After the end of the Cold War, the United States became the only superpower. At global and regional levels, the United States has long put maintaining its hegemonic position at the center of its foreign policy, deterring its adversaries by threatening to use overwhelming military power to punish them or convince them that they cannot win a war. This is seen as one of the cornerstones of the U.S. national security strategy. In terms of strategic orientation, the United States has shifted its strategic focus from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region, and has deployed a strong military presence in the Western Pacific. Especially after being tested by the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996, the United States has been considered to have the ability to win wars and the dominating power to control escalating conflicts in the Western Pacific, and to possess a strong deterrence capability against China. ¹ However, in the face of U.S. hegemony, emerging countries represented by China have resisted U.S. power through a variety of strategies.² It was also after the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis that China accelerated its defense modernization and committed itself to building a modern military. After more than two decades of efforts, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has significantly narrowed the gap with the United States in most areas in terms of technology and skill levels, and the power match-up between the Chinese and U.S. militaries has become increasingly balanced. ³

In terms of connotation, deterrence means dissuading an adversary from taking unwanted actions by issuing threats of force. Generally speaking, deterrence is influenced by two main factors: military power and strategic resolve. This means that deterrence is not only a process of calculating military power, but also a process of perceiving the strategic motives and military doctrines of both sides. The view of the U.S. strategic community is that the erosion of absolute U.S. dominance in conventional military forces in recent years has led to serious challenges to the credibility of its conventional deterrence. The significant decline in the utility of U.S. conventional deterrence against China is bound to bring about a series of significant changes, including changes in its deterrence doctrine and strategy, and to push the United States to adjust its established force-building and deployment of forces. What changes are currently taking place in the United States’ conventional deterrence doctrine? How is the United States making the relevant strategic adjustments? This paper will explore these questions, analyzing the changes in U.S. conventional deterrence doctrine and strategy in order to improve our understanding of the pattern of U.S.-China strategic interaction.

I. How the U.S. strategic community perceives China’s enhancement of its conventional deterrence capability

The fundamental reason for the adjustment of the U.S. conventional deterrence strategy toward China lies in the relative changes in the conventional deterrence capabilities of China and the United States. After the Cold War, the United States occupied a dominant position militarily. It could project power into the Western Pacific with comparative ease, and therefore more easily deter China. However, as China’s ability to deter the United States militarily has increased, U.S. access to the Western Pacific has become more difficult, and its effectiveness in deterring China has diminished. Against this backdrop, the U.S. strategic community has shown subtle changes in its perception of U.S. and Chinese conventional deterrence capabilities, and has even become skeptical of the credibility of U.S. conventional deterrence.

i. The rapid rise in China’s conventional deterrence capabilities

The dynamic shift in the balance of conventional deterrence forces between China and the United States can be theoretically examined through the relative changes in the military power of the two countries. Although both China and the United States are committed to improving their conventional deterrence capabilities, China has made more progress in this contest and is rapidly closing the power gap with the United States. China has not only focused on developing its “anti-access and area denial” capabilities and strengthening its conventional deterrence capabilities in the Western Pacific, but has also actively developed its conventional forces to achieve regional and global security objectives, undermining U.S. dominance and strategic superiority in relative terms.

First, China has worked adamantly to strengthen the foundations, make up shortcomings, and master distinctive skills in conventional military fields, thereby significantly narrowing quantitative and technological gaps with the United States and making significant achievements in military modernization. First, China has increased its investment and made many breakthroughs in core technologies. For example, with the launch of the Liaoning, Shandong, and Fujian aircraft carriers, the Type 055 destroyer, and the Type 075 amphibious assault ship, maritime combat capabilities have been greatly enhanced; and with the introduction in rapid succession of the J-20, Y-20 and Z-20 aircraft, there has been a rapid catching up with the United States in terms of technology. These advanced weapons and equipment and combat platforms have become a strong basis for China’s defense of its national interests and deterrence of the United States. Second, “Assassin’s mace” weapons are being developed to form local superiority over the United States. China has made significant breakthroughs in the fields of anti-satellite weapons, anti-missile weapons, and anti-ship weapons. In terms of anti-satellite weapons, China conducted its first anti-satellite test on January 11, 2007, and has conducted several more tests. This shows that China has the ability to strike communication satellites in outer space. ⁴ In terms of anti-missile weapons, China conducted a test of land-based, mid-course anti-missile interception technology on June 19, 2022.⁵ This followed previous tests conducted on January 11, 2010, January 27, 2013, July 23, 2014, February 6, 2018, and February 4, 2021. Anti-ship weapons, represented by the DF-21D, DF-26, and YJ-21 ballistic missiles, have become an “assassin’s mace” for deterring U.S. maritime power.

Second, China is rationalizing its systems and mechanisms, and seeking breakthroughs in new areas and directions, in order to catch up with the United States in technological innovation. China not only established the Rocket Force and the Strategic Support Force in the new round of military reform, but has also gradually focused its weaponry development on advanced weapons and equipment such as stealth aircraft, hypersonic weapons, railguns, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Taking hypersonic weapons as an example, China displayed its first hypersonic weapon, the DF-17 ballistic missile, at a military parade on Oct. 1, 2019, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. “With the successful development of the DF-17 ballistic missile, China is at the forefront of hypersonic weapons.”⁶ In August 2021, China conducted a test of an Earth-orbiting spacecraft, which was used to verify spacecraft reusability technology. The Financial Times even claimed that it was a hypersonic glide vehicle which could carry a nuclear warhead, and that the U.S. missile defense system would be unable to intercept it.⁷ Since the key to hypersonic weapons is not the speed of flight, but the ability to control the flight path and altitude, their high speed and maneuverability make them difficult to track, target, and shoot down. As a result, this has become a key area of competition between China and the United States. China’s superiority in this area has no doubt enhanced China’s conventional deterrence capability against the United States.

To summarize the above discussion, a significant shift is taking place in the conventional deterrence dynamics between China and the United States. China’s building of deterrence capability against the United States is characterized by a focus on system conflict, and it is shifting from a paradigm dominated by “assassin’s mace” weapons development to one of catching up across the board. In the period following the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the core question in China’s military equipment development was how to prevent external forces from interfering in the Taiwan issue, and the United States’ so-called “anti-access and area denial” strategy was developed on this basis. China has been investing relatively ample resources in recent years, and its military spending and equipment development are at a critical inflection point. China is gradually narrowing the gap with the United States in several areas of military technology, and the path to deterring the United States is shifting toward “integrated deterrence.”⁸ The United States believes that China’s rising conventional deterrence capabilities will inevitably erode U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities and adversely affect the credibility of U.S. conventional deterrence. China’s goal of building a world-class military will make conventional deterrence capabilities between the United States and China more symmetrical. This will inevitably lead to changes in the perceptions of the United States and its allies toward China.

ii. Perceptions of the U.S. strategic community

On February 10, 2021, President Biden stated that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) would establish a new “China Task Force” led by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III and headed by Ely Ratner, a DoD Senior Advisor on China affairs. Biden asked the task force to study high-priority topics such as strategy, operational concepts, technology and force structure, force posture, force management, and intelligence, and to establish priorities for responding to China’s strategy, and the processes and procedures for conducting its work.⁹ It is not hard to see that the U.S. government has always maintained a high level of vigilance toward the growth of Chinese power, and we can see the general shape of this in the various assessments that have emerged. U.S. perceptions of China include three main areas.

