The 1994 book The Intercalary August 1995, a fictional account of a surgical-strike invasion of Taiwan by China, sold a record 200,000 copies between August and December 1994. The huge sales volume reflected a growing sense of insecurity among Taiwan′s residents, despite a visitor′s observation months earlier that the two sides had “rarely been more peaceful.” In the latter half of 1994, China staged its largest military exercise in years and Taiwan followed suit as if in response. Concurrently, Taiwanese emigration reached a six-year peak, which many perceived to have resulted from residents fleeing in fear. By early 1995, some U.S. officials admitted publicly that one had to take seriously the threat that “the mainland could invade” Taiwan. This statement represents a shifting post-Cold War perception from marginalizing China′s attack on Taiwan almost as a non-issue to reckoning such conflict as a possibility bordering on probability. Beginning in late July 1995, China reinforced this shift by testing missiles and artilleries in waters with unprecedented proximity to Taiwan, imposing in effect a series of temporary blockades on the island.

Defence budgets have many components, and the way the various items in the budget are categorized differs from country to country.... The main reason for this is not the way the budget is drawn up, it is due to profound social, economic and political factors.

In this article I argue that China currently has the technical capacity to increase the size of its nuclear forces by about two to three times and to improve its operational flexibility.1 Whether it does so or not will depend primarily on four variables or constraints: trends in thinking about nuclear doctrine that justify these sorts of changes; the economic and technological resources available; China′s commitment to nuclear arms-related arms control conventions; and strategic and arms control decisions by the United States. I suggest that for the foreseeable future the variables relating to doctrine, economics/technology and Chinese arms control preferences are all relatively fixed or constant. That is, present trends in all three suggest a continuing will and ability to modernize Chinese nuclear forces. The last variable is somewhat less fixed, and thus may be the one that is most amenable to external manipulation.

In early 1975, in a speech to the cadres of the headquarters of the General Staff Department of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Deng Xiaoping delivered his blueprint for the military of the future. The radical restructuring of the military and its officer corps that it entailed was purportedly proposed by Mao Zedong himself. However, the fact that the speech was not made public until 1983, allegedly because it had been suppressed by the Gang of Four, makes it more likely that the architect of the reorganization, with its far-reaching implications for the PLA's officer corps, was Deng himself. Two decades later, at the close of the Deng era, it is important to examine the thrust of this document in assessing trends for the officer corps of the future.

China's rise as a major power constitutes one of the most significant strategic events of the post-Cold War period. Many policy-makers, strategists and scholars express significant concern over the implications of China's growing military and economic capabilities for the future security environment in Asia and beyond. Such concern derives in part from an anticipation of the systemic security problems that have historically accompanied the emergence of a new power. In the Chinese case, however, these anxieties are greatly compounded by the rapidity of internal change under way in China, the general lack of knowledge about Chinese strategic ambitions, the existence of many unresolved Chinese territorial claims, the intense suspicion and even hostility toward the West harboured by China's leadership, and China's internal political and social instabilities.

International attention is increasingly focusing on the modernization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). Discussions about the Chinese military have moved from intelligence circles and esoteric defence journals into the global media spotlight. Chinese moves in Burma and the South China Sea, continued nuclear testing, arms purchases and, exports, lack of budgetary transparency, increasing influence in elite politics and the political succession to Deng Xiaoping, and coercive pressure against Taiwan have all drawn attention to the PLA and have contributed to growing concerns about a muscular and assertive China.