China to ramp up its nuclear weapons, in the interests of its own survival
China said to speed up move to more survivable nuclear force
By ROBERT BURNS, WASHINGTON (AP) 1 Mar 21, — China appears to be moving faster toward a capability to launch its newer nuclear missiles from underground silos, possibly to improve its ability to respond promptly to a nuclear attack, according to an American expert who analyzed satellite images of recent construction at a missile training area.
Hans Kristensen, a longtime watcher of U.S., Russian and Chinese nuclear forces, said the imagery suggests that China is seeking to counter what it may view as a growing threat from the United States. The U.S. in recent years has pointed to China’s nuclear modernization as a key justification for investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming two decades to build an all-new U.S. nuclear arsenal. There’s no indication the United States and China are headed toward armed conflict, let alone a nuclear one. But the Kristensen report comes at a time of heightened U.S.-China tensions across a broad spectrum, from trade to national security. A stronger Chinese nuclear force could factor into U.S. calculations for a military response to aggressive Chinese actions, such as in Taiwan or the South China Sea. The Pentagon declined to comment on Kristensen’s analysis of the satellite imagery, but it said last summer in its annual report on Chinese military developments that Beijing intends to increase the peacetime readiness of its nuclear forces by putting more of them in underground silos and operating on a higher level of alert in which it could launch missiles upon warning of being under attack. The PRC’s nuclear weapons policy prioritizes the maintenance of a nuclear force able to survive a first strike and respond with sufficient strength to inflict unacceptable damage on an enemy,” the Pentagon report said. More broadly, the Pentagon asserts that China is modernizing its nuclear forces as part of a wider effort to build a military by mid-century that is equal to, and in some respects superior to, the U.S. military. China’s nuclear arsenal, estimated by the U.S. government to number in the low 200s, is dwarfed by those of the United States and Russia, which have thousands. The Pentagon predicts that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Forces will at least double the size of its nuclear arsenal over the next 10 years, still leaving it with far fewer than the United States. China does not publicly discuss the size or preparedness of its nuclear force beyond saying it would be used only in response to an attack. The United States, by contrast, does not rule out striking first, although President Joe Biden in the past has embraced removing that ambiguity by adopting a “no first use” policy………. https://apnews.com/article/china-moving-faster-nuclear-f711665a7ebb3a58d6c5bb7ce899ff1d |
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French nuclear attack submarine patrolling South China Sea
French Nuclear Attack Boat Patrolled South China Sea https://news.usni.org/2021/02/10/french-nuclear-attack-boat-patrolled-south-china-sea
By: Xavier Vavasseur, February 10, 2021 A French Navy Rubis-class nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) patrolled the South China Sea, the French minister of armed forces announced in a series of tweets.
French armed forces minister Florence Parly called the patrol “a striking proof of the capacity of our French Navy to deploy far and for a long time in connection with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners.” On Monday night, Parly shed some light on the current deployment of Rubis-class SSN FS Emeraude (S604) to the Pacific region. In a series of messages on Twitter, she said: “Since September, a nuclear attack submarine (SSN Émeraude) and a support vessel (BSAM Seine) have sailed up to 15,000 km from the coasts of mainland France in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. This extraordinary patrol has just completed a passage in the South China Sea. A striking proof of the capacity of our French Navy to deploy far and for a long time in connection with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners. Why such a mission? To enrich our knowledge of this area and to affirm that international law is the only rule that is valid, whatever the sea in which we sail. Nation of the Indo-Pacific (~ 2 million inhabitants), France has the 2nd largest exclusive economic zone in the world (11 million km2 of which 9 are in the Indo-Pacific). We intend to protect our sovereignty and our interests.” Naval News first reported about Emeraude’s mission to the Pacific when it stopped over in Australia. The submarine then visited the U.S. naval base in Guam and participated in an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) exercise with the U.S. Navy and JMSDF. Following an exercise with the Indonesian Navy Emeraude will likely be joining the French carrier strike group which is set to depart this week for the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf region. |
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How the United States can chart a new path that avoids war with China
How the United States can chart a new path that avoids war with China https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/how-the-united-states-can-chart-a-new-path-that-avoids-war-with-china/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter02042021&utm_content=NuclearRisk_NewPath_02032021
By Henry Bienen, Jeremiah Ostriker | February 3, 2021 The Biden administration has said that it will conduct a full review of trade and economic relations with China. It needs, actually, to conduct a review of all aspects of Sino-American relations: trade; technology; cultural, student, and scientific exchanges; and above all, security. There is room for vast improvement in all these realms, but the most pressing (and potentially dangerous) area involves security.