First, China is rapidly eroding U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities. The United States believes that its own conventional deterrence capabilities are being eroded in three main ways: (1) The competitiveness of the U.S. defense industrial base is declining. A DoD report released in October 2018 concluded that the U.S. defense industrial base faces unprecedented challenges that threaten the ability of the United States to respond to competition from other powers. ¹⁰ The China Strategy Group (headed by Eric Schmidt, former president of Google and director of the Defense Innovation Board at the DoD, and Jared Cohen, founder of the Google Ideas think tank) authored a report which recommended that the United States carry out asymmetric competition against China in the science and technology (S&T) sector, and called on the United States to formulate urgent policy solutions to reshape technological competitiveness and consolidate key S&T advantages. ¹¹ (2) China’s military modernization has surged in recent years, with a large number of iconic weapons and combat platforms emerging out of the blue to challenge U.S. military superiority. In November 2017, Joseph F. Dunford, then Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), said in a speech at Tufts University that U.S. military superiority was being eroded by competitors, and that continued U.S. investment was necessary to ensure that it will possess deterrence ability. ¹² The 2017 National Security Strategy report was blunt: “China and Russia are developing advanced weapons and capabilities that could threaten our critical infrastructure and command and control systems.”¹³ (3) Its operational doctrine is under attack from China. The 2018 Summary of the National Defense Strategy suggested that the United States will face a more lethal and destructive battlefield, and that competitors and enemies are optimizing targets against U.S. operational networks and concepts, while making full use of means other than open warfare to compete with the United States. These trends are challenging the United States’ ability to deter aggression.¹⁴ It is clear that the U.S. government already attaches great importance to the reality of declining conventional deterrence capabilities. This is because that reality is challenging the long-held U.S. belief that weakness will invite war, and therefore the relative decline in U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities may encourage China to make reckless moves. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Michèle A. Flournoy has said that a diminished U.S. deterrence capability increases the risk of Chinese miscalculation, and could lead to direct conflict between the two nuclear powers.¹⁵

Second, the United States also sees itself as being overly apprehensive. Over the past decade or so, China has increased its conventional deterrence capabilities at an unprecedented rate, and this is the cause of the United States’ strategic anxiety. The U.S. strategic community sees China as an unprecedented adversary. Since Biden took office, his national security team has tried to signal that the United States should regain its self-confidence and avoid excessive anxiety due to focusing on China’s strengths, as such excessive anxiety could lead the United States to make poor strategic decisions and ultimately fall into a vicious cycle. On one hand, overestimating China causes strategic anxiety, and strategic anxiety distorts U.S. domestic politics. Some U.S. analysts maintain that amplifying the China threat is counterproductive to U.S. foreign policy and will distort its domestic politics, which is very detrimental to U.S. national security.¹⁶ On the other hand, excessive focus by the United States on China’s strengths would trigger an overreaction, and overreaction is inherently more dangerous than China itself. Ryan Hass criticized this tendency, saying, “Focusing on China’s strengths without considering its weaknesses creates anxiety, anxiety breeds insecurity, insecurity leads to overreaction, and overreaction leads to poor decisions that undermine America’s own competitiveness.”¹⁷

What is more, the United States is not ready for war with China, and enhancing its conventional deterrence capabilities is in its interest. The United States has devoted the last 20 years to the war on terror. It has long neglected great power conflicts, and is therefore woefully unprepared for a great power war. There are two main ways to boost U.S. deterrence capabilities: One is to target China and devote more resources. Michael Beckley maintains that it is imperative for the United States to focus on the real threat, and that the Biden administration must clearly and repeatedly order the military to concentrate on deterring China, scale back other missions, and incorporate deterrence of China in the administration’s defense budget requests and defense strategy.¹⁸ The second is to unite its allies and strategic partners and strengthen security cooperation with them. Some U.S. analysts believe the United States relies too much on its own power projection, rather than on the “anti-access and area denial” abilities of its allies.¹⁹ By promoting a favorable distribution of power, it can deter adversaries from directly threatening the United States and its allies or controlling key regions, and prevent adversaries from denying the United States access to the global commons.²⁰

To summarize the foregoing discussion, the rapid growth of Chinese military power is indeed reshaping the conventional deterrence situation between the United States and China. Given how large China is and how fast it is growing, the impact on the United States and its allies will be huge. The modes of interaction between the United States and China will be highly complex. Some of them will have precedents one can find in the history of international relations, while some will be entirely new. Therefore, it will be of great significance to examine U.S. concepts and strategies for dealing with China.

II. Changes in the U.S. concept of conventional deterrence against China

Great power strategic competition is profoundly affecting the U.S. concept of conventional deterrence. U.S.-China strategic competition and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have prompted U.S. leaders to seriously consider three closely related issues, namely, how to plan the concept and framework of U.S. deterrence strategy at the macro level, how to enhance conventional military capabilities to deter China, and how to advance its strategic layout on core regional security issues. Looking at the U.S. strategic community’s words and actions in recent years, the U.S. concept of conventional deterrence against China is gradually becoming clearer at three levels: conceptual innovation, capability building, and issue implementation.

i. Proposing the “integrated deterrence” concept

In testimony before the Senate on March 9, 2021, Philip S. Davidson, then commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), stressed that the greatest danger to the United States in the great power competition with China was the “erosion of conventional deterrence.”²¹ Davidson’s judgment was recently endorsed by a majority within the U.S. government. This is because conventional deterrence, with traditional military superiority at its core, remains the cornerstone of U.S. strategy for confronting China and the key to maintaining U.S. strategic credibility in the Indo-Pacific region. At a time when China’s military power is developing rapidly, the United States faces an urgent need to strengthen conventional deterrence and invest in future military superiority.²² To strengthen conventional deterrence, the United States has proposed a new deterrence concept. In April 2021, Defense Secretary Austin stated that the nature of warfare is changing. It spans unprecedented theaters of war, extending from the skies to cyberspace and reaching deep into the oceans. This requires new thinking and new actions within the DoD. As a result, Austin sees “integrated deterrence” as the cornerstone of U.S. defense strategy, and argues that the United States must rely on the seamless integration of technology, operational concepts and capabilities.²³ In the new National Defense Strategy report to be released soon, “integrated deterrence” will be placed at the center of U.S. defense strategy.²⁴ Judging from relevant statements of the U.S. government, “integrated deterrence” consists of three core elements.

First, “integrated deterrence” requires the United States to fully utilize its existing strengths while integrating technologies, operational concepts and abilities in different areas. In fact, this concept had been discussed in depth within the U.S. military before Austin proposed it. In February 2021, John Hyten, Vice Chairman of the JCS, recommended that the United States conduct a broader review of strategic deterrence. He suggested that “when you look at offense, defense, and all of these capabilities together, it’s really about strategic deterrence. It’s not just about nuclear posture…not about missile defense, not just about space… It’s about all those elements together that provide our overall strategic capability and our ability to strategically deter adversaries.”²⁵ In Austin’s view, truly robust deterrence does not depend on any particular platform, but on the entire network that the U.S. military has established. However, the United States has some shortcomings in its overall network. Colin Kahl, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, believes that the U.S. military has done well in conventional areas such as land, sea, and air, but space, cyberspace, and the information world are areas where competitors are pressuring the United States.²⁶ Thus, boosting deterrence capabilities in space, cyberspace, and the information world has become an important task for the United States.

