"A defense white paper released by China on April 16 has invited a debate over a shift in its nuclear policy, because this new paper, unlike previous editions, did not reiterate China's long-standing no-first-use nuclear weapons doctrine."

"If China abandons its no-first-use nuclear pledge, which has guided China's nuclear strategy since  its first nuclear test in 1964, it would severely undermine the global disarmament process, potentially preventing the U.S. and Russian from further reducing their nuclear arsenals and even encouraging the U.S. to expand its nuclear forces. Is China really changing its nuclear policy?"

"Although China has every intention of continuing nuclear energy development, in the aftermath of Fukushima it has approved a number of plans to enhance safety standards. All of them emphasize that the pace of growth should be controlled to minimize risk."

"President Barack Obama and Kim Jong-eun could end up confronting each other 'eyeball to eyeball', each with nuclear weapons on hair trigger, as president John F Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev did over five decades ago during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. However, the younger and less-experienced Kim of the smaller and isolated Kingdom might not behave as rationally as Khruschev."

"From China's perspective, the crisis is driven by Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear ambitions until it gets from the U.S. what it covets most: a reliable security assurance. This would mean an end to Washington's pursuit of regime change. If Washington does not move in this direction, Pyongyang will continue to escalate the crisis. Any resolution of the impasse has to address the reasonable security concerns of North Korea."

"North Korea has only a small supply of plutonium—material that it had stopped producing by 2008—and had more recently demonstrated an operational capability to enrich uranium, which would support a much larger arsenal of weapons given North Korea's huge deposits of natural uranium.... However, the seismic signals are useless in this regard. The question is, then, can the off-site environmental sampling analysis distinguish a plutonium explosion from a HEU explosion?"

Presentation at the 13th PIIC Beijing Seminar on International Security: Building a World of Sustainable Peace and Stability, Oct.31 – Nov.3, 2012, Beijing, China

China, like all nuclear weapon states, bears a responsibility to provide leadership in nuclear security issues. But China's strategy for securing its nuclear weapons -- and the complex of facilities where fissile material for weapons is fabricated and stored -- has so far remained largely opaque.

Since the New START Treaty entered into force on Feb. 5, 2011, concerns have grown about Chinese nuclear modernization. Some are concerned that China would reach nuclear parity with the United States as it cuts down its arsenal along with Russia. However, China’s nuclear arsenal and its modernization are constrained by its inventory of fissile materials, and most importantly by its nuclear policy—a no-first-use pledge and “minimum deterrence.”

Establishing modern, well-designed nuclear material protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) systems to secure nuclear material in China is very important to prevent against nuclear terrorism. At the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, Chinese President Hu Jintao made clearly commitments to strengthening nuclear security. This paper will assess China’s material protection, control, and accounting approaches, analyze existing regulations and administrative systems, and propose ways of strengthening them.