Dangerous Confidence?: Chinese Views on Nuclear Escalation
Fiona S. Cunningham, M. Taylor Fravel
Abstract
Chinese views of nuclear escalation are key to assessing the potential for nuclear escalation in a crisis or armed conflict between the United States and China, but they have not been examined systematically. A review of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with members of China’s strategic community suggest that China is skeptical that nuclear escalation could be controlled once nuclear weapons are used and, thus, leaders would be restrained from pursuing even limited use. These views are reflected in China’s nuclear operational doctrine (which outlines plans for retaliatory strikes only and lacks any clear plans for limited nuclear use) and its force structure (which lacks tactical nuclear weapons). The long-standing decoupling of Chinese nuclear and conventional strategy, organizational biases within China’s strategic community, and the availability of space, cyber, and conventional missile weapons as alternative sources of strategic leverage best explain Chinese views toward nuclear escalation. China’s confidence that a U.S.-China conflict would not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons may hamper its ability to identify nuclear escalation risks in such a scenario. Meanwhile, U.S. scholars and policymakers emphasize the risk of inadvertent escalation in a conflict with China, but they are more confident than their Chinese counterparts that the use of nuclear weapons could remain limited. When combined, these contrasting views could create pressure for a U.S.-China conflict to escalate rapidly into an unlimited nuclear war.
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Community Reviews
Ciaran Santiago
12/21/2025
As someone currently reading a large amount of theoretical literature concerning nuclear weapons, reading this paper helped me to realize how much of the research out there is cruft dating back to the Cold War Era that presupposes adversaries with intentions broadly similar to the United States or the USSR. If, like me, you think that China's goals are somewhat different in both scope and quality, then it obviously follows that they will think differently about how nuclear weapons can and should be used. Now, given the stakes of poor nuclear strategy, a little bit cruft in the spirit of maintaining Chesterton's Fence isn't the worst idea. However, if you think that a direct war with China is a serious possibility, then this paper is definitely worth reading, if only to get an idea of the lessons learned from a state that spent the past century doing drastically different things than the U.S. I don't always find myself agreeing with the conclusions that Chinese security experts have drawn from the past 80 or so years, but they can be a useful corrective for the information cascades inherent to a relatively narrow, but very important body of literature. Good stuff overall.