China MAD option

Hendrik_2000 said:

For those of you who still believe in the myth that China only has 300 nuclear warhead. It beg the question why they build thousand miles of tunnel inside the mountain?. A building program that span decades and cost billion of dollars?

The idea that China only has 300 nuclear warhead is first published by FAS who has their own vested interest of nuclear disarmament Even they admitted they admit they are not so sure

Check this link below that has great photos and the only video about under ground tunnel by CCTV

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It should also be noted that FAS / The Bulletin have a vested interest in opposing the idea that China has many more nuclear weapons than it admits to, as (1) it would mean they were very wrong for a long time; and (2) it would torpedo disarmament talks with Russia, as doing so would just mean ceding nuclear primacy to China. That said, also note that on its own website, FAS writes: “due to the emphasis that China has placed on concealment of its special weapons capabilities, it is doubtful whether any other country, perhaps even including the United States, has identified all of China’s special weapons related facilities.”

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because china's nuclear deterrence stance is, never was, and never will be MAD.

it is minimum deterrence with a no first use policy. Even if china has 2000 instead of 200 missiles it would never admit to it. because:
1) it would never achieve and it is too expensive to achieve semi-parity with the Russia and US in term of weapons and their survivuability
2) it is able to achieve 1-2000 weapons with out problems, but at that level, announced, would mean china has the potential of being dragged into a mini-SALT/START like treaty with the large states, with it comes inspections and recon and detailed inspection. exposing its vulnerability in weapon survivuability.
3) keeping it vague and let the number float between 200-2000, would save the most amount of money and have the maximum amount of deterrence.

People who claim that China has thousands of weapons forget that you actually need fissile matarial to manufacture warheads, and on top of that we don't really know how much HEU or Pu they use to manufacture each pit. Composite pit is also possibility, but personally I think that DF-31 RV has a HEU pit.

The core of Yang Zheng’s argument is that estimates placing the Chinese arsenal at 2,000 plus warheads are “are reasonable” because “data from various U.S. intelligence agencies show that, in the mid-1980’s, China was producing at least 800 kilograms of U-235 and 400 kilograms of Pu-239 per year.”

That’s great, except the declassified data doesn’t show fissile material production at that level.

Just take a look at plutonium, production. A classified DOE estimate of Chinese plutonium production, leaked to the press, places Chinese Pu stockpile at 1.7-2.8 metric tons. This is consistent with unclassified estimates by Gronlund and Wright (2-5 metric tons) and Albright et al (4.8 metric tons). For more information, see my post Guangyuan Plutonium Production Reactor, November 9, 2006.

Assuming 3 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per warhead, 1.7-2.8 tons of plutonium could support a force of 340 to 930 weapons. If China uses substantially more than 5 kilograms per warhead, its stockpile might only support a few hundred weapons.

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China is not producing any weapons grade plutonium currently and all military reactors have been actually converted to civilian use. HEU is (at least officially) produced only to support nuclear power stations, but if Chinese warheads (DF-31 RV) are using HEU it's quite easy to use those centrifuges in manufacturing of weapons grade HEU for making make new pit's for warheads, and that is the reason why I believe Chinese use HEU... cheaper and far less hassle if compared to Pu-239 production.

chuck731 said:

Chinese nuclear arsenal is far from credible as a tool of mutural assured destruction because American can absorb china's best shot and remain a superpower, to say nothing of just surviving.

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US has never experienced war brought to her domestic soil, and the loss of 30 million Americans by Chinese ICBMs targeting the top 20 civilian centers means US will be set back into the Stone Age in economic terms.

Plus, I think you are a Korean nationalist from The racist korean sentry forum and your username refers to unit 731, massive troll.

Historically inaccurate. The US has been attacked on four occasions by foreign powers. 9/11, pearl harbor, Pancho Via and his Sandinistas, and finally the war of 1812. The war of 1812 caused widespread damage and infrastructure devastation.
additional the American civil war between the northern union and southern confederacy created widespread economic hardship and major depopulation particularly among the vulnerable southern states.

second point in the event of Chinese American nuclear exchange, both nations would be heavily damaged. The most developed potions of mainland China are costal regions, the vast majority is still rural. The retaliatory strike against the PRC would likely level the PRCs economy into pre civilization. Well the US would still have a number of major industrial and economic areas particularly on the east coast.

