It’s time for China’s approach to arms control to evolve. The United States can help.
Editor’s Note: As China has built up its nuclear arsenal, many U.S. observers have hoped that China, like the Soviet Union before it, would embrace various arms control initiatives. But so far Beijing has not done so. Wu Riqiang of Tsinghua University, drawing on his recent article in International Security, explains why China has historically rejected calls for arms control and what both China and the United States might do to make success more likely. – Daniel Byman
In nuclear dialogues between China and the United States, U.S. participants often ask why it is so difficult to negotiate serious nuclear risk-reduction measures with Beijing—especially given that Washington managed to do so with Moscow during the Cold War. The assumption underlying this question is that classical arms control theory—derived from U.S.-Soviet experiences—is universally applicable.
China is a different case. Relative to the two nuclear superpowers, it has inferior capabilities, a unique nuclear experience, and a distinct arms control tradition shaped by that experience. China’s arms control tradition prioritizes capability development over reassurance and risk reduction. This tradition helps explain Beijing’s reluctance to engage in risk-reduction dialogues. As China’s nuclear capabilities continue to grow, Beijing needs to adjust its arms control beliefs, and place greater emphasis on risk reduction. In this process, Washington should exercise restraint in its strategic capabilities while reassuring China about its nuclear deterrent.
China’s Arms Control Tradition
During the Cold War, the greatest nuclear risk for Washington and Moscow arose from “the reciprocal fear of surprise attack,” as the Nobel Prize-winning scholar Thomas Schelling put it. Even if neither side intended to strike, the belief that the other was about to strike could have created a motivation for preemption, leading to an unnecessary nuclear war. Therefore, reducing the risk of nuclear war became the primary goal of U.S.-Soviet arms control, with measures such as establishing hotlines, setting up nuclear risk reduction centers in each capital, sending missile launch notifications, and engaging in strategic stability dialogues.
China—being the weaker party in an asymmetric nuclear relationship—has developed its own distinct tradition. Confronted with U.S. nuclear threats during the Korean War, Chinese leaders made the decision in January 1955 to pursue nuclear weapons. This pursuit was later explicitly framed, in the statement issued following China’s first nuclear weapons test in 1964, as a response to “U.S. imperialism’s nuclear blackmail and nuclear threats.” In addition, China faced U.S. nuclear threats during the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises, and in 1969, the Soviet Union threatened China with nuclear weapons during the Sino-Soviet border crisis.
The nuclear test ban process profoundly shaped China’s perception of arms control. While China was still developing its nuclear program, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States attempted, unsuccessfully in 1963, to bring China into the Limited Test Ban Treaty to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Subsequent proposals by the United States and the Soviet Union to limit or ban nuclear testing reinforced China’s perception that, once the nuclear superpowers had conducted sufficient tests themselves, they would formulate treaties and impose testing restrictions on others. China did eventually sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. The disparity in testing experience—1,050 tests by the United States versus 45 by China—frozen by the CTBT had the effect of locking China’s nuclear weapons program at a low technical level, particularly in terms of reliability and new warhead design.
From China’s perspective, nuclear arms control has often served as a tool used by superpowers to restrain its capabilities. The primary objective of China’s arms control policy has been to safeguard its national defense modernization. Accordingly, Beijing prioritizes building its retaliatory capability over reassurance and risk reduction and maintaining a high level of secrecy, both of which go against U.S. arms control principles.
New Challenges
In recent years, China’s nuclear modernization has advanced substantially. According to publicly available assessments, China has established a nascent nuclear triad or even a “quad.” Commercial satellite imagery has revealed that China is constructing three intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields, totaling 320 silos. China’s six Type 094 ballistic missile submarines have reportedly already begun “continuous at-sea deterrent patrols.” The H-6N bomber is believed to be capable of carrying air-launched nuclear missiles. In addition, in summer 2021, China reportedly conducted two flight tests of a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS)—a delivery system that places a warhead into low-Earth orbit for part of its trajectory, significantly reducing early-warning time and potentially evading missile defenses. China’s total nuclear stockpile is estimated to have grown from around 260 warheads in 2015 to 600 in 2025.
Certain aspects of China’s nuclear modernization have raised concerns within the international community. First, the rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal—described by U.S. military leaders as “a strategic breakout”—has sparked discussions about the driving factors and end state of its nuclear buildup, as well as the future direction of its nuclear strategy. Second, there are growing concerns that China’s FOBS missile and dual-use systems—such as the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, which can be armed with nuclear or conventional warheads—might increase the risk of unintended nuclear escalation.
