As China seeks to find a ‘just’ world order based on its principles, its N-proliferation is to showcase its status as a supreme nuclear power
China’s military and nuclear links with North Korea and Pakistan are well established. Interestingly, by encouraging Pakistan against India by supplying average payload capacity nuclear missiles and other military supplies, China tried to avoid being noticed as the first order nuclear threat in South Asia. It also served the purpose of keeping India engaged with Pakistan to ensure that New Delhi’s strategic outreach remains limited.
In the last three decades, Beijing presented before the world its “peaceful rise” and non-belligerent face. Simultaneously, China used its foreign aid and its participation in the nuclear non-proliferation regime as tools to convince the world that it is a serious partner in the development in various regions.
The recent discovery of two new nuclear bases in China has caused a lot of flutter in the national and international media. One has to analyse China’s strategic behaviour from close quarters to gain a comprehensive understanding.
Currently, China is only shedding its camouflage. Beijing’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy and its nuclear proliferation are related to its tactical vulnerabilities rather than a position of strength. The world has witnessed a complete rejection of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision on the South China Sea issue, the presence of its nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean Region, debt trap policies, belittling of its neighbours, and other regional powers. Its insecurity viz- a- viz the Quad and its trade wars with the US have led Beijing to adopt the path of nuclear proliferation.
In 2018, China’s nuclear scientist Qian Hu received the ‘State Supreme Science and Technology Award’ for successfully building an ‘underground steel wall’ nuclear shelter that could stop the hypersonic missiles and overcome its tactical weakness. In his conversations with the media that are available in the public domain, he spoke of these shelters as “shields” and also mentioned the profound importance of the nuclear missiles which he termed as “spears”. The world might have guessed that to overcome its weaknesses, China is occupied with nuclear proliferation. In order to divert attention, China brought out its 2019 Defence White Paper that aimed to keep its nuclear capabilities at a “minimum level required for national security” which cited its commitments towards the Treaty of Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons apart from listing all the treaties in this domain that it supposedly agreed to. Some countries were swayed by this argument while others probably thought that China is constructively engaged. Contrary to the Chinese assertion, the Pentagon in its 2020 report that assessed Beijing’s military capabilities estimated that Beijing was likely to “at least double its warhead stockpile” from the then existing “low 200s”. Later, as the world was hit by the pandemic, enough attention could not be paid to its expanding arsenals.
Today, as China seeks to find for itself a “just” world order based on its own principles and philosophies, and perceives itself as an established power, its nuclear proliferation is an attempt to showcase its status as a supreme nuclear power.
The relative availability of tactical mobility and military technology are the major determinants of offensive dominance. In this context, China’s building up of villages on the Indo-China border, moving of sophisticated artillery, and now the discovery of the silo dumps point out to the direction of China’s preparedness to launch surprise offensive actions which may be of shorter duration and relatively bloodless. In a second scenario, apart from nuclear proliferation, a Sino-Pak collaborative threat cannot be ruled out.
As a counter approach, India’s movement has been appropriately on the offensive side that includes heavy military and artillery deployment including the induction of the Rafale jets at Hasimara Air Base in West Bengal. However, the discovery of the nuclear silos near the border presents an unpredictable situation before India concerning the possibility of the nuclear factor in future Chinese offensive launches. It may also be just a threat of using nuclear coercion with an intention to capture Indian territories.
The traditional understanding of the presence of nuclear silos can be easily related to both deterrence and military deception. China has adopted a three-pronged strategy that involves the use of military deception, propaganda, and legal warfare without resorting to the ICJ. A significant question that arises is why would a country build two nuclear bases with silos to accommodate 100 nuclear missiles at a single place in a desert and invite its discovery and subsequent international attention?
Experts put forth the view that it can be a tactic to confuse the US and India about the strategic locations of its nuclear missiles and should be treated as a part of military deception. Another aspect of this discovery could be that probably China is strategically conditioning the countries, especially India and the US, to accept an ongoing or future nuclear proliferation. Or maybe it is a safe place for its ally, Pakistan, to keep its missiles in case it is declared a ‘failed state’ in the eventuality of being blacklisted by FATF and a subsequent fundamentalist takeover or as a sovereign assets takeover in case it goes ‘bankrupt’ with the Chinese Debt.
Experts suggest that China adopts a salami-slicing tactic wherein it gradually erodes the international norms by violating the international law and frames its own domestic rules which are in sharp contradiction with the former. Is nuclear proliferation another example of this? The world can see it in the South China Sea, the Himalayas, and the Indian Ocean. This is heavily accompanied by the creation of Grey Zone tactics implemented through disinformation campaigns and active propaganda warfare which includes fake news and forgery.
In any case, given the primary understanding that since any of the silos can accommodate missiles and a rough estimate of the distance between Xinjiang and Ladakh is around 1200-1300 kilometres, it is quite a possibility that in the future, it may resort to nuclear coercion in its open hostilities. The possible future deployment of Chinese intermediate-range missiles such as DF 21 D compounds the threat to Indian security.
China may shift to a launch-on-warning posture since it is building a space-based early warning system with the help of Russia. Once completed, it would mean that China’s nuclear missiles and warheads would always be in an ‘alerting state’, i.e., in a position of eternal operational readiness. Along with this, the reports of its forthcoming hypersonic vehicle-mounted laser gun which can be used to clear the path of its missiles and jets to make them swifter and lethal make the Indo-Pacific region highly vulnerable and susceptible to the Chinese hegemony. Already China has launched a diplomatic offensive against countries like Vietnam, The Philippines, Japan, and Australia apart from India. Absolute power without any democratic values or counterchecks threatens the entire international community.
Having realized the Chinese threat, nations are coming together to help one another in order to secure the democratic world order. The arrival of the German Frigate Bayern and the British HMS Queen Elizabeth points to the evolving scenario.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor at Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. The views expressed are personal.)