Phead128 said:

US has never experienced war brought to her domestic soil, and the loss of 30 million Americans by Chinese ICBMs targeting the top 20 civilian centers means US will be set back into the Stone Age in economic terms..

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You are mistaken. The US expected only 30 million casualties, or 15% population loss, from a much larger soviet counter value strike during the late 1960s, at the dawn of MAD era, involving 900 warheads, perhaps 10 times what china can deliver against the US proper. Cold War contingency studies suggest society and economy anticipating war can continue to remain both functional, and governable, after suffering loss of up to 25% of it population in a series of nuclear strikes and counter strikes. Some place the estimate at as high as 40%. This is the basis for both the US and USSR continuing to believe an all out nuclear war can still be "winnable" after the start of MAD era. It has been shown over and over again in history that nations responding to existential threat can achieve degree of unity of purpose and perserverence, and withstand the level of privation without falling apart, orders of magnitudes greater from what one might infer from watching it collectively flip out when accumstomed complacency is wounded by ambarassing but nonfatal insults like 9-11.

It is utterly absurd for china to believe it currently plays in the same league as Soviet Union during late 1960s. Chinese capacity to strike at US homeland barely matches what Soviet Union could have done on the eve of Cuban missile crisis in 1963. Chinese nuclear deterrence is expanding at a tiny fraction of the rate attained during the soviet missile build up through the 1960s. At current rate it will not be 5-7 years, but many decades, before china can match soviet nuclear capabilities of late 1960s.

Phead128 said:

Plus, I think you are a Korean nationalist from The racist korean sentry forum and your username refers to unit 731, massive troll.

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The kind of stridently antagonistic attitude towards opinion better founded than your dream, but less pleasing to the ears of your pride, coupled with the hubris and lack of perspective required to imagine a "meteoric" rise from a very low starting point indeed means one has in one bound already reached the very top, does not bid well for making future Chinese policy a better act than simply blundering from one overreach to another, similar to those of Soviet Union.

chuck731 said:

You are mistaken. The US expected only 30 million casualties, or 15% population loss, from a much larger soviet counter value strike during the late 1960s, at the dawn of MAD era, involving 900 warheads, perhaps 10 times what china can deliver against the US proper. Cold War contingency studies suggest society and economy anticipating war can continue to remain both functional, and governable, after suffering loss of up to 25% of it population in a series of nuclear strikes and counter strikes. Some place the estimate at as high as 40%. This is the basis for both the US and USSR continuing to believe an all out nuclear war can still be "winnable" after the start of MAD era. It has been shown over and over again in history that nations responding to existential threat can achieve degree of unity of purpose and perserverence, and withstand the level of privation without falling apart, orders of magnitudes greater from what one might infer from watching it collectively flip out when accumstomed complacency is wounded by ambarassing but nonfatal insults like 9-11.

It is utterly absurd for china to believe it currently plays in the same league as Soviet Union during late 1960s. Chinese capacity to strike at US homeland barely matches what Soviet Union could have done on the eve of Cuban missile crisis in 1963. Chinese nuclear deterrence is expanding at a tiny fraction of the rate attained during the soviet missile build up through the 1960s. At current rate it will not be 5-7 years, but many decades, before china can match soviet nuclear capabilities of late 1960s.




The kind of stridently antagonistic attitude towards opinion better founded than your dream, but less pleasing to the ears of your pride, coupled with the hubris and lack of perspective required to imagine a "meteoric" rise from a very low starting point indeed means one has in one bound already reached the very top, does not bid well for making future Chinese policy a better act than simply blundering from one overreach to another, similar to those of Soviet Union.

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You also need to understand the severity of the environmental impact of nuclear exchange to crop harvest, as explained in this article

so no matter how united and stoic a society is, without food everything will crumble

Stop all of the direct talk of US/China nuclear war. It will lead to arguments, counter arguments, anger and emotion...as it is already doing.

This entire MAD thread is borderline, and it can only remain if posters speak about the technical realities of the policy and stay away from specific talk about this nation or that nation going to war with nuclear weapons and how many civilians will be killed on either side.

Such discussions almost always immediately become emotional and angry and are not what we desire for SD.

So keep it to pure technical terms and the abstract when it comes to such specifics. If the dialog cannot remain above the emotional/angry level of discourse, the thread will be closed.