Second, “integrated deterrence” needs to be put into action. In assessing and analyzing the deficiencies for countering China, the DoD’s China Task Force found that there was a “talk-do” gap between the U.S. military’s goal of confronting China and its efforts to achieve that goal.²⁷ In response, the U.S. military has strengthened action in three areas. The first is strengthening intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities against China.²⁸ According to incomplete statistics, the U.S. military conducted close to 1,000 aerial reconnaissance sorties in the South China Sea in 2020. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, just between January 1 and July 12, 2021, “the U.S. side conducted nearly 2,000 missions of air and naval close reconnaissance of China.”²⁹ The second is boosting U.S. deterrence capabilities through new technologies. In a speech to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence on July 13, 2021, Defense Secretary Austin said that “integrated deterrence,” as a new vision for the 21st century, relies on innovation and investment,³⁰ and in particular on the military application of important technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, big data, and 5G. The third is countering the coercive behavior of adversaries. Operations are the foundation of “integrated deterrence.” The United States must strengthen forward deployments and preemptively deploy military forces to places where adversaries intend to deploy them. JCS Vice Chairman Hyten argues that “integrated deterrence” is not only about the U.S. military’s cyber, space, or nuclear capabilities. Its goal is also to use these capabilities to create problems for an adversary, so that the adversary will decide not to intervene in a conflict.³¹

Moreover, “integrated deterrence” also requires the participation of allies. In a speech in Singapore on July 27, 2021, Austin further elaborated on the meaning of “integrated deterrence,” namely that it is “using existing capabilities, and building new ones, and deploying them all in new and networked ways—all tailored to a region’s security landscape, and growing in partnership with our friends.”³² This means that U.S. allies play an irreplaceable role in this concept. For the United States, fully utilizing the global alliance system increases its own deterrence capabilities, and makes it unmatchable by any competitor. This is a unique advantage.

ii. Emphasizing deterrence by denial against China

In theoretical studies, deterrence is generally divided into deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial.³³ According to John Mearshemer, the former aims to deter an adversary by threatening to destroy its population and industry, while the latter aims to convince an adversary that it will not achieve its objectives on the battlefield.³⁴ In terms of connotation, the targets of deterrence by punishment may be broader, not necessarily limited to an adversary’s population and industry, but also including retaliation against other social dimensions and the defeat of an adversary’s military forces. That is to say, any threat of punishing an adversary through military force can be considered a form of deterrence by punishment. Deterrence by denial, on the other hand, is where a state hopes to have a level of power that would convince an adversary that the state can expand or prolong a war, and thereby make the adversary unable to achieve its strategic objectives. Thus, the core logic of how deterrence by denial works lies in increasing the cost of an adversary’s actions through a strategy of attrition, thwarting its hopes of achieving a quick victory at a low cost. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. conventional military forces have dominated the world, and both deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial have been important components of the U.S. deterrence strategy. However, as China’s conventional deterrence capabilities have risen, the basis for U.S. deterrence by punishment against China has eroded. As a result, the importance of deterrence by denial has been emphasized more, dissuading China from risking military action on the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea issues by convincing China that it cannot win a war. The U.S. strategic community has discussed this in some depth, and it mainly includes three core ideas:

First, U.S. deterrence mechanisms have undergone significant changes since the end of the Cold War, and the established deterrence strategy is ill-equipped to meet U.S. needs. For deterrence to play its proper role, it must be put into practice at the doctrinal level, that is, through specific military strategies that send clear signals to adversaries. However, the U.S. deterrence strategy often seems to fail. Richard Betts argues that the logic of deterrence broke down after the Cold War, and that the defense policy the United States relied on to win the Cold War has performed very poorly.³⁵ Not coincidentally, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. also suggests that as a result of technological and geopolitical developments, the unprecedented military dominance that followed the Cold War has ended, and using deterrence to contain aggression is becoming increasingly difficult.³⁶ In fact, while deterrence can certainly lose its effectiveness, most of the reasons for this are not problems with deterrence itself, but rather problems with the policymakers who formulate deterrence strategies, having ignored the need to shift deterrence paradigms according to specific scenarios.

Second, the effectiveness of U.S. deterrence by punishment against China has declined significantly. Eric Heginbotham and Jacob L. Heim maintain that deterrence by the United States has long been conducted mainly on the premise that it occupied a dominant position.³⁷ Now, that dominance no longer exists. Former Assistant Secretary of State A. Wess Mitchell has also suggested that, at present, the United States’ external environment is undergoing significant changes that pose major challenges to the U.S. model of punishment-based deterrence: The number of adversaries the United States needs to deter is large; and U.S. competitors are better armed and are developing tactics to circumvent deterrence by punishment.³⁸ Some analysts also note that the geographical location of the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea limits U.S. options for deterrence by punishment. The United States faces a number of dilemmas in implementing deterrence by punishment: Changes in U.S. and Chinese power have led to shifts in the risk-benefit calculations of the two countries, and many of China’s policy objectives are below the U.S. threshold for punishment-based deterrence. Even if the United States were to wage a war to inflict punishment, it is unclear whether China would consider the punishment to be a deterrent; and, as with all limited wars in the nuclear age, once conflict breaks out, it may be difficult to keep the situation from escalating.³⁹

Third, in order to respond to China, the United States needs to implement deterrence by denial more. In recent years, the United States has adjusted its concept of conventional deterrence against China in an attempt to make China recognize the difficulty of resolving disputes through war. U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has called for a shift in the U.S. military’s approach to deterrence. It should make greater use of deterrence by denial, denying an adversary’s attack in the first place, rather than committing to carry out deterrence by punishment after an adversary’s aggression, and in this way respond to China’s ever-growing “threat.”⁴⁰ Rush Doshi recommends that the United States adopt an asymmetric strategy at the military level: Borrow from China’s book by developing asymmetric weapons and deterrence to counter the impact of China’s anti-access and area denial strategy; help allies and partners develop anti-access and area denial capabilities; and undermine China’s costly efforts to build overseas bases.⁴¹ Elbridge A. Colby suggests that U.S. national defense must change. In order to counter China’s growing power and ambition, it should deter and deny the outbreak of war by preparing for war.⁴²

When discussing the issue in this context, most analysts believe that U.S. deterrence strategy is shifting from deterrence by punishment to deterrence by denial.⁴³ The reason is that they believe that deterrence based on denial, rather than on punishment, is best suited to addressing the United States’ current strategic challenges. This is also consistent with a principle that the U.S. national security strategy has always adhered to, i.e., “The goal is to deter conflict, and if deterrence fails, the war must be won.”⁴⁴ However, deterrence by denial is not more likely to succeed than deterrence by punishment, and both the strategic choices of the deterring party and the strategic responses of the adversary will affect the ultimate effectiveness of deterrence by denial.⁴⁵ In particular, after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States punished Russia severely through economic and financial sanctions, which are essentially a typical kind of deterrence by punishment, and the United States likewise saw that it created a strong deterrent effect on the international community. Therefore, the United States will flexibly choose or combine deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial, rather than stick to one strategy or the other.

iii. Learning from deterrence experience in the Russia-Ukraine conflict

To take a specific topic, U.S. conventional deterrence against China mainly comes down to the Taiwan issue. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on February 24, 2022, the United States imposed a series of severe financial and economic sanctions on Russia and assisted Ukraine militarily on a large scale. This in fact formed a deterrent effect against China, and brought about some new changes in the strategic game between China and the United States on the Taiwan issue. The U.S. strategic community has drawn analogies between the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Taiwan issue, eagerly summarized the experience and lessons learned from U.S. deterrence actions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and proposed appropriate directions for policy adjustments. Broadly speaking, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has influenced U.S. thinking on deterrence toward China in two ways.

