contemporanea

ABOUT the first Chinese nuclear test
Reactions

di Ludovico Mocci Guicciardi

At the beginning of the 60s, China’s threat perceptions were heightened by three international events: the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Sino-Indian Border War and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The latter, in particular, prompted the Chinese leadership to accelerate its ongoing defection from the Soviet orbit, since Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, accused the USSR of “capitulationism” to the American imperialists. Moreover, it gave impetus to nuclear test ban negotiations and, as a result, on 5 August 1963, the U.S., USSR and Britain signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: this was an expression of the Soviet-American determination to reduce the risk of an accidental nuclear war and to counter the potential threat to the strategic balance posed by the acquisition of nuclear weapons by other countries.

Anyway, Beijing criticized the treaty as an attempt by the superpowers to monopolize nuclear weapons and therefore as a threat for China itself, at a time when it was producing its first nuclear bomb. By analysing the 16 October 1964 Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, it is evident that the Chinese perceived the superpowers’ nuclear monopoly and the U.S. intrusions in the PRC sphere of influence as a security threats: “In stationing nuclear submarines in Japan, the United States is posing a direct threat to [...] the Chinese people [...]. U.S. submarines carrying Polaris missiles with nuclear warheads are prowling the Taiwan Straits, the Tonkin Gulf”.

Thus, even though Mao had defined the atomic bomb as a “paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn’t”, he believed that the PRC needed to join the “nuclear club”, in order “to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear powers” and “for defence and for protecting the Chinese people from the danger of the United States launching a nuclear war”. In fact, the Chinese leader believed that the nuclear weapons were useless from a strategic point of view, but really useful tactically.

Moreover, no longer seeing the USSR as a reliable ally due to ideological disagreements and unequal relations between the two communist countries, but also because of the Soviet refusal to share military nuclear technology, Mao believed that possessing a nuclear bomb would have asserted China’s identity as the leader of the developing nations, thus providing an alternative to the two superpowers.

On 16 October 1964, China “exploded an atom bomb at 15:00 hours […] and thereby conducted successfully its first nuclear test”^. China’s entry into the “nuclear club”, caused by the evolution of its threat perceptions, and in particular by the perceptions of the “paranoid” Mao, inevitably led to a shift in the security discourse.

The main problem was that Mao, unlike the U.S. and the USSR, seemed realistically willing to consider fighting a nuclear war with the capitalist states (and then with the Soviet Union) which he claimed was both inevitable and winnable, despite having proclaimed that China would follow a no first use policy. Such a willingness was reaffirmed by a May 21, 1965, talk by Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People’s Republic of China, with a group of Central Military Commission Operational Meeting Comrades: “The Americans and the Japanese need to realize that if atomic bombs fall on their heads, their losses will be greater than ours. […] we have to prepare to pay some price”.

Paradoxically, the PRC’ neighbours perceived the threat of this security alteration to a lesser extent than the two superpowers; as Zhou Enlai said: “We have met many people in Asia and Africa who outwardly express regret, stating that it would be best to halt testing, but behind our backs congratulate us”. For example, despite the previous Sino-Indian Border War, the Indian Chiefs of Staff affirmed on August 30, 1965, that “the immediate and the real threat from China will be with the conventional arms, ammunition, etc. Naturally the nuclear explosion by China does pose a long term military threat”.

Even more unexpected than the Indian reaction was the Japanese reaction: China’s emergence as a nuclear power had little impact on the Liberal Democratic Party, nor was there any particular alarm in the Defence Agency or in the Foreign Ministry; according to a Liberal Democratic Party Security Research Committee report: “The success of China’s nuclear test does not mean we are faced at once with a Chinese military nuclear threat. […] this will increase only slightly the threat to which Japan has previously been exposed by Soviet military power”.

In 1966, the Interim Report on Japan’s Security was even harsher, since it observed that the Chinese conventional power was even more limited, that its nuclear weapons programme would have retarded its economic growth and that, in these circumstances, the PRC couldn’t pose a direct military threat outside its land borders. China’s military power was dismissed as a factor of little significance in world affairs by Japan.