Relations between China and the United States have degenerated so far that some foreign policy experts now believe that war between the countries is possible. While this is a minority view, it is a dangerous one.
In the past, a US-China war was often considered unlikely for reasons of mutual economic interdependence and nuclear deterrence, not to mention the huge costs of war. Moreover, it has been said, ideological conflict and regional and international striving for advantage are not reasons enough for war. But now more pessimistic voices are also being heard. Citing pre-World War I analogies, in which it was (quite inaccurately) said that economic interdependence among European powers made war impossible, and noting what Harvard University’s Graham Allison has called the “Thucydides Trap,” in which there is a drift towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing leading power, some believe war between China and the United States is becoming more conceivable and even probable.
We are concerned with the current direction of US-China’s policies, but we believe that the pessimists both overstate the possibility of a US-China war and understate the consequences of possible armed conflict. The production of so-called “small” nuclear weapons is given as a reason for the possibility of war without massive destruction. Nuclear war among nuclear powers has not occurred since the spread of nuclear weapons precisely because destruction would be huge and ghastly. But even lower-yield nuclear weapons nonetheless are quite deadly; each has the destructive potential of thousands of WWII airplane bombs. We cannot tell how limited the use of such weapons would be in advance of armed conflict, and, since Chinese missiles can reach our shores, we do not know if such a conflict could be contained.
There are other reasons for thinking war between China and the United States not only should be but will be avoided. We have past experience to warn us. The United States and China fought in the Korean War when US forces pushed to the Yalu River on China’s border. We know how that turned out. We also note that the United States did not send a land army to North Vietnam after China warned that the first US troops in North Vietnam would be met by Chinese “volunteers.” Lesson learned.
What points of conflict does the United States have with China that could actually lead to war? We can find only one, and it has nothing to do with trade, economic competition, ideology, human rights violations by China, or struggle for relative power in Asia or elsewhere. Taiwan is the critical point of conflict. China asserts its historical right to Taiwan as an integral part of China. The United States is committed to the principle that Taiwan’s relationship with China cannot be changed by force. Thus, how much military assistance to give to Taiwan, if China uses blockades or applies military force, is a critical issue for US policy. How and in what way to defend Taiwan loom as large questions. To do nothing in the face of Chinese military threats would not only call into question US commitments everywhere but might well lead to nuclear proliferation in Asia. What lessons would Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, perhaps Vietnam and Indonesia take? Taiwan itself has the capacity to build nuclear weapons and could do so, if the United States made clear that it would not respond to threats against Taiwan.
We do not minimize the difficulty of the Taiwan issue. There needs to be both clarity and ambiguity in how the United States deals with Taiwan. The United States needs to make clear that if China uses force against Taiwan there will be severe consequences. But we cannot in advance specify the consequences. We do not think war with China is probable over Taiwan. But we admit to the difficulties of finding the right policies in this area. We propose the following: As Joseph Nye noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, in consultation with China, the Biden administration should review policies for accident avoidance, crisis management, and high-level communications. Military-to-military relations already exist, and we do not know the details of them. But we suspect that the Trump administration let lapse, or weakened, constant communications and accident-avoidance protocols. These must be maintained and strengthened.
Arms sales to Taiwan are sensitive. Our aim is to avoid an invasion of Taiwan, and thus sales of missiles and technologies for defensive purposes seem right. We must make clear that we would work to circumvent a blockade of Taiwan. But obviously, Taiwan is not Berlin during the Cold War, and airlifts would have limited utility. Thus, it is the avoidance of a blockade that must be worked toward. And here, we need allies and friends in Asia and beyond to support the position that such a blockade would be disastrous for China’s economy and trade worldwide.
