US and China find themselves with already very robust arsenals (even if the US remains far more armed) but the political and military rules of engagement between them still remain very confused. Hence there is the increased possibility of mutual accidents and errors.
Furthermore, the great rapprochement between the US and China in the last 50 years, since Nixon’s trip to China, has been based on a series of military collaborations (against the USSR at the northern Chinese border, in Afghanistan, and about Vietnam) and a series of strategic “ambiguities”, for lack of better terms, such as those over the Sino-Indian border, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and so on.
Today military collaborations are no longer there or are obsolete. Moscow (formerly common enemy of Beijing and Washington) is linked to China while Vietnam (formerly enemy of the United States) is now close to America. The various terrains of strategic ambiguity are being defined but are still vague, and it is not clear how and when they can be defined.
For instance, What are the true and mutual insurmountable limits (not bluster) on Taiwan, the South China Sea, or the Senkaku? Nobody really knows. That is, we are in a situation like in Europe between 1945 and 1948 when the US, Great Britain, and France were aligned against the USSR. However, then only the US had the bomb, and the world had just emerged from a war, and no one wanted to go back to it. So, the European borders, which became the Iron Curtain, were drawn without major conflicts.
Today they have to track them while all have massive nuclear arsenals. The memory of a great destructive war is far away, so war fantasies could move more freely on their own. Furthermore, back then the 1950 Korean War, and the armistice of 1953, gave the two blocs the opportunity to test each other’s limits. For this reason, in 1956, with the protests in Hungary, the US did not intervene because there was an unwritten agreement that Hungary was Soviet, and a direct intervention would have triggered much greater reactions.
Today, however, we have not had a conflict in which the two sides have established the limits, and even if there were, given the Chinese capacity for nuclear reaction today, many things could quickly degenerate.
Limits should be negotiated quickly, but this could damage the situation even more in a full-fledged Cold War with possible important economic repercussions, whereas the present ambiguities still give room for hope and positive developments. But, if limits are not negotiated, the chances of an accident increase.
Moreover, there are the questions what America will do in response to this new Chinese capacity and what North Korea will do. Opinions are divided in America and a careful observer from Washington like Chris Nelson in his report recommends a halt to US nuclear rearmament. In fact, the US today has a much greater military capacity than China and nuclear rearmament would divert resources from the current American plan to relaunch infrastructure and production.
But North Korea, which is now more under Beijing’s umbrella but could engage in a kind of “privateering war” for itself and for others in this already confused scenario.
Besides all this, there is Russia, whose arsenal, especially if computed together with the Chinese one, could give dramatic results in strategic calculations.
Then, what will America decide to do? And the other Asian countries? Here, in a simplified manner we can say that there was an old division of opinion: military elites fanned the fire, and the business ones were doves attracted by China’s market opportunities.
Until recently, the business elites prevailed. Today the balance is shifting faster and faster in favor of the military elites, also because the business opportunities in the American or European stimulus plans for the post-Covid period could provide many more opportunities than China. Plus, many businessmen grew wary about the realities about dealing with the Chinese in a sustained mutually beneficial way.[3]
And then security concerns always prevail in the end over business concerns in dangerous conditions.
The basic problem is that in Washington the idea that China poses the same sort of strategic threat as the former USSR is getting traction and is gaining increasing acceptance. This is a very complex issue and the statement badly captures the whole set of ideas and concerns building up in Washington about China and also about present Russia, but this consensus, once affirmed, then obeys logic that is difficult to stop or steer.
[1] See David Ignatius, The wizards of Armageddon may be back, Washington Post 7/05/2021.
[2] See Fred Kaplan, We Don’t Need a Better Nuclear Arsenal to Take on China, Slate, 23/04/2021.
[3] For this and other corrections I am deeply grateful to ambassador Donald Keyser,
I feel much safer here in California knowing China can obliterate our idiots in charge if they even think they can win a war.
The US economy is a mess, it can´t live with a basic interest rate exceeding the rate of inflation. If China were unable to deter US aggression Russia would be forced to support China because otherwise it would be the next victim of US aggression. By now China seems well able to defeat a non-nuclear US assault.
On the other hand China’s economy is developing well and will soon exceed the nominal size of that of US. It is therefore in China’s interst to delay war indefinately. At some time soon China will be in a position to demand for every ship and airplane touching Taiwan a nominal sum in recognition that the island is part of China……
That comment is utterly laughable. Permit me to explain.
The China Daily also reported that Lu Jiehua of Peking University believes that the country’s total fertility rate (TFR), broadly the number of children per female of child-bearing age, “has fallen below 1.7.” A US-based demographer reported, on the other hand, that China’s TFR last year was 0.90 and could not have exceeded 1.1. That estimate is on the lower end but is consistent with the China Daily’s reporting of 1.05 in 2015. The replacement TFR for most societies is generally 2.1, but some demographers suggest that China’s replacement rate is actually 2.2 because of its higher child mortality rates (China’s under-five mortality rate is 7.9 compared to Australia’s 3.6). If its TFR stabilises at 1.2, China will have a population of around 480 million by the end of this century. If it does not increase from where it is now, however, that number could be closer to the 400 million mark. To put that in context, according to the UN’s latest projections, the US will have a population of 433.9 million in 2100, up from 331.0 million in 2020. The disparity in the number of men compared to women – in 2019 there were 30 million more Chinese men than women and that disparity is increasing – is a consequence of the Chinese preference for male children and its one-child policy. That factor, when combined with the growing preference for small families, the high cost of housing, health and education, lead to the conclusion that China’s population will continue to fall. As a Chinese demographer said, “Most people want no baby or at most one baby, so even if you remove all the limits right now, it won’t have much effect.”
