Two top experts on China warned a Washington audience about the growing danger of China in a recent Mitchell Institute nuclear deterrence seminar.
Gordon Chang described a “decade of concern” where China may act soon to take over Taiwan or engage in aggression elsewhere, while Rick Fischer explained China’s push to reach nuclear superiority over the United States may be a companion part of that effort.
“Decade of Concern”
Chang initiated the discussion explaining China may no longer feel deterred by the United States. For example, Yang Jiechi, Beijing’s top diplomat, in March declared the US can no longer deal with China from a position of strength. The regime in July went so far as to make explicit threats to attack Japan—a key US ally– with nuclear weapons should the government in Tokyo defend Taiwan. Put bluntly, Chinese supremo Xi Jinping on July 1 declared he would “crack skulls and spill blood” of those standing in China’s way.
Chang also explained that taking down Taiwan was part of an overall communist Chinese party view of its role in creating an entirely new international order, to be based on China’s supremacy. In this narrative, the Westphalian nation-state system now in its fifth century is to be overthrown, part of what the Chinese Communist Party leader sees as a necessary “taking down of the old world.”
Chang further explained China is not interested in “working with” the United States—cooperatively or in competition” in the existing Westphalian international system—but in making the United States and all others subservient to China. China has even declared that heavenly bodies such as the moon and Mars will be considered sovereign Chinese territory–not unlike China’s similar expropriation of vast expanses of the South China Sea—should China get there first and establish control.
China Nuclear Superiority
What military capability would be key to expand China’s hegemonic ambitions? A growing nuclear capability says Rick Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Known as the top US analyst of everything nuclear Chinese, Fisher explained the 250 new missile silos now being constructed in China cover an area of 700 square miles and are being constructed in a missile field [not as some reports have claimed a wind farm configuration] where silos are miles apart and of a diameter capable of holding the Chinese DF-41, the Chinese 6-10 warhead solid-fueled ICBM.
