EXPERT INTERVIEW – A report from China about a massive new military command center – a complex that, when completed, is expected to be 10 times the size of the Pentagon – has raised eyebrows and brought fresh attention to China’s military expansion.
The Financial Times reported that the command center – dubbed by some analysts “Beijing’s Military City” – is being constructed on some 1,500 acres on the western edges of the capital, in an area known as the Western Hills. The complex will reportedly house not just military leaders and facilities, but also deep bunkers built to withstand American bunker buster bombs, and even a possible nuclear strike.
China has been on a large-scale military spending spree recently, an effort aimed at achieving parity or supremacy vis-a-vis the United States in everything from warships to missile capability to the size and variety of its nuclear arsenal.
The 2024 iteration of the Pentagon’s annual China Military Power Report, issued in December, highlighted “key modernization milestones” in China’s People’s Liberation Army. “The PLA Air Force…with respect to its modernization and indigenization of its unmanned aerial systems, is quickly approaching US standards,” the report said. Regarding China’s nuclear arsenal, the report assessed the PLA has over 600 operational warheads and estimates it will have over 1,000 by 2030.
China’s military ambitions are widely seen to be tied to its regional ambitions – the potential for conflict over Taiwan and the South China Sea in particular – and President Xi Jinping’s project of “national rejuvenation.”
The Cipher Brief spoke with Rear Admiral Mike Studeman (Ret.), a former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence about the significance of the new military command center in Beijing and China’s military development more broadly.
“The Chinese intend to have the ability to walk up the nuclear ladder and hold their own, if not be dominant at every rung,” Studeman told us. “That requires them to develop the nuclear force on pace and in parallel with the advancement of the conventional forces in every warfare area.”
Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the full interview on The Cipher Brief's YouTube channel.
The Cipher Brief: How did you receive the news of this new military facility in China? How should we receive it?
RADM Studeman (Ret.): It's part of a pattern of behavior with regard to the Chinese military buildup and their intent to ensure that they're ready for a major-power war. There are so many different indicators that the Chinese are being told to get ready by 2027 for a variety of contingencies that will have nuclear elements associated with them, if the Chinese commit aggression. So, the Chinese are very serious about preparing for conventional and nuclear outcomes in any potential war.
They'd love to get their way without fighting. They love to intimidate and show that there's no possibility of holding the Chinese leaders at risk in a future war, and they're building the capabilities to ensure that that would be the case. They had a bunker in Western Hills for many years. I suspect that they reviewed their nuclear posture and looked at the defensive side, and decided they needed to have more assured protection for a variety of different kinds of weapons all the way up to the high-end nuclear types. And so I think they embarked on this particular element, but all as part of the whole. This is a small element of a larger growth in capabilities designed to bring the Chinese up to be on par in terms of a nuclear capability with the United States and any other country.
The Cipher Brief: Is this part of preparation for a specific contingency?
RADM Studeman (Ret.): I think we need to see it in multiple lights, and I think they're mutually reinforcing.
First of all, the Chinese understand that they need to grow their comprehensive national power. That's an aggregate of every kind of power – across sharp, hard, and soft power. This is one important area for them to develop their capabilities and essentially harden their society, their leadership, their critical infrastructure, to be able to withstand a worst-case scenario. Part of it is, I need these capabilities because it gives me a dominant position in the world; I intend to come back into center stage; I intend to build up my comprehensive strategic power and to be able to have it so that it at least meets, if not exceeds, the United States and the West and any others. There's that conceptual element of where they see themselves by their rejuvenation date of 2049, or earlier.
And then there's the very specific case that if there's any likely war on the horizon, it's going to be regarding their core sovereignty issue, and Xi Jinping's intent to assimilate Taiwan. He's been very clear that this is an essential part of “rejuvenation.” They intend to look at every potential outcome in the process of assimilating that stretch of territory, and they know that the likelihood of U.S. intervention is high. So they intend to be prepared for any contingency. That includes all the way up to this nuclear escalation ladder, and they do not want to be seen as vulnerable at any part of that ladder, including the possibility that there may be strikes against Beijing in a way that was designed to decapitate the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].
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The Cipher Brief: Let's talk for a moment about that nuclear escalation ladder. China, by all accounts, is marching up the ladder of buildup. The most recent figure we've seen is up to 600 operational warheads; the U.S. assesses they'll have 1,000 by 2030. Given what we understand about nuclear deterrence, what is the reasoning and the need to get to that level? Is it simply to match American capabilities?
RADM Studeman (Ret.): [Former] STRATCOM (U.S. Strategic Command) Commander, Admiral [Charles] Richard, was very clear when he said that in all respects, the Chinese capabilities are a breakout capability in terms of nuclear development. Weapons, command and control, all the way through the protection side of it, launch on warning. The new triad, where they now have bombers with nuclear-tipped missiles, in addition to submarines, which they continue to build more of. You'll see a new SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) with a more advanced missile called the JL-3. Advanced ICBM types, some of them are silo-based, some of them are road-mobile. These huge silo fields that they're building out in the west. Detection capabilities, the ability to do orbital bombardments, hypersonic capabilities, penetration. The list goes on.