First, on the Taiwan issue, the United States needs to learn from the experience and lessons of Ukraine. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the U.S. strategic community realized that the experience and lessons from Ukraine could be transplanted to the Taiwan issue to bolster deterrence against China. On one hand, by demonstrating the setbacks Russia has suffered and the costs it has endured in Ukraine, the perceptions of Chinese leaders and the public will be changed, and China will be deterred from taking military action on Taiwan. [Former Assistant Secretary of State] A. Wess Mitchell asserted, “By helping the Ukrainians inflict high costs on the invaders, the United States and its allies can demonstrate the dangers that even a very large power faces of protracted conflict on hostile territory. The same can happen in Taiwan.”⁴⁶ On the other hand, the U.S. government realizes that Ukraine’s experience in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is worth learning from and could be taken as a potential model for dealing with future conflicts in the Taiwan Strait. U.S. European Command commander Tod D. Wolters, and USINDOPACOM commander John Aquilino believe that the response of the United States and its allies to Russia’s attack on Ukraine could serve as a potential model for responding to an attack by mainland China on Taiwan.⁴⁷ According to a Politico report, U.S. officials are urging Taiwan’s authorities to use Ukraine’s successful resistance to Russian forces as a “playbook” for countering an attack by mainland China.⁴⁸

Second, the United States believes that China is also studying U.S. deterrence in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration has also been looking at the pattern of China’s response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and analyzing whether there has been a shift in China’s position on the Taiwan issue. There are probably three different readings within the U.S. government and strategic circles. The first reading suggests that China, influenced by the deterrent effect of economic and financial sanctions against Russia and massive military assistance to Ukraine by the United States and its allies, will learn from Russia’s lesson on the Ukraine issue and act more cautiously on the Taiwan issue. Bonnie S. Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, and Jude Blanchette, who holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), argue that the setbacks of Russia’s military action in Ukraine and the West’s solidarity may prompt China to remain cautious on the Taiwan issue.⁴⁹ The second reading suggests that the deterrent effect of U.S. sanctions against Russia will not affect China’s resolve on Taiwan, but may influence China’s strategic choices. Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has not changed anything, that Chinese leaders have not changed their view of U.S. power and resolve and the international community’s response, and that China does not want to draw analogies between the Taiwan issue and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.⁵⁰ CIA Director William J. Burns argues that China’s leaders are carefully studying what lessons should be learned from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and that while this will not weaken China’s “determination to control Taiwan,” it will affect China’s “calculations of how and when to do so.”⁵¹ Some analysts agree with this point of view. They argue that, although the PLA will learn from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and adjust its military plans, there is no evidence that the conflict has changed China’s resolve to use force against Taiwan, nor has it amended its red lines or added additional ones.⁵² The third reading suggests that the deterrent effect of the United States’ strangulation of Russia will strengthen mainland China’s resolve to settle the Taiwan issue. Some analysts believe that Russia’s military action in Ukraine will accelerate China’s seizure of Taiwan.⁵³ Evan Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara also argue that the Russia-Ukraine conflict may cause China’s leaders to be more determined and redouble their efforts to crush Taiwan’s will to resist. They suggest that “Russia’s setbacks and Ukraine’s temporary successes could spur China to threaten and use force earlier, so as to reduce the likelihood of U.S. military intervention and increase the likelihood of Taiwan’s surrender.”⁵⁴

Third, the United States must strengthen its military assistance to Taiwan and enhance its ability to deter China. Enveloped in the atmosphere of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the U.S. strategic community is building a narrative that China will take similar military action in the Taiwan Strait. Some U.S. politicians are advocating that Taiwan’s authorities cannot wait any longer, and that the United States and its allies must strengthen combat capabilities to be able to deter China and “defeat a Chinese invasion” if necessary. ⁵⁵ Andrew Erickson and Gabriel Collins posit that in order to counter China’s “anti-access and area denial” on Taiwan, the U.S. and Taiwan authorities need to specifically target China’s military weaknesses, based on the experience of Ukraine, invest in the areas of anti-missile, air defense, maritime denial, coastal denial, mine warfare, information warfare, and civil defense systems, and critical infrastructure resilience, to make Taiwan more difficult to invade, conquer, occupy, and govern.⁵⁶ Some analysts also believe that the biggest lesson from the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that economic sanctions cannot stop a war from breaking out, and that the threats issued under this deterrence model could only be enforced once Russia crossed the Ukrainian border.⁵⁷ To deter China, the United States and its allies need to accelerate the sale of advanced weapons such as F-16s, missiles, and drones to Taiwan, which will turn it into a “porcupine.”⁵⁸ Judging from the planning of the U.S. government and strategic community, they have probably reached a consensus that Taiwan must prepare for war, not only by improving its defensive capabilities, but also by increasing its will to fight. Only then can China be deterred.

To summarize, in terms of the conceptual innovation, capability building, and issue implementation of U.S. conventional deterrence against China, the arena of interaction between U.S. and Chinese conventional deterrence is mainly focused on the Western Pacific, and the core issue is Taiwan. In this arena and issue, the increasing strategic pressure on the United States has forced it to enhance its conventional military forces to deter China. This inevitably requires the United States to seek innovation in the deterrence concepts used to guide U.S. military strategy. The core intention of the United States is, by strengthening conventional military forces and integrating deterrence capabilities, to change China’s cost and benefit calculations in a future conflict so that it will eventually abandon the use of force to resolve related issues.

III. U.S. strategic initiatives to enhance conventional deterrence capabilities against China

In the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States report released in February 2022, the United States made strengthening deterrence an important element of the Indo-Pacific Action Plan.⁵⁹ This also indicates that the United States is aware that China is rapidly eroding its conventional deterrence abilities, and it is attempting to seize the window of opportunity, adjust its course in a timely fashion, and take a series of measures to enhance its own conventional deterrence abilities. At the strategic level, the United States is mainly working on three aspects: strengthening defense S&T construction, improving deterrence by denial capability, and consolidating Asia-Pacific alliance relationships.

i. Strengthening defense S&T construction

First is increased investment in S&T innovation. As China’s position in global production chains rises, the United States has stepped up reviews and assessments of its own defense industrial base. Driven by these reviews and assessments, the U.S. Congress has passed a series of bills in an attempt to compete with China in science and technology and seize the high ground through institutional design, using national legislation to provide assurance for relevant investments. On April 20, 2021, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Todd Young (R-IN) introduced the Endless Frontier Act of 2021, which aims to strengthen the leading position of the government’s Big Science system, promote S&T at the national level, and suppress China’s S&T competitiveness.⁶⁰ On May 18 of that year, Schumer introduced the U.S. Competition and Innovation Act of 2021, which was passed by the Senate on June 8. Based on the Endless Frontier Act of 2021, the bill integrates chip and O-RAN (Open Radio Access Network) 5G emergency appropriations, the Strategic Competition Act, International Security and Governmental Affairs Committee provisions, and the “Meeting the China Challenge Act.” The bill requires the U.S. government to increase investment in technology research and development, the centerpiece of which is approximately $81 billion in new federal R&D funding through the National Science Foundation and an investment of $52.7 billion in semiconductor development to counter China’s growing influence.⁶¹

