China and Global Nuclear Order: From Estrangement to Active Engagement

摘要

China's elaborate September 2015 military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War allowed Beijing to showcase some of its newest high-tech weapons, including some of China's most advanced nuclear missiles. This display of China's growing strategic capabilities, along with Beijing's relevance to the North Korea and Iran nuclear issues, highlights the need for more scholarly attention to be devoted to the subject of Chinese nuclear arms control and nonproliferation policy. Some excellent work has already been done in this area, including Evan Medeiros, Reluctant Restraint: The Evolution of China's Nonproliferation Policies and Practices, 1980-2004 (Stanford University Press, 2007), Jeffrey Lewis, The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (MIT Press, 2007) and Alastair Iain Johnston, Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000 (Princeton University Press, 2008). Such work has explored Beijing's thinking about nuclear force modernization and nuclear deterrence, as well as its arms control and nonproliferation policies. Yet the fact that some of these studies are now almost a decade old - and that China's capabilities have been growing and its influence rising since these books were published - underscores the importance of revisiting these important and evolving subjects.