The Chinese intend to have the ability to walk up the nuclear ladder and hold their own, if not be dominant at every rung. They were threatened before with nuclear weapons, and it was the way that the crises of the 1950s over the offshore islands were resolved. The Chinese remember their history. When Mao Zedong was shelling Kinmen and Matsu, the 1954, ‘55, and then ‘58 crisis, our presence threatened nuclear weapons. That resolved the issue. They do not want to see Taiwan resolved because we have any kind of nuclear edge with which to compensate for conventional force issues, or to be able to use it in a way where the Chinese can't respond. That requires them to develop the nuclear force on pace and in parallel with the advancement of the conventional forces in every warfare area.
The Chinese have learned from their past. They know that the United States would be tempted to potentially use nuclear supremacy as a way to resolve the situation, and they're not going to let that happen. That's the reason you find them investing in these capabilities; they're locking out nuclear as an option for the United States. Essentially, all you have to do is reach sufficiency to achieve a mutually assured destruction capability. You just have to have enough capability to hold the United States at risk, and to do counter value in a way that essentially would be existential on our side.
They're approaching that already. They intend to have more warheads. They intend to have a family of systems that include theater options, not just thermonuclear. Think about smaller [weapons] tailored for selective use with less overall damage, but designed for devastating effects inside the theater, using them against Guam or at sea against carrier strike groups. That's the kind of thinking that China is walking through, because if you have more options than your opponent, then you'll prevail.
In peacetime, they hope that we'll take a look at this and go, There's no way that we could prevail in a conflict with China, we shouldn't even embark down that path. There's a whole influence game in peacetime. And then there's the real thing — if you end up in it because of miscalculation and decisions that are made, they intend to prevail in time of war as well. That's the reason why they're spending so much in each of these capability areas across the military.
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The Cipher Brief: The Pentagon puts out an annual report on China's military power. It referenced issues with commanders and other personnel in China – what the People's Liberation Army itself acknowledges are the “five incapables.” And I'll just read from this report: “Some PLA commanders are incapable of judging situations, understanding higher authorities' intentions, making operational decisions, deploying forces, or managing unexpected situations.” Give us your assessment of that.
RADM Studeman (Ret.): I do think that when it comes to the PLA inspiring confidence of civilian leaders, the Chairman, the Central Military Commission, and the Politburo writ large, there's enough room for them to be concerned whether or not they're truly ready for a high-intensity warfare environment. They judge themselves harshly and are constructively critical. They allow their forces lots of opportunities to exercise, and when they don't deal well with weather or new contingencies, that report goes in, and they look at ways to become better in the future.
They have a dilemma. If you're in a society where freedom isn't enjoyed, but you need to kowtow up your hierarchy, there's a great deal of fear spore in the air. Fear as a motivator only gets you so far. The fear of that system — making a misstep, doing something that your bosses didn't want to see happen — you can't always predict what those are, but it creates a hesitation or an intimidation effect down the chain for people to take independent action in a way that we do within the U.S. military and other Western militaries. That's a very real deficiency. I'm not sure they're ever going to fix that, but they are trying to create leaders who in fact do have that blend of political loyalty, but have more confidence in employing military forces.
This is something that I think they're going to have to struggle with for quite some time. They're also affected by these corruption sweeps that are occurring, and so there's more fear there about what that means. Corruption has been part of their promotion system for many years. They've tried to clean up some parts of it, but it still exists. It calls into question whether or not you really have the most competent, capable officer there at the senior colonel level or the general or admiral level.
There are deficiencies there, but I would warn people who want to use those as an excuse to say that the PLA can't fight, and that they haven't fought since 1979 – that the sheer material strength of what they produce, the amount of live fires that they do of every missile system, the amount of training and exercise time that they give them, the amount of training they get in their wartime operations areas across the China seas all the way through and around Taiwan and then east of Taiwan, don't underestimate a force of this size with this many advanced capabilities across every warfare area. We would underestimate them at our peril. I think we're treating them seriously here, but I wouldn't use those old deficiencies as a way to say that the PLA can't engage and win based on proximity and sheer weight of their forces.
The Cipher Brief: You've painted a pretty stark picture of the road ahead. What should the United States be doing about any of this?
RADM Studeman (Ret.): I think we're doing a lot. But I think we've lost a lot of time. We probably rightly committed to the global War on Terror to make sure we eliminated threats that existed to our interests in a lot of different places. Better to fight afar than to let those kind of threats come near.
At the same time, we were doing some investments in modernizing our military — just not in enough places and fast enough. Now in the 2020s, we find we're behind in many areas. Whether it's conventional forces, long-range fires, directed energy, laser, space, cyber, nuclear, the list goes on. These are very expensive capability areas to be in a major competition, not just with one peer, but essentially, on the nuclear front, a two-peer challenge with Russia and China colluding together.
This is a major test of American industrial might. Can we recover and get more capability in our manufacturing side for defense? Can we bring those concepts together that we've been developing that have promise? And can we take a look at the world around us, and see that in fact we are back to 20th century issues where nuclear elements come into play with regard to any kind of contingency planning that we do?
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