Manufactured Deterrence: Bridging China’s Nuclear Strategy and Practice

Abstract China openly pursues a nuclear strategy of assured retaliation, but in reality, it has not achieved a credible second-strike capability. This article notes a gap between China’s declaratory strategy and actual deterrence practice. It bridges the gap by proposing a new concept—manufactured deterrence—to explain how China compensates for its insufficient capabilities with practices to achieve deterrence. On the material basis of second-strike latency, Beijing deliberately employs opaqueness and ambiguity to generate and strengthen uncertainty in adversary counterforce planning, therefore producing deterrent power. Manufactured deterrence is not an intentional strategy, but the temporary and suboptimal consequence of China implementing its stated strategy. It captures the inadequate state of China’s second-strike capability and hints itself as a stopgap practice. In the context of heightening great power competition, China is destined to materialize assured retaliation by increasing its arsenal to a level at which its warhead redundancy problem is solved. Beijing’s nuclear modernization is not a doctrinal shift but an effort to address the gap between its declaratory strategy and manufactured deterrence. Therefore, acknowledging China’s manufactured deterrence practice is the starting point for meaningful arms control talks between Washington and Beijing.