Compounding those concerns, China’s hukou system, which was created in 1958 to control internal migration could cause the current economic divide between urban and rural Chinese to widen. The system also creates disparities in educational opportunity between rural and urban China, disincentivises rural China, imposes a social cost on rural immigrants to urban regions and exacerbates the widening healthcare divide. As an IMF report notes, income inequality in China increased sharply from the early 1980s and rendered China among the most unequal countries in the world. Beijing’s efforts to amend the system have had mixed results at best.
Given those factors, a dual circulation economy that is based on consumption will depend to a very large extent on China’s urban population in a decreasing overall population and can only be viewed as a stop-gap initiative.
Second, China’s rejuvenation can only be accomplished by becoming the leader in scientific fields such as telecommunications, artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, etc. Faced with the technological curbs placed on it by then-US President Trump, however, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) statement in 2020 proclaimed, “Science and technology should be self-reliant as a strategic support for national development”. In other words, China had to develop in-house the technology that was required to meet its goals in those fields. Technology is key to the CCP’s campaign to promote self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumer spending and to build a moderately prosperous society in the first instance. While China’s factories assemble most of the world’s smartphones, personal computers and consumer electronics, they require U.S., European and Japanese components, which the CCP sees as a strategic weakness. It is especially worried about China’s reliance on U.S. providers of the processors used in smartphones, electric cars and other technologies that are central to their plans. China had to be able to develop, in short, the processors used in computers that were its single biggest import by value, ahead of crude oil. According to the China Semiconductor Industry Association, Chinese semiconductor imports in 2018 were valued at US$312 billion ($401 billion), US$304 billion ($390 billion) in 2019 and over US$300 billion ($385 billion) in 2020. In 2014, China announced its intention to become a leader in manufacturing semiconductors by 2030. Official plans called for China to produce 70 per cent of the semiconductors it uses by 2025. In 2020 it made about 20 per cent.
China’s ambition to become the leading manufacturer of semiconductors may not eventuate, however. A news report noted that China faces delays in miniaturising semiconductors with most of the seven major Chinese semiconductor manufacturing equipment manufacturers saying that their primary products were those for making 14 nanometre to 28 nm chips, which are two or three generations behind the world’s current chips, with others saying that even older generation machines were their main products. A combination of factors, led by the US’s curbs on the export of technology to China, has led to a simultaneous shortage of microprocessors in China. As the report concludes,
China’s government under Xi had put large amounts of subsidies into semiconductor projects across the country until 2020, but the results of the funding were limited, with many projects failing. The government now seldom mentions the 70% self-sufficiency target laid out in its Made in China 2025 industrial policy.
Making matters worse, the world’s biggest chip foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Co. (TSMC), announced its intention to join a new lobbying group, the Semiconductors in America Coalition, which includes 65 major players along the semiconductor value chain, whose immediate purpose is to lobby the American government to provide subsidies to companies to manufacture processors in the US. A second report goes a step further, alleging that while TSMC announced last year that it would invest up to US$12 billion ($15.4 billion) to build a processor factory in Phoenix, Arizona, it actually plans to pump tens of billions of US dollars more into cutting-edge processor factories in that state than it had previously disclosed. The report states that TSMC’s first factory in Arizona could be the first of up to six plants there. TSMC officials are allegedly discussing whether to build a factory to manufacture processors of 3 nm technology in the first instance, which would cost around US$23 billion ($29.6 billion) or one to manufacture chips of 5 nm, which would cost less. Intel, the world’s leading designer of microprocessors, and Samsung, the South Korean firm, are also increasing investment in US manufacturing facilities. Intel is building two new fabrication plants in Arizona and Samsung is building a US$17 billion ($21.9 billion) plant in Texas. Separately, President Biden has called for US$50 billion ($64.3 billion) in funding to support domestic chip manufacturing, and a group of Senate and House of Representatives lawmakers introduced the “Endless Frontier Act”, calling for US$100 billion ($128 billion) over five years for basic and advanced technology research and US$10 billion ($12.8 billion) to create new “technology hubs” across the country. Those initiatives could cement the US’s position as the global leader in microprocessor design and manufacture, forcing Beijing to depend on Washington for its supply, as is now happening.
Compounding China’s concerns, Taiwan has banned listings for jobs in China, a drastic move to prevent the outflow of vital technological talent to the mainland. In other words, in addition to being unable to find the skills required to create a domestic semiconductor industry, China will now find it increasingly difficult to acquire those skills internationally. That situation would jeopardise China’s overall plan to become a technology hegemon and, with it, its plan to rejuvenate the Chinese nation.
China’s plan to dominate the renewable energy sector is also in doubt. A recent report published by Sheffield Hallam University, titled “In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains”, highlighted China’s use of slave labour in the manufacture of the solar panels that it exported. The report has the potential to disrupt China’s exports of solar panels and cause it further embarrassment internationally by negating China’s refutation of the accusations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang Province that have been levelled against it.
China is well on its way to growing old before it grows rich or powerful. In other words, China has peaked, and therein lies the danger for the rest of the world.
mr Francesco Sisci failure to mention the numbers of nuke the US (6000+) or china (+-300) has to help put things in context somehow obfuscate the entire issue. washington will accept anything as “strategic threats” as long as its strategic or convenient to do so regardless of facts or evidence. washington is now pointedly threatening china and has even confirmed that all cards are on the table including nuke first strike. china would be utterly irresponsible to its ppl to not react to that in self-defence.
its silly to suggest washington should talk to china on “limits” now. if the US wanna talk to china on “limits”, its should perhaps reduce its nukes to chinas level or china to the US’ – level playing field ???
Quite right.