Third, the U.S. nuclear community has concluded that China can no longer be treated as a “lesser-included” threat and is now debating how to deter both China and Russia simultaneously—and whether doing so requires a larger nuclear arsenal or adjustments to the current U.S. nuclear posture. Should Washington decide to deploy additional strategic warheads following the expiration of New START in February 2026, it is likely that Moscow would do the same—reversing decades of post-Cold War nuclear arms reductions.
Nuclear Learning
As China continues its nuclear buildup, is there a path to some form of arms control? Broadly speaking, arms control can take two forms. The first involves limiting capabilities, as the U.S.-Russia New START Treaty does. This type of arms control is widely regarded as unrealistic at present because China’s nuclear capabilities still fall far short of those of the United States and Russia. The second category includes confidence-building and risk-reduction measures—such as transparency and missile launch notifications. China’s persistent reluctance to engage in this type of dialogue has puzzled many observers.
China needs to update its core beliefs regarding arms control through nuclear learning, shifting from seeing it as a means to restrain China to emphasizing the shared interest among nuclear powers and the value of reassurance in preventing nuclear war and arms races. China can adjust its arms control beliefs by drawing on both its own experiences and those of others—including lessons from the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Nuclear dialogues play a significant, though indirect, role in the learning process; they generate shared knowledge within epistemic communities and disseminate insights gained through these exchanges. Since the mid-1980s, Track 1.5 and Track 2 nuclear dialogues have helped train young Chinese scholars, build China’s arms control community, improve mutual understanding of nuclear doctrines, and avoid worst-case assumptions. Track 1.5 dialogues, in particular, provided a valuable opportunity for officers from the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (formerly the Second Artillery) to observe international nuclear discussions and build the expertise and confidence they need for future Track 1 dialogues.
China and the United States should continue nuclear dialogue at all levels. Regrettably, the Pentagon terminated its support for Track 1.5 dialogues in 2019 due to the lack of progress in official Track 1 talks. Despite growing difficulties in mutual visits—many Chinese are hesitant or unwilling to travel to the United States, and many Americans feel likewise about going to China—in-person exchanges gradually and cautiously resumed following the coronavirus pandemic, representing a slow but important step toward regaining momentum in nuclear dialogue.
Fostering Nuclear Learning
If the United States hopes to encourage China to engage in risk-reduction dialogue, pressuring and humiliating China—such as by leveraging geopolitical rivalries, threatening to win an arms race, or criticizing China in international forums—will be counterproductive. As several U.S. diplomats wrote in the Washington Post in 2020, Beijing must be “persuaded to join” dialogues, and “not [be] bullied by diplomatic stunts and threats.” Coercive efforts to bring China to the table only reinforce Beijing’s existing perception that arms control is a political tool. Unsurprisingly, the first Trump administration’s efforts to shame China into negotiations in 2020 went nowhere.
Instead, Washington should exercise restraint in developing both strategic offensive and defensive capabilities, acknowledge and accept mutual vulnerability with China, and help build China’s confidence in its nuclear retaliatory capabilities. This would encourage China to reconsider some of its arms control dogmas. Unfortunately, the political atmosphere in Washington is moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. strategic community is discussing plans to deploy more strategic warheads to target China’s newly built silos, develop damage limitation capabilities “to deny an adversary the ability to inflict unacceptable damage,” and construct the “Golden Dome” missile defense system to counter Chinese and Russian programs.
Chinese nuclear strategists are unlikely to embrace the view that avoiding unnecessary nuclear risks constitutes a shared interest with the United States unless they first believe that China’s nuclear forces can endure a first strike. Although China’s nuclear modernization has significantly enhanced its nuclear retaliatory capabilities, China’s nuclear establishment is still concerned about the future survivability of its nuclear arsenal on account of ongoing U.S. counterforce developments and strategic missile defense efforts.
Maintaining strategic stability within an asymmetric nuclear force structure is a delicate problem for both China and the United States. Mutual reassurance arrangements need to be set up to ease China’s concerns about its nuclear retaliatory capability while addressing U.S. expectations for risk reduction, with the goal of preventing a nuclear crisis and managing one if it occurs.
– Wu Riqiang is a professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Published courtesy of Lawfare.
