Sanjana Gogna_An Indian Perspective on China's.indd

The gradually embittering relations resulted in the withholding of the prototype of the atomic bomb developed by the Chinese scientists with the help of the Soviet scientists in Moscow by the Soviet Union. [...] Sun Tzu in The Art of War wrote: “The highest form of generalship is to thwart the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the alliance of the enemy’s forces; the next is to attack the enemy’s army in the field, and the worst of all is to besiege cities.” Thus, while nuclear weapons seemed to alter the methods of combat, the Chinese leadership continued to believe that they serve no war-fightin. [...] China’s aim is to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear powers and to eliminate nuclear weapons.  … The development of nuclear weapons by China is for defence and for protecting the Chinese people from the danger of the US’ launching a nuclear war. [...] Under the new historical conditions, it is still the nation’s strategy, and the basic goal of the nuclear struggle to better exercise the existential function of nuclear weapons and to contain nuclear threats and the outbreak of nuclear war.7 In the assessments by Lewis and Litai, China’s pursuit of “deterrence of a nuclear war and limited nuclear retaliation,” is governed by the following five pr. [...] In 1985, the CMC outlined the plans for the second generation, where the JL-2 and DF-21 were to replace the DF-3; the DF-31 and the JL-3 were to replace the DF-4; and the DF-41 was to replace DF-5.