The dragon is not as strong as is commonly thought

There is a habit, among too many people, here and abroad, to lazily categorise China as a superpower, implying parity and balance with the US. And yet the truth is that China is not a superpower – yet. It is true that, depending on how you calculate it, China has the second biggest or biggest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world (most experts go for second biggest, after the US). But the actual wealth (but not the development) of a society is better indicated by GDP per capita (although very unequal societies can have very high GDPs per capita and high levels of poverty). By this measure, according to International Monetary Fund projections issued in October last year, China does not feature in the Top 50 of countries, whether the per capita GDP is calculated in nominal terms or purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. In fact, in nominal terms, China ranks 60th and in PPP terms, 75th (out of 192 countries and territories). China is a lot poorer than it superficially appears to be. This is not to deny the incredible economic progress the country has made over the past 25 years, but a reminder that it started from a very low base and still has a long way to go.

More importantly, however, ‘superpower’ is not a primarily economic concept (although an economic base is important); it was and is primarily a political-military concept. The classic superpowers were the US and the Soviet Union during the decades of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was not famed for its economic strength. There was, in fact, a joke in the early 1980s that the Soviet Union was Upper Volta with rockets (Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso in 1984). Famously, the Soviet Union drove itself into bankruptcy trying to maintain a military machine. Up till now, China has been determined not to repeat that mistake.

Now, there is no question that China is a major power. It is undoubtedly one of the most important powers in the world today. But it is still not on a par with the US. To deal first with the ultimate determinator of power today, nuclear weapons, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) estimated (in its recently published ‘Sipri Yearbook 2019’) that, in January this year, China possessed a total of 290 nuclear warheads. In comparison, the US had 6 185 and Russia had 6 500. More strikingly, France was estimated to possess 300 nuclear warheads – more than China! (The UK had 200, India had an estimated 130 to 140, Pakistan estimated at 150 to 160, Israel estimated at 80 to 90, and North Korea estimated at 20 to 30.)

In the real world, there are all sorts of complications in determining actual nuclear strength. Some countries still have tactical nuclear weapons as well as strategic ones, while others just have strategic systems (for example, some 50 of France’s warheads are mounted on tactical systems, while Britain only has strategic systems). Nuclear warheads are useless without delivery systems, and delivery systems need to be ‘credible’ – that is, have a very high chance of surviving a surprise enemy attack and an even higher chance of penetrating any enemy defences. The most credible nuclear weapons systems are ballistic missiles launched from nuclear- powered submarines (the latter known, in naval abbreviation, as SSBNs). And, as nuclear submarines can move anywhere around the oceans and seas of the world, they can hit anywhere on the planet. Britain’s nuclear forces are entirely submarine-based, and thus possess very high credibility indeed.

In June last year, the ‘Nuclear Notebook’ of the ‘Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ estimated that 186 of China’s nuclear warheads were mounted on 120 land-based missiles, but only 75 to 100 of these were intercontinental ballistic missiles (20 of them in silos, the rest road-mobile on large transporter-erector-launcher lorries), with the rest being intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and medium range ballistic missiles. China continues to develop and deploy IRBMs, which cannot reach the continental US. China has four SSBNs (carrying 48 ballistic missiles between them) but they are known to be noisy (and so easy to detect) and thus cannot be deployed away from secure home waters, making them purely regional weapons. China also deploys nuclear weapons on bombers – the least credible delivery system of all (and China’s only strategic bomber type, the Xian H-6, is a subsonic 1950s design which has absolutely no credibility at all, even when armed with air-to-surface missiles, in a scenario involving the US).

Overall, China has a decently credible, minimum level nuclear deterrent, with its backbone being 55 to 80 road-mobile (and so difficult to find and hit) IRBMs. In practice, taking numbers and credibility and intercontinental range into account, China’s global nuclear deterrent capability is on a par with that of France and the UK.

In conventional military terms, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA – the term covers all of China’s armed forces, not just the army) is orientated for regional operations, not global ones. A striking example of this is that the PLA Air Force reportedly possesses only 13 air-to-air refuelling tankers, of which ten are converted H-6 bombers (HY-6) with limited fuel transfer capacity (37 000 kg) and only three are wide-body tankers (Russian Il-78MPs) with large fuel transfer capacity (100 000 kg). The US Air Force has 396 Boeing KC-135s each capable of transferring a maximum of 91 000 kg of fuel, plus 59 Boeing KC-10 wide-body tankers each with a maximum fuel load of 160 000 kg – that is superpower level capacity.

Nevertheless, at the regional level (East Asia/South-East Asia/South Asia), China is very powerful indeed. In this very important part of the globe, China can bring all its nuclear and conventional forces to bear. In this sphere, it can indeed claim to be, overall, on a par with the US (however, the Americans still have many more nuclear weapons available). But not beyond this region.

Of course, China is strengthening its military capabilities all the time, both nuclear and conventional. And its continually growing economy generates greater resources for military modernisation and, in high-technology areas, expansion. So it is only a matter of time before China truly becomes a superpower – or so it would seem. In reality, there are complications, and big ones. But that is a topic for another time.