China's engagement with global nuclear order since 1949

This thesis explores China’s engagement with global nuclear order since 1949. In particular, China’s engagement refers to the process of creating, consolidating and maintaining nuclear order by assessing the methods it adopts, as well as the motivations behind its policy and the implications of its actions for global nuclear order. Overall, it is argued that in the 1950s and 1960s, even before nuclear order existed, China had an inadvertent hand in its creation, contributing to American and Soviet thinking about how best to build an order, as well as offering its own ideas based on socialist proliferation. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, China engaged in the process of consolidating nuclear order by developing alternative thinking on nuclear deterrence that challenged mainstream strategies such as mutual assured destruction; and by joining important institutions, for instance the Non Proliferation Treaty in 1992 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. In addition, during this period, China began to promote a new vision for nuclear order: that of a more representative order. China’s current engagement, at a time when global nuclear order is perceived by many to be under significant strain, is less clear: while China remains committed to key global nuclear institutions and a minimal nuclear strategy; Beijing is also wary of deeper commitments, in particular multilateral arms control processes that might unfairly constrain its nuclear force capabilities relative to other nuclear weapons states.