Second is increased military investment to consolidate traditional advantages. After a long period of decline, the Trump and Biden administrations have attempted to increase military investment. In the fiscal years from 2018 to 2023, the U.S. military budget was $699.9 billion, $716.3 billion, $738 billion, $740.5 billion, $753 billion, and $813.3 billion, respectively, providing ample funding for the development and acquisition of weapons and equipment and combat platforms. In terms of armaments, both the Trump and Biden administrations have supported new naval shipbuilding programs. The U.S. Navy has launched the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) to upgrade the Navy’s four major shipyards over a 20-year period with $21 billion in investment.⁶² In addition, the United States has tilted national defense resources toward the Western Pacific region. In May 2017, the DoD proposed the Asia-Pacific Stability Initiative, which provides $7.5 billion to support U.S. military force-building in the Asia-Pacific region.⁶³ On January 1, 2021, the United States passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. This bill proposed the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, with an appropriation of $2.2 billion, aimed at strengthening the U.S. military’s deterrence and defense posture in the Western Pacific.⁶⁴ In the view of U.S. senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Jack Reed (D-RI), the Pacific Deterrence Initiative will improve budget transparency and focus resources on key military capabilities for deterring China.⁶⁵

Third is emphasizing technological innovation and adjusting the direction of technology development. One idea for addressing the rapid growth of China’s military power involves relying on more advanced technology to enhance the ability to deter China. First, U.S. technological superiority is being used to offset China’s numerical superiority. In August 2014, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work called for the United States to implement a Third Offset Strategy.⁶⁶ The core of this idea is for the United States to rely on its advanced military technology to offset China’s numerical superiority in weaponry. In the case of the Navy, for example, the U.S. military is attempting to gain a competitive advantage through more technologically advanced and better-equipped warships in the face of China’s speed advantage in shipbuilding.⁶⁷ Second, the direction of technological development is being adjusted, as U.S. military technology development emerges from its post-Cold War detour. After the Cold War, the U.S. military was in an “uncontested top dog” situation for a long time. As a result, it had taken a detour in terms of the technical direction of some weapons and equipment and combat platforms. A representative example is the development of the littoral combat ships and DDG1000 destroyer projects, guided by the concept of “sea-to-land” operations. In the shipbuilding industry, which was once a source of pride for the United States, the U.S. Navy also lost the competition with China, and its former glory is no more.⁶⁸ In response, the United States promptly stopped its losses and terminated the two projects, attempted to re-implement a maritime control strategy, and made comprehensive adjustments in the areas such as strategy and tactics, operational concepts, and equipment development.⁶⁹

Finally, it is making up for the shortcomings in technology development and trying to catch up with China’s leading pace in some areas. Since the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China has devoted itself to the development of “assassin’s mace” weapons platforms. After more than two decades of development, it has made significant breakthroughs in some areas. In response, the United States has increased its investment and R&D in these areas. Taking hypersonic weapons as an example, the DoD has been actively conducting research on the industrial infrastructure for hypersonic weapons, and in 2020 established an office of hypersonic weapons operations led by an Assistant Secretary of Defense and the director of the DoD’s research and engineering office.⁷⁰ At the same time, the United States has increased its investment in the hypersonic weapons area, with the budget request reaching $3.8 billion in FY 2022 and climbing further to $4.7 billion in FY 2023.⁷¹ Driven by this, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are competing to develop multiple hypersonic weapons and have conducted multiple test launches. The United States is also actively developing hypersonic weapon defense systems, and DARPA plans to develop a hypersonic weapon defense system called Glide Breaker.

ii. Improving deterrence by denial capability

In recent years, the U.S. strategic community has carried out an in-depth discussion of the Taiwan issue, reflecting the core concerns and primary intention of U.S. deterrence strategy. According to Ely Ratner, the U.S. military needs to strengthen forward defense. He asserts that an operationally credible forward deployment is a necessary condition when it comes to the power of U.S. forces to implement deterrence.⁷² For the United States, strengthening deterrence by denial places greater demands on building defensive and offensive capabilities.

In terms of building defensive capabilities, the United States is improving its ability to survive a preemptive strike by China. To address China’s rapidly increasing deterrence capabilities, the United States is upgrading its capabilities in a number of areas. First, it is improving its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. In recent years, U.S. military reconnaissance capabilities within the “first island chain” have been severely weakened, threatening the construction of the U.S. military’s defensive capabilities. On one hand, Chinese intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems have been greatly enhanced;⁷³ on the other hand, U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services are still not prepared to effectively support gray-zone operations or operations in highly competitive environments.⁷⁴ To this end, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has proposed a “reconnaissance deterrence” concept of operations. They recommend that the U.S. military integrate key enabling technologies, such as U.S. and allied military drones and floating balloons, unmanned surface ships, maritime buoys and gliders, undersea research networks, and small space-based commercial satellite payloads, and employ sustained, effective, and low-risk reconnaissance and surveillance to maintain real-time, continuous situational awareness capabilities in key regions of the Western Pacific and Eastern Europe, thereby achieving the purpose of deterring regional powers.⁷⁵

Second, it is implementing distributed deployment. As China’s deterrence strength has risen, the United States has shifted multiple batches of military forces from bases in Okinawa to Guam and Australia over the past dozen years, aiming to offset China’s deterrence strength through distributed deployment. This is in keeping with the U.S. Navy’s “Distributed Lethality” concept of warfare introduced in recent years. This concept is designed to enhance the attack capability of U.S. Navy surface ships by adjusting how naval combat forces are employed. The basic idea is to disperse the deployment of surface ships, then rely on one’s technological advantages to concentrate firepower against the opponent, and finally achieve control of the sea.

Third, it is reinforcing key infrastructure and enhancing logistics and maintenance capabilities. Some analysts have suggested that the Biden administration, in making decisions about how to invest in U.S. military capabilities in the future, should recognize the value of deterrence by denial and invest in capabilities that enhance defense, focusing on strengthening infrastructure, logistics, and partnering capabilities.⁷⁶ The U.S. military has made significant efforts to enhance strike resilience, fortify critical infrastructure, strengthen bomb-proof bunker construction, and enhance protective measures for hangars, fuel depots, ammunition supply systems, and other critical facilities and equipment. It has also made significant efforts to enhance logistics and maintenance capabilities to improve counterattack capabilities and post-strike combat recovery levels.

