Analysis & Opinions

As the Biden administration and Congress struggle to get their heads around the challenge posed by China today, they should reflect on lessons learned in America’s success in winning the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Just because fundamental and irresolvable differences in values and interests compel the United States and China to be formidable rivals does not mean a hot war is a viable option.

Graham Allison is interviewed about U.S.-China relations by the Global Macro Research Team for a Goldman Sachs publication.

A quarter-century ago, China conducted what it called “missile tests” bracketing the island of Taiwan to deter it from a move toward independence by demonstrating that China could cut Taiwan’s ocean lifelines. In response, in a show of superiority that forced China to back down, the United States deployed two aircraft carriers to Taiwan’s adjacent waters. If China were to repeat the same missile tests today, it is highly unlikely that the United States would respond as it did in 1996. If U.S. carriers moved that close to the Chinese mainland now, they could be sunk by the DF-21 and DF-26 missiles that China has since developed and deployed. This article presents three major theses concerning the military rivalry between China and the United States in this century.

Nearly nine months into the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, Washington’s relationship with Beijing has sunk to a historic low. After a high-level diplomatic meeting in March that devolved into an ugly exchange of insults, fruitless visits to China by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, and virtual climate talks that failed to produce clear deliverables, the world’s two great powers have reached a dangerous impasse. 

...If the Biden administration hopes to manage the competition and prevent it from turning into catastrophe, it must take urgent action to establish and maintain open channels of communication between the Pentagon and China’s armed forces.

Commercial bidding and purchase documents and other accounts suggest China is likely to start construction of a second spent fuel reprocessing plant of the same capacity and at the same site as its first such plant, the CNNC Gansu Nuclear Technology Industrial Park in Jinta, Gansu province.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, launching the nuclear age. On the 75th anniversary of that somber event, Belfer Center experts reflect on the event and its aftermath. 

Rebecca Davis Gibbons and Stephen Herzog provide an update on current efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. 

Over the last decade, China has been actively pursuing plans to recycle its spent nuclear fuel. In 2010, it began testing a pilot civilian plutonium reprocessing plant with a design capacity to produce about 50 metric tons of heavy metal per year at the Jiuquan nuclear complex in Gansu province (known as Plant 404). In July 2015, the China National Nuclear Corporation started construction of a larger demonstration reprocessing plant at the Gansu Nuclear Technology Industrial Park in Jinta, Gansu Province, about 100 kilometers from the Jinquan pilot plant. The demonstration reprocessing plant, which has a planned capacity of 200 metric tons per year, is to be commissioned in 2025.

Joseph Nye writes that some decoupling of interdependence is likely, particularly in areas related to technology that directly affect national security. But will Washington and Beijing go too far?