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Chinese Nuclear Doctrine: The Decade Prior to Weapons Development (1945–1955)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

William R. Harris
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Extract

China's nuclear detonation at Lop Nor has dramatised the last decade of advancement in Chinese Communist strategic thinking and weapons production: use of Uranium-235 suggests the availability of a uranium hexafluoride gaseous diffusion plant, aside from the plutonium-producing reactors already identified, and suggests the imminence of a Communist Chinese H-Bomb. The recent evidence of Chinese nuclear competence and speculation regarding the development of modern delivery systems underscore advances in strategic thought over the last decade. It is perhaps less obvious that the intellectual genesis of current weapons developments dates from the first decade of the nuclear era, when Chinese Communist leaders attempted to reconcile their concepts of nuclear warfare with Maoist revolutionary doctrines. Although public pronouncements between 1945 and 1955 emphasised the conservatism of Communist Chinese military strategy, they hinted at strategic innovations—regarding “tactical” nuclear and thermonuclear weapons—which may help to explain the priority, sacrifice and direction of China's weapons programme in more recent years.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 21 , March 1965 , pp. 87 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1965

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References

* This article is based upon research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense in connection with the East Asian Research Center of Harvard University. A forth-coming study, to be available as a monograph of the East Asian Research Center, contains fuller quotation and footnoting. Views or conclusions contained in this article are solely those of the author.

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