China will not use nuclear weapon first, at least not strategic one.
I am really confused right now, what does it mean that China can make US wasting its resource on these useless bomb? Because AFAIK US is not going to massively expand their nuclear arsenal accordingly no matter whether China has more nukes. And BTW how would China convince US that its nuclear deterrence is insufficient therefore commit more money into nuclear money printers if China is unwilling to disclose the true size of its nuclear force and intention?
If one looks down through the history, US media and government never took Chinese nuclear threaten serious until it is now serious enough for STRATCOM to re-think their strategy but public view from US is still "only Russia and US has nuclear parity." and Chinese mouthpiece influencers even cohort the idea that "US has 6,000 nukes meanwhile China only has 300."
What the flying fuck is a "Chinese mouthpiece influencer"?
China offhandedly disclosed it had 200-300 nukes on high alert at the turn of the century. Since then, it has introduced around a dozen different types of nuclear delivery, without talking about how many nukes are on high alert today.
Only a seriously delusional person would believe China has anywhere near 300 nukes, it would be as delusional as believing America only has 220 5th gen fighters because that's what they had at the turn of the century. Even on a random parade, the number of DF missiles ON DISPLAY cumulatively reach 100-200 warheads.
You can't be so delusional as to believing China routinely takes out 2/3rd of their nuclear arsenal just to put it on a parade... Right? Please.
It is to deter US from attacking China in the first place not fight a real war with US in a conventional way. So China has to make it clear to US counterpart that USN can't neither win the regional war conventionally nor can win the regional tactical nuclear war. To demonstrate this point, China need to make clear that it has enough nukes to put unacceptable loss upon US homeland even withholding a first strike, then it has enough tactical nuclear weapons to blow off US bases in West Pacific if attacked.
The whole point of keeping Taiwan hanging is to not completely deter US, so US is spending most of its effort trying to overcome conventional fortifications, rather than being able to freely move globally and pursue their interests there. For example, do you think Russia would be able to deal that well with all of NATO if US wasn't forced to reserve all the big guns for a potential attack on China?
If China really feels the heat and believes US could actually succeed in an invasion, they would just swap strategy to what US did when the USSR had the upper hand in Europe during the 60s: make it policy that any US force advancing on Taiwan would be mass nuked by tactical nukes.
But in the current situation, China does not believe an US invasion has any chances of working.
Convincing your opponents that you have the ability to end the world at last resort is the safest way to keep the cold war remain in cold not hiding the doomsday machine from the public. DETERRENCE is show of force not use of force.
Nobody in Chinese leadership is worried about their ability to ending the world with nukes, new platforms all focus on how the end of the world can be averted by increasing the speed of the strikes.
