China's Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age (review)

502 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 John W. Lewis and Xue Litai. China's Strategie Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the NuclearAge. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. ix, 393 pp. Hardcover $45.00. Once again, Lewis and Xue have provided us with yet another superb volume in their series examining the role ofnuclear weapons in the development ofChina's defense and security policies. Uncertain Partners (1993), authored with Sergei Goncharov, detailed the evolution of the Sino-Soviet alliance and the origins of the Korean War in China's pre-nuclear period; China Builds the Bomb (1988) analyzed the development of China's nuclear weapons program; and this latest volume brings the estimable research and analytical skills of these two scholars to the final component of the strategic triad: the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) and its solid-fueled missiles. It is a complex work in which the dominant theme is that oftechnology in collision with the political chaos created by Mao Zedong's ruinous political campaigns. Interwoven with this thesis are detailed analyses ofthe organizational patterns ofresearch and development for the SSBN and its sister program for the nuclear-powered torpedo attack submarine (SSN), linked to questions of security and strategy, the consequences of factional and personal disputes, and the twenty-five years ofturmoil brought about by Mao Zedong's drive for a revolutionary society. Using an extensive array ofprimary sources, including Chinese military publications , Party histories, biographies, and memoirs, Lewis and Xue have provided far more than a detailed history of the development and acquisition ofChina's first SSBN and its missiles. Their work contributes extremely valuable detail on the politics and the policy processes of China's nuclear-weapons programs and on the destructive consequences of the Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on the body of scientists and technical specialists in China, who endured great personal suffering as they continued their work on critical national defense projects under intolerable conditions. These circumstances were the direct result not only of Mao's campaigns against intellectuals, but also ofhis strategic plan for the "Third Line," which relocated defense industries and research and development facilities deep into the interior of China, and ofhis policies toward the Soviet Union and his personal contempt for Nikita Khrushchev— which contributed to the breach in Sino-Soviet relations and the era of unwanted self-reliance, during which China's strategic-weapons programs were developed.© 1995 by University ? js mjs balance ofpeople and politics, combined with detailed analyses ofweapof awai ? Pressons development and the organizational and administrative structure that gave birth to the SSBN and its missiles that brings life to this study. Although, as the authors readily admit, there is much that remains unclear, Lewis and Xue have Reviews 503 provided yet another pafhfinding examination ofthe personalities and policy processes in China's most secretive policy area—national defense. This is a tale ofideological Luddites who seek to disable the linkage between ideas and technology in the quest for security in a nuclear age. Thus, the deployment of China's strategic nuclear triad did not evolve through systematic analyses of the requirements for minimal deterrence or limited retaliation, for there were no overarching concepts of strategy guiding the development ofthe SSBN and its missiles. The triad came into existence because it was a desired capability, not because it was prescribed by a sophisticated doctrine and strategy for nuclear forces. The only guidance came from Mao Zedong's infinitely flexible concept of People's War, to which "under modern conditions" was added by Marshal Ye Jianying in 1959, along with the principle of"active defense." The warheads and their delivery systems were developed, tested, and deployed, with doctrine and strategy falling almost accidentally into place; the weapons themselves silently signified "minimal deterrence" as they assumed their deadly vigil. What drove the strategic-weapons programs was not a sophisticated doctrine but a desire to avoid the condition where an adversary could coerce Beijing through the threat of nuclear force—nuclear blackmail. Thus, China's weapons system at first emerged not as a "deterrent," for this term was initially condemned as a strategy employed by the nuclear superpowers...