We can find no other issues where war could plausibly arise between China and the United States. And we reassert that any armed conflict could lead to a global catastrophe. In a more positive vein, the United States should be finding new paths to both cooperate and compete with China. The demonization of China—as per Donald Trump’s “China virus” and Secretary of State Pompeo’s bellicose language—are misguided and counterproductive. The two countries need to cooperate on climate and environmental issues and on the pandemic and other health matters.
Decoupling the economies of the United States and China would be very difficult, very expensive, and very foolish, as the Trump administration found out. It continued to want to export agricultural goods to China, and where it imposed tariffs, they raised costs to US consumers and manufacturers. We need to challenge China over its trade policies, but the best way to do that is to strengthen the US domestic economy and invest in education and technology innovation and research. So much of our vaunted technological progress has come from government investment. We should renew our government support for advanced research and technology, rather than faulting the Chinese for imitating our past actions. For but one example, consider how the internet was developed in the 1970s.
The United States has benefitted from an infusion of Chinese undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Undergraduates pay tuition; graduate students and post-grad medical and science researchers have strengthened the quality of universities and research centers. Most universities do not host classified research on their main campuses. Of course, there are dual-use technologies that can be copied or stolen. But the United States has gained from having Chinese scholars and students and researchers come to our shores. Many stay as productive and important citizens. As was the case with students and researchers from other countries in the past, many who return home see themselves as friends of the United States and hope for a more positive turn in Sino-American relations.
We now should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And we should form alliances and cooperative endeavors with China’s neighbors on trade, climate, health and regional conflict issues. And here we include Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, as well as India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea. China’s push into Asia and Africa via its Road and Belt Initiative has not been a huge success. But here too the US could be more active and constructive with its own health and development policies abroad. The most useful thing that we could do to combat climate change would be to help the underdeveloped world move from coal and oil to renewable energy.
Above all, a strong and confident United States can compete and cooperate with China without conjuring up new enemies, or creating a new Cold War.
UK universities partnering with Chinese technology companies may be breaching national security rules
affairs committee, to alert Manchester University to the fact that a
Chinese company with which it was collaborating was implicated in
Beijing’s persecution of the Uighurs.
its partner’s role in providing surveillance technology used to spy on
China’s Muslim minority.
universities cut off links with CETC in 2019 after similar warnings. But
what is more troubling is that Manchester appears to be far from alone in
partnering with Chinese companies with defence links on cutting-edge
scientific research. Indeed the Foreign Office is investigating more than a
dozen universities for possible breaches of national security rules.
What is the ”acceptable” death toll for China (and others) in planning for nuclear war?
Nuclear numbers: Assessing China’s threshold of ‘unacceptable damage’, TSG Sunday Guardian Live , Manpreet Sethi, February 6, 2021 Contemporary China appears to have a far lower threshold for taking damage than it once projected.Nuclear deterrence works on the principle of causing unacceptable damage in response to nuclear use. But what kind of damage do nations find unacceptable? How does one calculate what would be unacceptable to another? Answers to these questions are difficult, but important because a fair assessment of what the adversary would find unacceptable can help to right-size one’s own nuclear arsenal. Different countries, like different individuals, have disparate thresholds of damage absorption. For instance, during the Cold War, the US concluded that the USSR would be deterred if 50% of Soviet industry and 25% of its population were to be destroyed. Meanwhile, President Kennedy’s hesitation to lose even one American city during the Cuban missile crisis revealed America’s low damage threshold. Interestingly, in the case of Communist China, Premier Mao had created the image that his country had a high damage-taking capacity. Dismissing nuclear weapons as a “paper tiger”, he suggested that American nuclear use could not deter China