Chinese Politics and International Relations

Nicola Horsburgh, Astrid Nordin, Shaun Breslin, Nicola Horsburgh, Astrid Nordin, Shaun Breslin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317961581
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

The question of how China will relate to a globalising world is one of the key issues in contemporary international relations and scholarship on China, yet the angle of innovation has not been properly addressed within the field. This book explores innovation in China from an International Relations perspective in terms of four areas: foreign and security policy, international relations theory, soft power/image management, and resistance.

Under the complex condition of globalisation, innovation becomes a particularly useful analytical concept because it is well suited to capturing the hybridity of actors and processes under globalisation. By adopting this theme, studies not only reveal a China struggling to make the future through innovation, but also call attention to how China itself is made in the process.

The book is divided into four sections:

• Part 1 focuses on conceptual innovation in China's foreign and security policies since 1949.

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• Part 2 explores theoretical innovation in terms of a potential Chinese school of International Relations Theory.

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• Part 3 expands on innovation in terms of image management, a form of soft power, in particular how China exports its image both to a domestic and foreign audience.

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• Part 4 highlights how innovation is used in China by grassroot popular groups to resist official narratives.

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This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, Chinese foreign policy and international relations, international relations theory and East Asian security.

Part I

Innovation in foreign and security policy

1 Innovation through debate and differentiation

Chinese nuclear doctrine since the reform era

Nicola Horsburgh¹

Innovation might not be what first comes to mind when one thinks of Chinese nuclear weapons policy and doctrine. Indeed, a quick glance at the literature paints a somewhat different picture: of a belligerent China during the Maoist period of its history from 1949 to 1976 (Ryan 1989: 17; Schram 1969: 129–30); irresponsible in the 1980s and 1990s when supposedly proliferating sensitive dual-use nuclear technology to countries like Pakistan; and more recently, a slow and reluctant student of global nuclear norms such as non-proliferation (Medeiros 2007: 30–88). According to this view, rather than innovate, since opening up to the world, China has been catching-up with mainstream nuclear ideas and integrating itself into the non-proliferation regime.

However, this is only half the story. While China has integrated itself into the global nuclear order, most notably by joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1994, what is often overlooked in Western analysis is the degree to which China has its own innovative ideas in its nuclear doctrine. Indeed, innovation in Chinese nuclear thinking can be traced back as early as the Mao period, from the so-called ‘paper tiger’ thesis disparaging the significance of nuclear weapons to the emphasis on minimalism in nuclear development during the 1970s and 1980s, a time when other nuclear weapons states were actively building vast nuclear arsenals (Zhang 2009). During this period of reform under Deng Xiaoping, amid intense internal debates on military strategy, truly innovative thinking regarding nuclear weapons began to take shape in China.

This chapter will pay particular attention to three areas of innovation: dynamic internal debates in the 1980s that led to the making of China’s first nuclear strategy; the reconsideration of nuclear deterrence in Chinese declaratory policy throughout the 1980s and 1990s; and finally, academic discussions of nuclear strategy in China today. In addition, the chapter will analyse China’s choices of nuclear strategy relative to other states, at different junctures of time. In essence, innovation is considered in two main ways: first, in an historical sense, through internal debates that have shaped Chinese nuclear thinking, and second, in terms of a process of differentiation, particularly from the West. In focusing on these areas, the chapter addresses a number of questions central to this book, namely: what has prompted innovation in the past in China? How has globalisation, in particular since the 1990s and 2000s, impacted upon past innovative ideas, and has it brought forth new ones?

Innovation in the Chinese nuclear context

Since 2006, innovation has become a buzz word in China. The official term used by the Chinese government, chuangxin (or zizhu chuangxin, indigenous innovation), has been applied almost exclusively to technology and science. This emphasis on technology extends more generally to the military field, where innovation has largely been studied in terms of China’s transition from imitation to innovation in weapons technology (Cheung 2011: 325–54). However, as Andrew Ross points out, there is more to military innovation than just technology; innovation can also be seen in military doctrine and organisation (Ross 2010). In addition, Chinese innovation has mostly been cast in a future orientated light, linked to a wider process of ‘catching-up’ with the West. According to these narratives, innovation is intrinsically linked to modernity and development. However, as will be argued here, the focus on technology and the traditional explanations for China’s innovation – namely the ‘catching-up’ and the ‘copy-cat’ model – overshadow innovation elsewhere, in particular the role of ideas and internal debates that have led Chinese doctrine down a different nuclear path to that of most other nuclear weapons states.