Fourth, it is enhancing missile defense capabilities. Over the past decade or so, China has successively deployed a series of ballistic and cruise missiles, represented by the DF-26, which have Guam as a hypothetical target. The U.S. military has now clearly identified upgrading Guam’s missile defense system as a U.S. priority in the Western Pacific. The United States has gradually realized that relying only on the Army’s THAAD system and the Navy’s Aegis destroyers deployed to Guam is not sufficient to deal with the Chinese “threat,” so it has increased investment in missile defense system construction and deployed the land-based Aegis [ballistic missile defense] system in Guam to establish a durable, all-around missile defense capability in the “second island chain.”⁷⁷

In terms of building offensive capability, the United States has been focusing efforts to enhance offensive capabilities against adversaries on three areas: First, it is accelerating the transformation of the Air Force and strengthening air power construction. After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force built a towering reputation for strategic deterrence based on its outstanding performance in the Gulf War. However, the United States focused on the war on terror for 20 years. During this period, China aggressively developed its military forces, and the emergence of a set of new equipment, represented by the J-20, greatly weakened U.S. deterrence capability against China. Although its air power continues to dominate, the United States has perceived strategic pressure. In August 2020, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown, Jr. stated that China is attempting to use advanced weapons systems to directly counter and deny U.S. air power and challenge its air superiority and reconnaissance and strike capabilities, in order to deprive the United States of its global projection ability. In response, the U.S. Air Force must accelerate change and explore new operational concepts. When defining the Air Force’s mission and capabilities, it must target competitors’ operational doctrines, warfare approaches, and force development strategies; and it must change its platform-centric view to focus on building capabilities against adversaries, change in response to enemies, and outperform them in capability development and deployment.⁷⁸

Second, it is leveraging asymmetric advantages and strengthening the counterattack role of submarines. Lyle Goldstein maintains that the PLA has now significantly diminished the decisive advantage of U.S. forces in underwater operations.⁷⁹ Against this background, in addition to conventional means such as expanding the size of the navy in the Western Pacific, accelerating the development of new military technologies, and innovating operational concepts,⁸⁰ the U.S. Navy is attempting to leverage asymmetric advantages, and could rely on a strong submarine force to counter China if a war were to break out. U.S. attack submarines and strategic nuclear submarines are both at world-leading levels. The Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarine, the Seawolf-class attack submarine, and the Virginia-class attack submarine all have powerful deterrence capabilities, and the Columbia-class strategic nuclear submarine currently under construction is even more technologically advanced. These forces could form a powerful deterrent against China. Although China’s submarine silencing technology has made huge progress, it is still difficult to fully penetrate the area search of U.S. and Japanese anti-submarine forces, thus allowing the United States to gain a tremendous asymmetric advantage and enhance its deterrence capability.

And third, it is enhancing anti-landing operation capabilities. In a fundamental sense, the U.S. forward defense hinges on whether the United States can enter the battlefield successfully, and its key lies in solving the U.S. military’s troop deployment problem.⁸¹ When an adversary launches a landing operation, the United States must have the ability to enter the battlefield and prevent the adversary from occupying the area in question. In the view of some U.S. policy analysts, the United States should adopt a “porcupine” strategy on the Taiwan issue, arming the Taiwanese authorities to prevent mainland China from conducting an amphibious landing, and attempting to inflict heavy casualties on China to buy time for the U.S. to intervene in the Taiwan issue.⁸² Judging from U.S. arms sales to Taiwan for some time past, the U.S. goal is very clear: to provide defensive weapons to Taiwan and strengthen anti-landing operations so as to maximize the cost of a Chinese landing operation.

To summarize the above discussion, the U.S. seeks to increase its conventional deterrence capabilities against China at both the defensive and offensive levels in order to offset China’s geographical strategic advantage. While U.S. technology and capabilities remain dominant, the reality of the Western Pacific’s remoteness from the U.S. homeland poses numerous problems for U.S. forces. Therefore, to enhance its conventional deterrence capabilities, the United States must adjust its concepts and circumvent the challenges posed by geopolitical shortcomings.

iii. Consolidating Asia-Pacific alliance relationships

Allies and partners have long played a central role in the United States’ Asia-Pacific strategy. Many of Trump’s foreign policies greatly hurt the credibility of U.S. policy, however.⁸³ Even the Trump administration was aware of this problem. On January 12, 2021, a declassified version of the U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific was released on the U.S. White House website. The document states that one of the top U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific is to “enhance the credibility and effectiveness of our alliances.”⁸⁴ After the Biden administration took office, it put repairing relations with allies at the forefront of its foreign policy. In a speech on May 26, 2022, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken used three key words—invest, align, and compete—to summarize the U.S. strategy toward China, which attempts to draw allies and partners into the competition with China.⁸⁵ In fact, while the Trump administration’s foreign policies had a political impact on alliances, the defense relationships between the United States and its allies were minimally affected, and were even strengthened to a large extent.

In terms of defense, the main focus of both the Trump and Biden administrations has been on three conventional strategies. The first is enhancing U.S. defense relationships with these countries, increasing strategic commitments to Asia-Pacific allies, and strengthening their confidence. The second is strengthening the defense capabilities of Japan, South Korea, and Australia, encouraging allies to take on more responsibility, further unleashing the strategic potential of allies and partners, and implementing an active denial strategy against China.⁸⁶ The third is focusing on multilateral defense cooperation. On one hand, it is focusing on the role of “quadrilateral” mechanisms. For example, the United States has actively upgraded the Malabar maritime military exercises into a joint U.S.-Japan-India-Australia military exercise. Based on these measures, the United States is attempting to strengthen defense cooperation with its allies and strategic partners to “show off its muscles” to China and demonstrate its deterrence capabilities and determination. On the other hand, it is strengthening its defense relations with the UK and Australia. On September 15, 2021, the United States, the UK, and Australia announced the establishment of a trilateral security partnership, further upgrading the security cooperation relationship between the three countries.

In the Western Pacific, allies and partners are crucial factors for the United States to enhance its conventional deterrence capabilities. In terms of strategic credibility, the United States must also maintain a balance between allies and adversaries, one that can appease allies and deter adversaries, but must also control allies and stabilize adversaries. To this end, the United States has actively strengthened its reassurances to allies. On April 24, 2018, U.S. Senators Cory Gardner (D-CT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Todd Young (R-IN) jointly launched the 2018 Asia Reassurance Initiative, which aims to enhance relations between the United States and its allies and partners.⁸⁷ On December 31 of that year, Trump signed the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018, reaffirming the strategic commitment to Asian countries, and thereby countering China.⁸⁸ The Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which the United States proposed in June 2020, has the same purpose, being a prescription for the current U.S. dilemma, both militarily and politically. Militarily, former USINDOPACOM commander Davidson has called for the United States to invest more than $27 billion over the next five years to enhance its defensive capabilities and resilience, and to prepare for the defense of the first two island chains. ⁸⁹The core issue is to strengthen U.S. forward deployments in the Western Pacific and enhance U.S. missile defense capabilities in the Pacific, thereby breaking through China’s “anti-access and area denial” capabilities, and ultimately achieving maritime suppression. Improving communication, interoperability, and information sharing with allies is therefore critical. Politically, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative has the deeper agenda of seeking to reaffirm commitments to allies in the Asia-Pacific region by focusing on four areas of work: (1) planning the defense budget around key priorities in the Indo-Pacific region, and increasing transparency and congressional oversight of the defense budget; (2) focusing resources on firmware capability gaps; (3) prioritizing cooperation with allies and partners; and (4) enhancing credible deterrence.⁹⁰

Taken together, the United States is attempting to use all the means at its disposal to enhance its deterrence capabilities against China by working on three fronts: strengthening defense S&T, enhancing denial deterrence capacity building, and improving relations with its Asia-Pacific allies. The United States has opted for a comprehensive program, with both enhancement of its own capabilities in some areas and reliance on allies in other areas, as well as a number of new ideas and approaches, showing the self-evolving trajectory of the United States over time in dealing with great power strategic competition.