Both the Japanese and the Indian statements show the connection between security policies and military technology: the worst security threat is the most immediate and probable one, since it can cause the most damage, a real damage, in the short term. Furthermore, the evolution of the security policies is caused by the evolution of military technology, which in turn is caused by the evolution of the perception of threats due to new security policies: this vicious circle was the main logic behind the arms race during the cold war.

This issue is dealt with extreme clarity by Zhou Enlai while (supposedly) talking to two Japanese art troupes in China: “You had two atomic bombs on your heads, and you made a contribution to the whole world, since everybody in the whole world opposes atomic warfare. If there had not been the sacrifices [caused by] those two atomic bombs, how could the world’s attention have been focused? If there had been no harm wrought by poison gas, how could there have been opposition to poison gas warfare? There is always a price to be paid. As Chairman Mao has said, once a price was paid, no one will dare use the bomb. Now there is the atomic bomb, and later there will be the hydrogen bomb”.

Moreover, the fact that both the Japanese 1966 report and the Indian Chiefs of Staff referred to conventional forces reflects their importance in the regional security discourse: the neighbouring countries couldn’t ignore the enormous number of troops in the People’s Liberation Army and Mao himself was clearly aware of that; in fact, while interviewed by Anne Louis Strong, he said that “the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon”.

On their part, the U.S., the USSR and the other members of the “nuclear club” were definitely more alarmed than the Chinese neighbours.

According to Zhou Enlai: “Now the Soviet Union is purposely underestimating us, [but] actually it also fears [us]. [...] Now the United States is afraid. Britain is also concerned. France also thinks it’s falling behind, and knows that it cannot replicate our production method. [...] they cannot air-drop; and their Uranium-235 plant will only be in production in 1969”.

Talking about France, Zhou remarks again the strict connection between the evolution of security policies and military technology: being ahead of the opponents in military technology competition is crucial to altering the perception of threats and of one’s own security, and using Uranium-235 meant having the necessary technology for its enrichment.

This issue is even more evident in a cable received by the Chinese Foreign Ministry from the Chinese Embassy in Switzerland, which analyses the U.S. reactions: “They would have expected China to eventually produce nuclear weapons but the high technological standards had totally exceeded their expectations. After conducting tests, the Americans now know that we are using uranium 235 as our raw material, and feel that our technological standards and pace of development have surpassed that of France”.

Actually, the Americans didn’t panic, but, on the contrary, as Zhou Enlai observed, “the response of the United States has been limited, since they want to downplay our role”; however, the subsequent moves of the U.S. showed that “in their heart of hearts they are worried”. And in fact, a few days after the first Chinese nuclear test, American Polaris submarines were sent to the Pacific, air bases in Taiwan and Thailand were strengthened and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise was attached to the Seventh Fleet. Moreover, the U.S. started working on a “Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty” — the Chinese embassy was probably referring to what will become the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty —,”obviously targeted at China”, as the Chinese Embassy in Switzerland described it.

However, the country that experienced the greatest shift in its security discourse was the Soviet Union. In fact, for the USSR, the first Chinese nuclear explosion represented an important security shift not only because a neighbouring country — once a partner, now a rival — had joined the small “nuclear club”, but also because this gave an incredible boost to the Chinese prestige in the “Third World”, where it was now competing with the Soviet Union for influence.

China was definitely threatening the USSR leadership in the Communist world and in fact, within the international Communist movement pro-Chinese factions broke away and some Soviet satellites took advantage of the situation to follow a more independent course. The new Soviet leaders, Brezhnev and Kosygin, as a response granted the two governments of Vietnam and North Korea substantial military and economic aid, thus intruding into the Chinese sphere of influence and contributing to further exacerbate relations between the two countries.

In conclusion, the main consequence of the explosion of the first Chinese atomic bomb was not a shift in the regional security discourse, as one might imagine, but in the superpowers’ security discourse: not so much from a military point of view, as the single Chinese atomic bomb could not compete with the hundreds of bombs of the superpowers, but because this event marked the definitive rupture between Beijing and Moscow, as well as an escalation of tensions that culminated in the 1969 Sino-Soviet Border War.

Furthermore, this rupture shifted the balance of the cold war more in favour of the U.S., which could then take advantage of the divisions between the two communist countries in order to achieve their global interests, in particular after the election of President Nixon in 1968.