because even if 50 million Chinese died, an equal number would survive to carry the country forward. But is this assumption true even today? How does modern China perceive damage? ……… Amongst the many factors that can help assess damage tolerance thresholds, five are particularly relevant. The first is to understand the historical experiences since a country that has been through more wars and experienced losses is expected to have a higher damage tolerance threshold. …….. Secondly, damage acceptability depends on the nature of the political system, with the assumption being that a closed, authoritarian system would be able to take more damage than a democracy…………damage acceptability depends on the nature of the political system, with the assumption being that a closed, authoritarian system would be able to take more damage than a democracy. While China is authoritarian, the Chinese Communist Party is extremely careful to sustain an image of legitimacy based on popular support. This, however, is not as easy to maintain today as it once was owing to society having become better educated, expressive and digitally connected. Therefore, the Party decision-making cannot afford to be insulated and ignore the mood of the masses. The third factor is the level of economic development, since an economically well-off and materially aspirational society is believed to have a low stomach for damage. ……….. Fourthly, the damage threshold varies depending on the value a country places on the objective it seeks. The more a country is politically, economically and emotionally invested in the objective, the greater its willingness to bear damage. For instance, in case of a conflict over Taiwan, which China considers an existential threat, its threshold of damage is likely to be higher than in case of conflict in high Himalayas or over areas disputed with India. Contemporary China, therefore, appears to have a far lower threshold for taking damage than it once projected. ……. These, and more such insights, should help India to calculate the “right” size of its nuclear arsenal in order to signal credible deterrence ……..https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/nuclear-numbers-assessing-chinas-threshold-unacceptable-damage |
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China rejects reports of hitch in investment pact talks with EU
Negotiations have stalled at the last stretch because China is raising additional demands on nuclear energy, German magazine WirtschaftsWoche reported on Wednesday.
“As I understand, talks are goings smoothly,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing on Thursday.
“The news about talks being stuck because China has put up more requests about nuclear energy is fake,” Wang said.
He did not deny or confirm that China had made fresh demands on nuclear energy investment.
China has 350 nuclear warheads, compared to USA and Russia’s many thousands of them
The report, written by Hans Kristensen, the director at the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a research associate at FAS, arrived at the number by counting both operational warheads and newer weapons “still in development.”…….
the report noted that the size of the Chinese nuclear stockpile is still significantly below that of the United States and Russia, which have thousands of nuclear weapons in their respective stockpiles. The authors wrote that claims by the Trump administration’s special envoy for arms control, Marshall Billingslea, that China is striving for a form of “nuclear parity” with the U.S. and Russia “appears to have little basis in reality.”
It also added that China has traditionally maintained a low alert level for its nuclear forces, with most warheads at a central storage facility and smaller numbers kept in regional equivalents…….
China refers to its nuclear posture as at a “moderate state of alert,” with the report suggesting that in peacetime this “might involve designated units to be deployed in high combat-ready condition with nuclear warheads in nearby storage sites under control of the Central Military Commission that could be released to the unit quickly if necessary.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/12/14/report-estimates-chinese-nuclear-stockpile-at-350-warheads/
China’s changing aims for nuclear weapons
MYTHS OR MOVING TARGETS? CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN CHINA’S NUCLEAR FORCES,War on the Rocks, AUSTIN LONG 6 Dec 20, The nuclear arsenal of the People’s Republic of China and its plans to use it are in the middle of an unprecedented shift. Just over a decade ago, China’s long-range nuclear force structure consisted of a handful of inaccurate, silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that were kept at low readiness with nuclear warheads stored separately. Chinese posture was demonstrably one of retaliation, with a clearly articulated policy of “no-first-use” of nuclear weapons, while force readiness and command and control of those forces were both poorly suited for anything else.
