China has recently released its significant policy document, a White Paper, titled China’s Arms Control, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation in the New Era, building on the foundations of the 1995 and 2005 white papers. It talks about China’s nuclear posture, its commitment to a no-first-use (NFU) nuclear policy, and its support for multilateral arms control, while introducing geopolitical and technological emphases that can have regional and global impact, especially when seen in the context of South Asia.
The paper criticizes the great-power behaviour while giving a warning that hegemonism, power politics, and unilateralism pose a threat to the nuclear order, as it calls for them to be eliminated. It accentuates restraint, measured force levels, and controlled defense spending. It also mentions China’s nuclear policy by making NFU its rudimentary element, which is described as a “stable, consistent, and predictable” element of it. The paper also acknowledges that Chinese nuclear capabilities are being maintained at the “minimum levels required for national security,” while reaffirming that it does not seek any nuclear arms race, limiting testing, and supports increased disarmament measures.
When it comes to South Asia, the white paper delivers a dual message, one of reassurance and the other of strategic caution, having an impact on the India-Pakistan strategic equation. In this way, its broader strategic implications cannot be understated. By vehemently criticizing the United States’ (US) Golden Dome missile-defense program, the paper accuses Washington of overtures in the pursuit of “absolute security.” It also warns that Washington’s deployment of offensive systems across the Asia-Pacific and Europe, and its militarization of outer space, “severely threaten” global strategic stability. Therefore, Beijing issues a clear warning that it will “resolutely counter” any actions that are aimed at undermining its core interests, while framing its own military developments as responsive and defensive in nature.
Such a posture generates a cascading security effect. China’s sustained investments in advanced missile and air-defense capabilities, undertaken in response to the United States’ Golden Dome missile defense project, may be invoked by New Delhi as justification for accelerating its ongoing military and nuclear modernization programs. When coupled with India’s increasingly assertive strategic posture, these developments heighten perceived national security vulnerabilities in Islamabad and risk reinforcing destabilizing action–reaction dynamics in South Asia.
In this manner, China’s own defensive measures would impact regional strategic balance, thereby not only affecting Sino-India security dynamics but those between India and Pakistan as well. As Islamabad sees its credible minimum deterrence as Indian-centric, any acceleration in India’s already initiated modernization efforts would create a need for Islamabad to follow suit, initiating its own modernization efforts to ensure the preservation of a “minimum credible deterrence” against India. Projects like Golden Dome have a possibility of triggering a cascading effect, which would not only have regional implications but would also greatly hamper global strategic stability and erode existing deterrence frameworks by fueling arms competition at a time when they are already under tremendous strain due to bilateral tensions and the emergence of disruptive technologies and the militarization of new domains, which are increasingly questioning traditional deterrence models.
However, the white paper also introduces elements that can greatly impact the global arms control discourse, depending on the type of response it receives from other nuclear-armed states. This can help revamp ageing nonproliferation regimes, incorporate a wider and more diverse range of state actors, including developing nations, into normative deliberations, and facilitate the development of new governance frameworks for novel security challenges like cyber and space warfare. As can be seen from how countries are heavily investing in these domains, a recent example is that of Germany, which has announced a staggering $41 billion space militarization policy. Therefore, the collective response of the international community to these proposals will likely shape the necessary structural evolution of the nuclear order in the coming decades.
When it comes to South Asia, such developments present a complex scenario and a delicate strategic calculus, particularly as the world recently witnessed how both India and Pakistan engaged in a limited war earlier this year. Therefore, the future of regional strategic stability depends upon the advancement of strategic restraint dialogues and robust confidence-building measures. There should not be a failure to reconcile competitive security drives with cooperation, as this could entrench hostility, even within discussions ostensibly aimed at cooperation. In this way, the Chinese arms control white paper offers a substantive basis for dialogue, risk reduction, and norm development.