A brief word on innovation in the nuclear field is useful at this stage. Following the tragic atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a consensus soon emerged among military strategists that nuclear weapons, with their potential for massive global annihilation, would likely result in a revolution in warfare (Brodie and Dunn 1946: 76).² New thinking was suddenly required: should states consider these weapons of mass destruction as operational and usable, and thereby integrate them fully into their arsenals, or would their value be best served in their non-use, as a threatening ultimate weapon of last resort? The latter idea won out, but only after a period of strategic and technological innovation in the 1950s and 1960s.

In terms of strategy and ideas, the two superpowers at that time, the US and USSR, oscillated between a number of different strategies, from massive retaliation to flexible response and warfighting, until both sides settled on a condition of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) based on a rough parity of forces and so-called TRIAD second strike/retaliatory capabilities such as nuclear bombers, land forces and sea-launched missiles (see Freedman 1989: 76–89; Smoke 1993: 72–75). This experimentation with strategy fuelled an enduring arms race and resulted in the build-up of vast nuclear arsenals during the Cold War. These debates on strategy were in turn shaped by further innovations in technology, in particular multiple warheads (known as MIRVs) and ballistic missile defence, both developments blurring traditional offence–defence boundaries, complicating strategy. Yet, since the end of the Cold War, as the world has become more globalised, there have been surprisingly few new ideas, and strategy and technology have reached somewhat of a plateau. This stagnation is perhaps unsurprising. Important international legal restraints now exist, such as the CTBT, forbidding the testing of nuclear weapons. Most nuclear weapons states have also ceased production of weapons grade fissile material (highly enriched Uranium and Plutonium), complicating the development of new nuclear weapons. Instead, since 2009, the nuclear debate has been moving somewhat in the opposite direction away from new nuclear weapons technology towards reducing reliance on these weapons, driven in part by the failure to heed the call for disarmament in the NPT, and wider threats posed by nuclear security and terrorism. In strategy, recent official documents from NATO, the US Nuclear Posture Review and the decision to renew TRIDENT in the UK, echo the logic of assured destruction established during the Cold War. As a result, there is little experimentation in doctrine today, most nuclear weapons states openly subscribe to a strategy of minimal deterrence.

This chapter offers a somewhat different approach to standard interpretations of innovation in the Chinese and nuclear context. First, what follows is a look back, rather than forward, to the reform era under Deng Xiaoping and an evolving internal debate on nuclear doctrine. In this debate, new ideas and concepts led to doctrinal innovation. Key actors engaged in this process included political elites, scientists, military strategists and later in the 1990s and 2000s, academics and arms control experts. Second, this chapter considers innovation as a political process of differentiation from other nuclear armed states. During the Cold War and the reform era, this other was the superpowers, the US and former Soviet Union, and Chinese interpretations of superpower nuclear doctrine. In the post Cold War era of globalisation and China’s rise, this other is the US. It will be argued that China’s strategic choices in terms of nuclear doctrine differed – both during the Cold War and today in an era of globalisation – from the major nuclear weapons states, namely the US and former Soviet Union, leading to sharp asymmetry in terms of the size and scope of nuclear arsenals, as well as conceptual approaches to nuclear deterrence. While some analysts, such as the Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ Dr Jeffrey Lewis in his 2007 book The Minimum Means of Reprisal, highlighted unique aspects of Chinese nuclear thinking such as retaliation and minimalism, these aspects have so far not been framed within the context of innovation.

The search for Chinese nuclear strategy

In 1978, China’s leader Deng Xiaoping launched the ‘Four Modernisations’, placing defence modernisation the last of the four, subordinate to economic development.³ As a consequence the defence budget was reduced, slowing down the pace of weapons development. Such a decision seems, in retrospect, a risky one since at that time China still had a very weak nuclear arsenal, with no retaliatory second strike force capabilities in place. This meant that China’s declared policy of no-first-use (NFU), in place since 1964, rendered the country extremely vulnerable to a nuclear first strike. Indeed, during this period, China’s nuclear capabilities consisted of around 80 TU-16 bombers that could not penetrate US or USSR air defences; 30–40 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) that could not reach the US, and only a few Soviet cities; no Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs); and no Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs). In fact, the ICBM and SLBM systems were several years behind schedule. Throughout the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, relative to other nuclear states, China was arguably one of the weakest nuclear weapons states. However, despite the de-prioritisation of defence in China, the pursuit of nuclear capabilities was not abandoned. In 1981, two ICBM systems, the DF-5 and DF-4, were deployed, and then in 1986, China launched a SLBM system, the Xia (IISS 1985/6: 111–13; Lin 1988: 38–39).