In 2020, China’s nuclear posture and force structure has changed dramatically. Its arsenal has grown and diversified even as readiness and command and control have improved. By 2030, the country’s force structure and posture will be similar to America’s and Russia’s in many ways (albeit probably not at parity). Yet, in a recent article in these virtual pages, David Logan dismisses claims that China is reconsidering the fundamental role of nuclear weapons in its strategy as “dangerous myths.” He argues that China’s policy of no-first-use “is still intact” and dismisses as fiction the claim “that China has developed and deployed an array of nuclear war-fighting capabilities, including tactical nuclear weapons.” While the ultimate destination of China’s nuclear posture remains uncertain, the trajectory is clear. Changes to China’s nuclear war-fighting capabilities and policies are not myths. Instead, they are moving targets, evolving as Chinese leaders reflect on China’s role in the world and the requirements that role places on the country’s nuclear arsenal. In this article, I review what is publicly known about these moving targets. First, it briefly traces the post-Cold War trajectory of China’s nuclear posture. Second, it addresses the role of the DF-26 intermediate range missile in Chinese posture for “tactical” nuclear weapons. Third, it reviews China’s no-first-use policy. Fourth, it presents evidence on the last time an authoritarian state declared a policy of no-first use — the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It concludes with observations on the possible consequences of change in Chinese nuclear posture for U.S. strategy and nuclear posture…………………. https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/myths-or-moving-targets-continuity-and-change-in-chinas-nuclear-forces/ |
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China-India competition is not likely to lead to a nuclear weapons exchange
After the Border Clash, Will China-India Competition Go Nuclear?,
WHAT DO CHINA AND INDIA THINK ABOUT EACH OTHER’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS? Carnegie Endowment for International Peace TOBY DALTON, TONG ZHAO, RUKMANI GUPTA, OCTOBER 29, 2020
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Nuclear pollution in China – the Uighur people pay the health and environmental price
A third of the PRCs uranium for nuclear energy comes from extortion in the Yili basin of Xinjiang. This is also home to a great population of Uighurs.
Today, China has one of the world’s largest nuclear energy development programmes. During the Cold War era, there did not exist a political or economic motivator for commercialising nuclear energy as coal-fired power stations and hydroelectric energy dominated the system. However, after 2005, China has been able to reinvent this narrative. Notably, what this resurrected was a reassertion of spaces of injustice for their minorities. Their lands were first grounds for nuclear weapons’ testing and now used for energy rather than warfare purposes, thus continuing a historical subjugation to nuclear imperialism. This nuclear imperialism situates itself within an already prevalent cyclic violence against China’s far western frontier region of Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities, the predominantly Muslim Uighurs, ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949.
Given the inherent differentiation between the Uighurs and the Chinese dominant ethnicity, the Hans, the former’s identity was always up for scrutiny. The government came down particularly hard on the Uighurs after the events of 9/11 initiated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), as well as the Ürümqi riots on 5 July 2009 which saw clashes between protesting Uighurs, Han people, and China’s People’s Armed Police, leaving nearly 200 people dead in Xinjiang. The Chinese government has attributed security concerns with the certain ‘terrorist’ acts committed by a handful of them. Taking what some might perceive as an opportunist stand, China was able to claim being victim to global terrorism, to justify crackdown on the minority group. What this terrorist narrative in turn ushered in was a transnational territory of uncontrolled spaces where ‘dangerous populations’ need not be afforded legal protections and therefore be made to quarantine; containing their actions that often correspond to security threats. The antagonism was not restricted to the few Uighurs rioters. Instead the entire Uighur community as a single biological group was treated as the Homo Sacer.
………….. The systematic discrimination of the Uighur feeds into a larger understanding of necro-politics of Uighur lives having become too consequential juxtaposed with a system which is ready to dispense with this minority population. The emphasis here is on China’s first nuclear weapons test in Lop Nor, and the legacy it has translated onto the present day context through states sponsored uranium mining in the Yili Basin, underscoring a new kind of imperialism.
Nuclear weapon testing began in the mid-1960s. Soon a kind of nuclear imperialism started to take root in the existing Han colonisation of Uighur spaces. The latter revolved around a combination of contestation over the sovereignty of the Uighur homeland and the resource-rich soils they inhabited. The aftermath of the Sino-Soviet split meant a collapse in PRCs nuclear relationship with China which acted as a driver for hastening and furthering their ambitious nuclear programmes. The PRC became the fifth nation to develop nuclear weapons during the Cold War. They formally established the 10,000 km sq. Lop Nor Nuclear Test base in 1956. It still stands as the largest site of its kind in the world………
Professor Jun Takada conducted a study explaining how peak levels of radioactivity from large yield tests might have had prolonged consequences in the biological makeup of the generations to come observing congenital defects and cancer incidents in some. The cancer incidents in the region were approximately 35% higher than the rest of the state. Uighur traditional medicine could not cope with these cases. In short, a biopolitical regime protected the state from liability, meanwhile for the Uighurs, contestation around state assurance and health risks posed a blurring in the causation between sickness and exposition.