IV. Impact of adjustments in U.S. conventional deterrence strategy against China

The power shift between China and the United States has now entered a critical period. Paul Kennedy, speaking about the rise of China, has argued that changes in global politics, military might, and economics mean that the United States has a new contender for global dominance.⁹¹ For China and the United States, the ebb and flow of conventional deterrence capabilities, and the shift in the offensive and defensive postures of conventional deterrence strategies, are bound to have a bearing on the overall dynamics of great power strategic competition, and are bound to have a significant impact on the world and regional security orders.

i. Accelerating the formation of a new strategic balance

The shift in the U.S. conventional deterrence concept and strategy has accelerated the mutual adjustment between China and the United States, and there are even hints that they are entering a security dilemma. For China and the United States, this is a turbulent period that is fundamentally characterized by rapid changes in the power of both countries. In the economic and technological fields, the United States is attempting to suppress and contain China’s further economic development through economic and trade wars and high technology wars. In the military field, the two countries have gradually come into tit-for-tat opposition in terms of force-building and operational concepts, and military competition has become increasingly evident. In particular, after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States has drawn historical analogies with the Taiwan issue, strengthened its determination to protect the Taiwan region militarily, and accelerated the pace of increases in military deployments. In this context, the accelerated formation of a new strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region is manifested in three main ways.

First, China and the United States are adjusting their strategic thinking, and significant shifts in their strategic perceptions of each other are taking place. The United States’ mindset toward China is relatively complex, exaggerating the Chinese “threat” while also believing that China underestimates U.S. strength. This reflects the multidimensional perspective of U.S. strategic assessments of China over the past few years, and demonstrates the difficulties major powers in strategic competition have in making accurate assessments. Of course, we must also note that at present the United States has completed its strategic assessment of China. The period of strategic anxiety has passed as well, to be followed by a relatively stable strategic competition track. China’s perception of the United States has also undergone a major transformation. Having experienced the U.S.-China trade war and high-tech war, and weathered U.S. economic sanctions and coercive diplomacy, China has turned the corner on its mentality of fearing the United States, and its strategic confidence is gradually rising. For both China and the United States, the relationship between coercive threats and “reassurances” in conventional strategic deterrence has gradually become unbalanced. According to Thomas C. Schelling, coercive threats in deterrence require corresponding “reassurances” in order to function better.⁹² At present, the “reassurances” on core issues between China and the United States have shrunk and coercive threats have risen,⁹³ making the imbalance in deterrence a key cause of strategic instability between China and the United States.

Second, the strategic plans of China and the United States are also being adjusted, and there are signs that overall strategies are being replaced with local strategies. The Taiwan issue is at the center of capacity building and strategic planning for conventional deterrence in both China and the United States. Although there are still other important issues between the two countries in various political, economic, and security areas, such as high-tech competition, human rights issues, and the COVID-19 epidemic, the Taiwan issue is currently attracting the most attention, and the replacement of overall strategies with local strategies has become an important and dangerous trend in the strategic competition between China and the United States. On specific issues, the difficulties facing both countries are specific, obvious, and very much unresolved. As some scholars have pointed out, once a specific direction is involved, they face difficult issues such as how high a price can they afford to pay in the Taiwan Strait, and how their military objectives in the South China Sea should be defined.⁹⁴ When the space for strategic options between China and the United States shrinks or policy options are reduced, such difficult choices will be the first questions considered before a crisis erupts. The situation facing the United States and China on Taiwan has worsened since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Third, major U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region are worried about the development of China’s conventional deterrence. They are not only trying to strengthen their own defense capabilities, but are also eager for stronger U.S. security commitments. To deter China, Japan has increased its defense spending. In December 2020, the Japanese Cabinet decided to strengthen deterrence by developing new cruise missiles to counter the so-called potential “threats” from China and North Korea.⁹⁵ Former Japanese defense minister Gen Nakatani has said that Japan’s main concern is China’s growing military power, and that the Japan-U.S. alliance should strengthen vigilance, surveillance, and deterrence through joint U.S.-Japan operations. ⁹⁶ The Suga Yoshihide administration has repeatedly voiced its concern about “the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” South Korea is highly dependent on China economically, and it also looks to China for help on the North Korean nuclear issue. As a result, it expects good relations between China and the United States. As one South Korean official put it, “South Korea is an ally of the United States, but it also maintains a strategic partnership with China. It would be extremely difficult for Seoul to either adopt a pro-U.S. balancing strategy or follow China’s rise.”⁹⁷ Yet the inauguration of Yoon Seok-yeol as South Korean president has changed this trend, as he is filled with worries about China and prefers to follow the United States. Australia has become a pawn and point-man of U.S. efforts to contain China, making irresponsible accusations against China on the South China Sea, human rights, and COVID-19 traceability issues. On security issues, the rapid quantitative and qualitative increase in Chinese military power has alarmed Australia and been a cause of pressure and fear for its policymakers.⁹⁸ In May 2021, the Australian government announced that it would invest $212 billion in defense spending over the next decade to upgrade bases and purchase new weapons, so as to enhance Australia’s deterrence and combat capabilities.⁹⁹

ii. Pushing China to adjust its nuclear strategy

Changes in U.S. and Chinese conventional deterrence capabilities have also pushed the United States to consider nuclear and conventional forces in an integrated manner.¹⁰⁰ The main purpose of U.S. nuclear strategy adjustment is to deal with strategic competition among powers and possible future conflicts with them. Adjustments in the United States’ nuclear strategy have, in turn, pushed China to rethink its own nuclear forces and nuclear strategy. China has long maintained a minimal nuclear deterrent with smaller nuclear weapons. There have been some new developments, however. On May 8, 2020, on Weibo, Hu Xijin, who was then editor-in-chief of the Global Times, called for China to increase its nuclear weapons to 1,000. This sparked a debate about whether China should increase its nuclear weapons and where China’s nuclear strategy should go from here. Some scholars disagree with Hu Xijin’s views. Li Bin argues that “the number of nuclear weapons needed is a very significant issue concerning national security, and we should do this calculation with great caution.”¹⁰¹ Zhao Tong also suggests that “the kind and size of nuclear arsenal China should maintain requires a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the many capabilities of different types of nuclear weapons, such as their maneuverability, destruction resistance, type of reaction, and penetrating capability. At the same time, a comprehensive comparison must be made of potential adversaries’ technologies and deficiencies in various capabilities such as reconnaissance, strike, damage assessment, and defense.”¹⁰²

This policy debate is easy to understand when it is placed within the framework of U.S.-China strategic competition, especially when the focus is on the Taiwan issue. On the issue of China increasing its nuclear arsenal, proponents and opponents proceed from different starting points. Proponents are more likely to see strategic challenges for China in the future over the Taiwan issue. They see that China’s nuclear forces lag considerably behind those of the United States, and that there are shortcomings in terms of building deterrence against the United States. They believe that the U.S. deterrence strategy and suppressive measures against China have whittled away the basis of China’s policy of maintaining a minimum nuclear deterrent. If China is to reunify Taiwan, increasing nuclear weapons is the inevitable choice. The Global Times has editorialized that it was the United States that triggered China’s sense of urgency on strengthening its nuclear deterrence, and argued that “China’s strength-building must convince Washington that, in the event of a war on China’s doorstep, they will never be able to win.”¹⁰³ Thus, this line of thinking takes the resolution of the Taiwan issue as the starting point for thinking about nuclear strategy, and is based more on political logic. Opponents start more from the logic of professionalism, and advocate using professional measurements to determine the number of nuclear weapons. Their basic argument is that China does not need to over-elevate the Taiwan issue, and that maintaining a minimum nuclear deterrent is a least-cost option that is also sufficient for safeguarding China’s current national security.

