from the New York Times, 2001-Sep-2, by David E. Sanger:

U.S. to Tell China It Will Not Object to Missile Buildup

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 - The Bush administration, seeking to overcome Chinese objections to its missile defense program, intends to tell Chinese officials that it has no objections to the country's plans to build up its relatively small fleet of nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States, according to senior administration officials.

One senior official said that, in the future, the United States and China may discuss resuming underground nuclear tests if they are needed to assure the safety and reliability of their arsenals.

Such a move, however, might also allow China to improve the quality of its nuclear warheads and lead to the end of a worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing.

Both messages mark a significant reversal from previous American policy. For years the United States has discouraged China and all other nations from increasing the size or capability of their nuclear arsenals, and from nuclear tests of any kind.

The purpose of the new approach, administration officials say, is to convince China that the administration's plans for a missile shield are not aimed at undercutting China's relatively small nuclear arsenal, but rather intended to counter threats from so-called rogue states.

The administration decided on the reversals during a review this summer by officials preparing for Mr. Bush's trip to China next month. The president's top advisers concluded that China's nuclear modernization is inevitable in any case and that they might as well gain advantage by acquiescing in it.

"We know the Chinese will enhance their nuclear capability anyway, and we are going to say to them, `We're not going to tell you not to do it,' " one senior administration official deeply involved in formulating the strategy said in an interview last week. "Why panic? They are modernizing anyway."

Currently, Beijing has a fleet of fewer than two dozen nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States, as part of a minimal deterrent that Mao created in the 1950's and 1960's. China is now developing mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be far more likely to withstand a first nuclear strike to replace those aging missiles.

Though Beijing has long planned to build up its arsenal, outside experts and a review last year by the Central Intelligence Agency have warned that an American missile shield could prompt China to expand its deterrent even further, possibly setting off an arms race across Asia.

And a report to Congress last year noted that intelligence officials predicted in 1999 that by 2015 China was likely to have " `a few tens' of missiles with smaller nuclear warheads" that could hit the United States.

One of those new missiles, the DF- 31, may be able to reach northwestern edges of the United States, though it is designed primarily to hit Russia and Asia; the longer-range DF-41, still under development, could reach much of the continental United States.

Some in the Bush administration now believe that the Chinese buildup may be larger - and that by acquiescing to it, Washington may defuse objections to its missile defense plans. If the missile defense plan is causing any change in Chinese nuclear strategy, administration officials insisted in interviews, it is only at the margins.

"At most, missile defense might speed up their program slightly, or prompt them to build a few more missiles," one official insisted. "But they are on that path anyway, and may add only modestly to it."

A number of China experts disagree. Robert A. Manning of the Council on Foreign Relations, who published a lengthy study last year of China's nuclear ability, said on Friday: "It's hard for me to accept the idea that what we do is totally irrelevant. If you are a Chinese military planner, your architecture and force structure depend on what the United States is doing, first and foremost."

In an interview last month with the publisher, editors and reporters of The New York Times, China's president, Jiang Zemin, deflected a question about China's response to the missile defense plan and suggested that his visitors knew more about the size and abilities of China's fleet than he did. "I hope he was joking," one of Mr. Bush's top aides said.

As for the ban on nuclear testing, both the United States and China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the Bush administration has made clear that it wants that accord to remain in indefinite limbo in the Senate, which rejected it two years ago.

One senior official said this week that China may, in future years, be given the go-ahead by the United States to resume underground tests of its nuclear weapons, and suggested that the United States might also someday want to resume such testing.

"We don't see the need for any tests, by anyone, in the near future," the official said. "But there may, at some point, be a need by both countries to make sure that their warheads are safe and reliable."

Whether the administration's new approach to China is considered a change in American policy or simply, as the administration insists, a recognition of nuclear reality, the implications could be enormous.

At home, Mr. Bush risks angering the right wing of his own party, which has long protested any buildup in Chinese arms.

And Democratic critics of the missile defense plan, like Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have also argued that even before the technology for a missile shield is proven, Mr. Bush may set off an arms race that could include China as well as the world's newest nuclear states, India and Pakistan.

"The question is, can you accept another 50 or 60 nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States at a time that Americans believe that they are no longer being targeted?" asked Bates Gill, an expert in Chinese nuclear strategy at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Gill, who says he believes the administration is "right to acknowledge the practical inevitability" of the modernization of Chinese nuclear forces, also warns of a possible side effect should China incorporate new technologies to defeat the missile shield.

"We shouldn't be sanguine about the possibility of China proliferating antimissile defense technology in the future, if the U.S.-China relationship goes badly," he said. "That could include basic decoy and shrouding technology for Pakistan, and potentially Iran and North Korea."

The new American stance could also have a major impact on the nuclear politics of Taiwan and Japan. Every major nuclear advance on the mainland leads to renewed calls in Taiwan for an independent nuclear force - a movement that the United States quashed during the cold war. American intelligence agencies keep a close eye on Taiwan to make sure its program is not resuscitated.

As the only country ever to have suffered the devastation of nuclear attacks, Japan has long renounced nuclear weapons, and it is almost inconceivable that it would reverse that policy as long as it can depend on American nuclear protection.

But Japanese officials have said privately that while they endorse missile shield research, they worry that it would only encourage China to speed its positioning of both medium- and long-range nuclear missiles. They fear that any placement of theater missile defenses in Japan - where 60,000 American forces are based - could provoke China to increase the number of weapons targeted there.

In interviews, administration officials dismiss the argument that the missile defense would set off any kind of arms race in Asia.

"The Indians know what the Chinese are doing, and so does everyone else," a senior administration official said. "If we canceled the whole missile defense program tomorrow morning, China would still build more and better missiles, and other countries would figure out their response."

Until now, there have been few discussions between China and the Bush administration about missile defenses.

In the late spring, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was sent to Beijing to give a rough outline of the administration's plans to his Chinese counterparts.

Instead, the administration's focus has been on talking to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and winning his agreement to abandon the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which bars most of the tests for a missile shield that Mr. Bush hopes to begin in Alaska next year.

American officials have raised with Mr. Putin and his aides the possibility that Russia could contribute to the missile shield project, and that some of its technology might be incorporated in it.

So far, though, that has not resulted in any significant progress in the talks. American officials speculate that serious negotiations will not begin until Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld comes up with a plan for deep, mutual reductions in American and Russian forces.

But there have been no equivalent conversations with China. That will have to change now that Mr. Bush's trip is only six weeks away. Mr. Bush has made it clear he plans to spend a considerable amount of time on that trip trying to allay Chinese fears about his plans, much as he has tried, with mixed success, in Europe.

But because China has such a minimal deterrent, he cannot make the kind of offer that he has made to Russia for a joint reduction of nuclear forces. The offer to allow China to improve its nuclear fleet - and perhaps test it - amounts to what one senior defense official calls "the incentive package" for the Chinese leadership and its military.