The Uighurs who were affected by the Lop Nor test therefore have been given no compensation or recognition from the state. Many Hans on the other hand were given assurance from the state especially in terms of healthcare on various occasions. This only furthered the resentment and tension between the Hans and the Uighurs of Xinjiang in the years to come.
Following this, peaceful protests sprung up. In November 1985, protests led by students in Beijing against nuclear weapon tests were met with brute state coercion. In 1993, Uighurs gathered at Log Nor and demanded the ban of nuclear testing but were interrupted by PLA forces, some protestors were shot in the process. The Tigers of Lop Nor were an organisation that even managed to send tanks inside nuclear spaces and blew up planes in protest. Moreover, enveloped in this environment, the Uighur identity that already clashed with Han nationalism was simply made starker; the anti-nuclear movement began to echo separatist tendencies.
Today, a third of the PRCs uranium for nuclear energy comes from extortion in the Yili basin of Xinjiang. This is also home to a great population of Uighurs. The PRC has placed a moratorium on the manufacturing of fissile material for deterrence purposes, transforming Xinjiang into the primary hub for the nuclear energy industry. The NINT continues to partake in nuclear research, to the north of the Lop Nor test site. There is no state system in place to ensure the safety of those dwelling the Yili. What this reflects is a revival of a past narrative of nuclear imperialism as uranium energy extraction seems to have overtaken nuclear testing. There appears to be no incentive from the ends of the government; a lacking in enforceable nuclear legislations and regional systems of monitoring and regulating nuclear activity. …….
. China now possesses over 44 nuclear reactors in operation and 18 others under construction and is striving towards ensuring that 1/5th of their energy comes from their power plants by 2030. Activism from the minorities in the region is often counted by officials as acts of Islamism or cultural protests rather than a legacy of activities against the nuclear industry which is another layer of discrimination that has been recognised by the Uighurs.
More anti-nuclear activism seems to be entering the eastern provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong as a result of general community concerns against an unprotected nuclear policy. Online petitions and active media are slowly entering the scene to influence and mobilise public opinion. However, it is only perhaps a matter of time before the PRC silences them too.
Censorship is often used to subdue this kind of opposition online. What is worse is that the Uighurs of Xinjiang lack the agency to voice their grievances while practitioners in the east who are often familiar with the political systems and often well-educated are able to make negotiations with the state in terms of the relocation of nuclear power plants. ……… https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/nuclear-imperialism-china-xinjiang/
China’s world-leading push for solar and wind energy
capacity each year than any other country, with over 760GW installed so
far. By contrast, the EU has only managed 500GW, the USA 250 GW.
capacity additions in China are expected to fall by over 16% to 19 GW from
2020 to 2021, given the Chinese government’s decision to end subsidies,
say analysts Wood Mackenzie.
250 GW of wind capacity to be added, with repowering opportunities onshore
and growth potential offshore. Indeed, some see the latter booming
dramatically. So, while wind subsidies will fall by 3.2%, wind capacity
will still grow, and PV solar seem likely to do even better: incentives for
PV will rise by 14%, with some seeing solar as the major growth area longer
term, helping China get 62% of its power from non-fossil sources by 2030.
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2020/10/china-renewables-to-expand-even-more.html
China backs Iran nuclear deal, calls for new MidEast forum
China backs Iran nuclear deal, calls for new MidEast forum Bangkok Post, : 11 OCT 2020 BEIJING: China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has called for a new forum to defuse tensions in the Middle East after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart where he reiterated Beijing’s support for Tehran.
Wang and Javid Zarif also reaffirmed their commitment to Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, according to the Chinese foreign ministry, an implicit rebuke of the United States for abandoning the accord during their Saturday meeting in China’s southwestern Tengchong city.