More crucially, the de-prioritisation of defence sparked innovative domestic debates, some of which transformed military thinking in China, facilitating the formation of China’s first nuclear strategy. One of the first discussions that took place related to the timing and urgency of military modernisation. In 1977, a theoretical group of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences challenged the decision to place defence last of the four modernisations by echoing an argument once used in the 1950s to justify nuclear weapons development: military modernisation was not just about national defence, the defence sector was also a highly advanced sector of benefit to the wider economy (Robinson 1982: 231–52). Others argued that since the prospect of nuclear war remained high, de-prioritising defence was too costly a compromise (Yee 1983: 239–49). An alternative view argued that the military, long a priority in China, could now afford to bide its time. According to this view, superpower parity – by now both the US and USSR had entered into a condition of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) – meant the likelihood of nuclear war had actually reduced in the 1970s, and China had sufficient conventional forces to deter an attack. This was the opinion of a powerful group in China, namely senior politician Deng Xiaoping; China’s then foreign minister, Huang Hua; and the father of China’s nuclear programme, Nie Rongzhen, who felt the USSR would hesitate to launch nuclear war (Beijing Review, 1980). In the end, this more moderate view won out. Discussions also centred on how modernisation would be carried out. In 1977, four military conferences took place in China to discuss this issue (Shambaugh 1979: 4–5). At these conferences a consensus emerged that defence modernisation would be best served through greater access to Western conventional technology, in keeping with the national goal of economic development (Tow and Stuart 1981: 286–300).

Changes also took place in China’s military strategy with implications for its nuclear posture. Initially, in 1978, ‘People’s War’ was modified into ‘People’s War under Modern Conditions’, with a focus on defending against the USSR. Then, in the mid 1980s, as the Soviet threat receded, an even bigger shift in strategy took place, from general war with the USSR to small scale wars (Godwin 1992: 191–201). In other words, China no longer based military planning on the prospect of entanglement in a world-wide ‘early stage, large scale war with nuclear weapons’ but instead re-orientated PLA planning to limited conflicts in the context of a new strategic environment of ‘peace and development’ (Medeiros 2006: 51). Ellis Joffe explains that this shift reflected an important change in Chinese nuclear thinking: whereas Beijing used to contend that nuclear weapons would not be enough to destroy China (on the basis that a ground invasion and conventional forces would be required) this no longer applied in the context of ‘limited nuclear wars’ and war-winning strategies under consideration by the superpowers at the time (Joffe 1965: 91). Robert Wang expands on this, highlighting how China’s past strategy of ‘luring into the deep’ no longer sufficed – especially in deterring the USSR – since it placed at risk the northern areas of China where its nuclear plants and missile sites were located (Wang 1984: 1047–48).

In parallel with these debates, Chinese military strategists began research on nuclear doctrine, indicative of plans to formulate China’s first nuclear strategy (Medeiros 2006: 49–51; Johnston 1996: 543–76). In particular, the Second Artillery Corps (SAC) – China’s strategic force – initiated internal research on the use of nuclear weapons and the requirements of nuclear deterrence. In the 1980s, the SAC formulated regulations like the Second Artillery Military Terms. Research also began on ‘nuclear strategy theory’ (Medeiros 2006: 49–51). Among several debates between Chinese strategists in the 1980s, one centred on the declaratory policy of rejecting nuclear deterrence. The end result of these discussions was the continued rejection of the term at declaratory levels, but use of the term internally. Chinese considered nuclear deterrence, translated as weishe, a derogatory term, reflective of an offensive and threatening strategy, ill-suited to China’s nuclear weapons policy based on NFU and self-defence. Crucially, China’s decision to reject the term flew in the face of nuclear thought at that time since all other nuclear weapons states had openly embraced nuclear deterrence.

Despite a public rejection of nuclear deterrence, convergence started to form over the importance of retaliation in nuclear strategy. Indeed, the 1987 Zhanlue Xue (Science of Military Strategy) handbook, set against the background of a potential USSR northern invasion, outlined that the primary mission of China’s nuclear forces was to deter a nuclear attack. Support for retaliation was also clear in statements made by Deng Xiaoping, who outlined in 1978 that ‘we also want to build some nuclear weapons but we are not preparing to make many. When we have the power to counterattack, we won’t continue to develop them’ (quoted in Frav...