China's Arms Race

**Jane Perlez** (0:03)
Rowhome Productions.
It was a display of pomp and circumstance and frankly, might. Drones, tanks, trucks, armored boats and ballistic missiles, even robot dogs, lined Chang'an Avenue in Beijing this past September for the Victory Day Parade. This was all to celebrate the 80th anniversary of China's victory in the Sino-Japanese War. If you watch the parade on TV as I did, and it seems President Trump also did, it was an impressive sight to behold Xi Jinping shoulder to shoulder with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. Then, flank after flank of troops, around 12,000 of them, stood at attention as Xi Jinping rode past in a very fancy car. It felt like a scene ripped from some agitprop newsreel. Xi was standing there in his Mao suit, in the car's sunroof, speaking into the four microphones mounted on the car roof. I salute you, comrade, says Xi, to which they all reply, Hail to Chairman. I'm Jane Perlez, and this is Face-Off, a show about China-U.S. relations. Today, the buildup of China's military. It is the largest peacetime expansion since World War II. An extremely worrying factor for the US and its allies. China's defense budget is now the second largest in the world behind the US. China has become the world's largest shipbuilder. Its Navy is in fact the biggest in the world by number of ships. It is rapidly expanding its arsenal of ballistic missiles, and its nuclear stockpile is growing fast. Xi Jinping has made it a priority that China's military be world-class by 2049 What does that mean for China? And what does this mean for the rest of the world? Our guest on the show today is Zhou Bo. Zhou Bo is a retired senior colonel in the People's Liberation Army. He was also intently watching the parade that day as a commentator for a Chinese state broadcaster.

**Zhou Bo** (2:39)
He is really an eye-opener, even for me, a PLA veteran, to see all the new weapons really eye-openers for me as well, I would say.

**Jane Perlez** (2:49)
We'll get to the new in a minute, but I wanted to ask you this. One of your colleagues, Wu Xunbo, he's a prominent political scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai, said of the parade, quote, China has to show the United States, if you challenge my core interests, I'm going to do harm to you. Do you agree that was a primary purpose of the parade?

**Zhou Bo** (3:16)
I don't think so, because the point is the objective of PLA, it is already quite clear. We would build a world-class military by 2049, right? Therefore, this kind of military capabilities could be used anywhere, not only in a potential conflict between China and the United States, in Taiwan straight. And I never believe that conflict between China and the US is inevitable. So I don't buy that.

**Jane Perlez** (3:46)
Yes, but Xi Jinping said in his parade speech, and people listen very carefully, he used the word unstoppable. What did he mean by that? Unstoppable.

**Zhou Bo** (4:00)
I would say that unstoppable means this process. For China to reach its goal, of a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, is unstoppable to be achieved by 2049, when PRC celebrates its centenary. So that is unstoppable. And I also think that this trend of China moving forward, either in its integration with the whole world, or the Chinese military becomes even stronger, that is unstoppable.

**Jane Perlez** (4:35)
There were some very impressive weapons in the parade. And for the first time, I think this really impressed people from outside China looking in. China showed that it could strike the United States and launch nuclear weapons from the sea, air and land. What was the purpose of showing off that capability at this particular moment?

**Zhou Bo** (5:03)
This kind of demonstration always would invite two different things.
One is you can say, okay, China is showing its muscles. That is correct. And the other thing is you can also interpret it as an unprecedented effort in transparency. Yeah, because this is again, one of the criticism from the west, that China is not transparent enough, especially about its military capabilities. But this kind of parade would actually be the unprecedented effort in making Chinese military capabilities transparent. So I think this serves this good purpose as well.

**Jane Perlez** (5:43)
Yes, I think that one of the major things that worries the United States and perhaps its allies is China's decision to dramatically increase its stockpiles of nuclear weapons. And this is in stark contrast to the past. So in the last several years, the number of warheads has gone from several hundred to six hundred this past May, according to the Federation of American Scientists. China doesn't publish the figures, but the Federation of American Scientists does. So this number of nuclear warheads, and it's going to grow, doesn't seem to fit with China's old policy of a minimal deterrent. Maybe you can describe how China's nuclear policy is changing.