Iran has been locked in an acrimonious relationship with Saudi Arabia, the other major Middle Eastern power, over the war in Yemen, Iranian influence in Iraq and Saudi support for Washington’s sanctions on Tehran.
“China proposes to build a regional multilateral dialogue platform with equal participation of all stakeholders,” said the Chinese foreign ministry statement. …… https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/2000307/china-backs-iran-nuclear-deal-calls-for-new-mideast-forum
China’s plan for dramatic switch to climate action and renewable energy
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Near to flaspoint – disputes between India, Pakistan,China
![]() SEP 30, 2020,
For decades, India and Pakistan have clashed over Kashmir, the mountainous region both countries claim. But to make matters more complicated, China has a stake in the area, too. The Aksai Chin region — located between Kashmir and Tibet — is under Chinese control and has been a source of conflict between India and China since 1962.
The borderlands between these three nuclear-armed states is increasingly a flashpoint for conflict. The international community ignores these growing challenges at its peril and should be looking for ways to help manage potential crises in the region. And while the United States can play a role, in this particular instance, direct US involvement is probably not the best way forward…………. China was drawn into a dispute between India and Pakistan when India revoked Kashmir’s autonomy in August 2019 and wanted to incorporate parts of “Xinjiang and Tibet into its Ladakh union territory,” which China believes violates its dominion due to its occupation of Tibet. It appears that over the last year the situation in Kashmir has not gotten better. ……It seems clear that after decades of poor relations, the tensions in this part of the world may reach a boiling point. Finding a solution to these half-century conflicts seems daunting, but it is necessary. While many nations have fought throughout history, a conflict between nuclear-armed states carries an unbearable risk of escalation. To start, these countries can take small steps to stabilise the security of the region and pave the way for better relations. Starting a dialogue, bilateral or trilateral, can improve communication in the longer term, which can help reduce the likelihood of conflict. Establishing crisis communications was an important step the United States and the Soviet Union took in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and de-escalation practices the two countries implemented in the early 1960s remained in place through the end of the Cold War. A third party could help facilitate regional discussions. Given its history in the region, the United States might have seemed like a good option for such facilitation, but that is not the case at this time……. This week, President Trump took aim at China before the United Nations, blaming it for the global COVID pandemic. At this point, there is no reason China would see the United States as a desirable mediator for any regional conflict…… friction among China, India, and Pakistan continues to grow. The only way to diffuse the tension and prevent destructive escalation is through diplomacy. Other countries need to step up and work to reduce the hostilities. Make no mistake, a large-scale, regional conflict among nuclear-armed states would have global consequences. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/httpsresponsiblestatecraftorg20200925india-china-pakistan-three-nuclear-powers-hurtling-towards-the-boiling-point-2020-9 |
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It’s important to dispel three persistent myths about China’s nuclear weapons

……….While the Cold War superpowers engaged in arms racing, China committed to building a “lean and effective” force. Since obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, China has publicly claimed a categorical no-first-use policy and has asserted that “China does not engage in any nuclear arms race with any other country and keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security.”
Misplaced Attention: The Real Risks of Beijing’s Nukes
Misplaced Attention: The Real Risks of Beijing’s Nukes………..
Addressing the Risks
These myths can exacerbate dangerous nuclear dynamics between China and the United States. The belief that China’s no-first-use policy is a sham increases the risk of Washington misidentifying a Chinese signal of resolve as preparations for a nuclear strike………
The myths can also hobble efforts to address more legitimate risks. Many of these risks, particularly those rooted in different perceptions, could be mitigated through formal dialogue. Beijing and Washington can share and refine understandings about escalation dynamics or their aims in a crisis or conflict. But misperception and miscommunication, sometimes rooted in the very myths discussed above, can make it difficult carry out such dialogues…………
Perhaps most significantly, a misguided focus on the myths could, perversely, make those myths realities. ……….
fixating on poorly sourced or unfounded claims makes any dialogue both less likely to occur and less effective if it does happen. There are enough real concerns about China’s nuclear modernization that need to be addressed without being distracted by myths. https://warontherocks.com/2020/09/the-dangerous-myths-about-chinas-nuclear-weapons/

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