In terms of strategic planning, China is indeed also making strategic adjustments at its own pace. The Proposal of the CCP Central Committee on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and Visionary Goals for 2035 clearly states that it will “accelerate military organizational form modernization, deepen reform of the national defense and military forces, promote a revolution in military management, accelerate the transformation and construction of military and armed police forces, expand the strategic forces and new quality combat forces for new domains with a new character, build a high-level strategic deterrence and joint warfare system, and strengthen the joint training, joint support, and joint application of military forces.”¹⁰⁴ Improving China’s conventional and nuclear deterrence capabilities is in line with the requirement to persevere in our great struggle now that we face changes unseen in a century. Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated, “We must adhere to the organic unity of political security, people’s security, and the supremacy of national interests, dare to struggle as well as be good at it, and strengthen ourselves comprehensively, especially by enhancing the strength of deterrence.”¹⁰⁵

In terms of practical policies, China is also making important strategic adjustments. On one hand, China is steadily increasing the number of nuclear weapons. According to the latest estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China had 350 nuclear warheads as of January 2021, an increase of 30 from 2020;¹⁰⁶ on the other hand, China is also improving its combat systems and enhancing the survivability of its nuclear weapons. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, China may be building nearly 300 new nuclear missile silos. The increase in the number of nuclear missile silos means that China’s nuclear deterrence is moving from a minimum to a medium-level nuclear deterrent.¹⁰⁷ China is also working on its combat readiness and operational concepts. It is improving the mobility and survivability of its delivery systems, and it has made strides in road-mobile ICBMs, solid-fuel ICBMs, strategic bombers, and ballistic missile submarines. A report from CSIS maintains that the DF-41 ICBM has a range of 15,000 km, can carry up to ten individually guided warheads, and can be deployed in three ways: road-mobile platforms, rail-mobile platforms, and hardened silos, greatly increasing China’s nuclear deterrence capability against the United States.¹⁰⁸

iii. Development trends that affect the arms control system

The improvement in Chinese and U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities will affect the development of the global arms control system. The progress of China’s conventional forces, especially the improvement of missile technology and strength, and its rising “anti-access and regional denial” capabilities, have caused the distribution of conventional forces in the Western Pacific region to develop in a direction favorable to China. As a result, the United States is attempting to adjust its arms control strategy and release more strategic dividends to offset China’s progress. This will have long-term implications for the arms control system.

First, the global arms control system is accelerating toward disintegration. The Trump administration withdrew from the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, and since the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002, that left only the New START Treaty signed between the United States and Russia in 2011. Despite the Biden administration’s renewal of the New START Treaty, “the era of triumphant advances on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation issues is over, and all the Biden administration has done is at best to prolong the life of arms control mechanisms that are ‘obsolete’ in America’s mind.”¹⁰⁹

Second, it provides a pretext for the United States to demand that China participate in new arms control negotiations. Requiring China to participate in arms control negotiations is a very good policy tool that the United States can use to suppress China, whether China participates or not. If China does not participate in arms control negotiations, the United States will put pressure on China. On June 8, 2020, Marshall Billinglsea, then the chief U.S. arms control negotiator, said that the United States and Russia had invited China to arms control negotiations as a way to pressure China.¹¹⁰ If China participates in arms control negotiations, the United States will constrain China through a new treaty, disrupting the pace of China’s military modernization and slowing the pace of China’s efforts to catch up with U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities.

Third, it exacerbates nuclear proliferation risks. Australia, the UK, and the United States signed an agreement on September 15, 2021, announcing the establishment of a “Trilateral Security Partnership.” Australia unilaterally broke a $66 billion contract with France for conventional submarines and plans to build eight nuclear attack submarines with technical assistance from the UK and the United States. These submarines will have a longer range, be harder to detect, have a greater missile payload, a greater strike range, and be better able to gather intelligence and deploy special forces. This will greatly increase the power of Australia and the United States to deter China. Australia, the UK, and the United States have taken full advantage of loopholes in established international treaties, exacerbating nuclear proliferation risks. A potential proliferator could use a naval reactor program as a cover for developing nuclear weapons. The reactors used in U.S. nuclear submarines require highly enriched uranium, and Australia’s mastery of this capability would accelerate the proliferation of nuclear infrastructure. Australia’s actions could spur Japan, South Korea, and others to attempt to possess nuclear submarines and even seek nuclear weapons. In order to enhance its own deterrence capabilities, the United States does not hesitate to license U.S. technology to its allies to produce nuclear-powered submarines and long-range missiles. This will no doubt open Pandora’s box, and the negative effects will be long-lasting.

Conclusion

Within the framework of U.S.-China strategic competition, the United States is making timely strategic adjustments to enhance its ability to deter China. This is a stress reaction to the shift in power. China should correctly view the dynamic changes in the conventional deterrence capabilities of both countries and should not exaggerate the decline in U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities. The topic of whether the United States is in decline is not new, and while there is a consensus that it is in relative decline, this kind of discussion is often misleading. For one thing, the sources of power are diverse, and making accurate assessments is a very difficult task. In power comparisons between China and the United States, there are multiple dimensions besides the economic dimension, including alliances and the military and technological dimensions, making it difficult to accurately assess the comparison at any given stage. U.S.-China competition may be in a state where the two alternate in rising and leading, and it is wrong to read too much into the decline in U.S. conventional deterrence capabilities. Second, the United States still maintains a significant advantage over China, and one should have a sober awareness of this. Looking back at the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War, the ebb and flow of strength and strategic offensive and defensive postures were often somewhere between real and imaginary, so it is important to clarify their underlying strategic intent. Looking solely at policies themselves often leads to excessive anxiety. The United States has recently claimed a decline in its conventional deterrence capabilities. The reasons behind this are very complex, but overall there are three main reasons: (1) to play up the “China threat” and intentionally depict China as a competitor; (2) to mobilize domestic forces in an attempt to build more of a social consensus; and (3) to obtain more military spending and win more resources for the military. This has happened many times in history, the classic example being the “missile gap” rhetoric that emerged in the United States after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Therefore, when such arguments appear in the U.S.-China strategic competition, one should not blithely get drawn in by them, but should rather focus on deeper factors. It is important to note that the U.S. containment of China is not a choice of tools, but a choice of a toolbox. The United States picks different toolboxes for different topics. In observing the U.S. choice of a toolbox, one should also focus on the continuity of its policies. In essence, there is little difference between the Biden administration’s and the Trump administration’s strategies for containing China. This also reflects the fact that the time factor plays a key role in the U.S. foreign policy framework: The United States is trying to seize the opportunity to contain China as early as possible. China should also realize that the strategic competition between the United States and China will be long-term, and only a steady course will take us far.