This book examines the crucial formative period of Chinese attitudes toward nuclear weapons - the immediate post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki period and the Korean War. It provides a detailed account of U.S. actions and attitudes during this period and China's response, which was especially acute after both countries had entered the Korean conflict as enemies. This response dispels some of the myths that have long existed regarding China's perceptions of nuclear war.

To understand China's foreign policy in the 1990s and the true attitude of Beijing towards the military presence of the United States in Northeast Asia, one must examine China's perception of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK). Public statements aside, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has shifted its traditional position and has tacitly accepted, even welcomed, the continuation of the U.S.-ROK alliance. Beijing views the institutionalized presence of the Americans in Northeast Asia as a stabilizing force, serving China's interest of maintaining the favorable status quo in the region. However, continued acceptance is not guaranteed; developments in the Sino-American relationship and the course of reunification of the Korean Peninsula will affect attitudes in the future. In order to discuss China's perception of the U.S. Korean alliance, let us first examine China's general post-Cold War security policy, especially regarding Northeast Asia. As the century ends, Beijing, increasingly preoccupied with its own domestic agenda, has adopted a more conservative attitude (nearterm) in Northeast Asia. In the post-Cold War era, international competition has shifted from the political and military to the economic arena. In this new mileau, Beijing displays a changed, even ambivalent, attitude towards the United States' political and military presence in Northeast Asia. American ground forces in Japan and South Korea and U.S. naval presence in the Western Pacific have now generally disappeared from China's list of complaints. Indeed, the United States is frequently regarded as a stabilizing force in the region, although Beijing watches carefully Washington's "hegemonic" moves. The future of the political division on the Korean Peninsula is naturally of key importance to China's perception of the U.S.-ROK alliance. One can hardly observe much eagerness on China's part for a rapid reunification of Korea, although Beijing is somewhat sincere in supporting the idea of letting the Koreans themselves control the reunification process. To Beijing, a stable, peaceful and (hopefully) friendly, but perhaps divided, Korean Peninsula is more desirable than rapid reunification or a de-nuclearization of North Korea. Finally, as a result of China's overall security considerations, Beijing now appears to have quietly accepted the U.S.-ROK alliance as a part of the favorable status quo in Northeast Asia. Continued tacit acceptance, however, is not guaranteed. From the Chinese perspective, there seems to be an inherent conflict between a united Korea and a strong Korean- American alliance; if a united Korea maintains an alliance with the United States, Beijing may have to make a sharp policy shift. The key variables affecting China's perception of the U.S.-ROK alliance in the future, therefore, seem to be the overall Sino-American relationship and the development of the inter-Korean relationship.

By emphasising the role of nuclear issues, After Hiroshima, published in 2010, provides an original history of American policy in Asia between the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, Matthew Jones charts the development of American nuclear strategy and the foreign policy problems it raised, as the United States both confronted China and attempted to win the friendship of an Asia emerging from colonial domination. In underlining American perceptions that Asian peoples saw the possible repeat use of nuclear weapons as a manifestation of Western attitudes of 'white superiority', he offers new insights into the links between racial sensitivities and the conduct of US policy, and a fresh interpretation of the transition in American strategy from massive retaliation to flexible response in the era spanned by the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

The authors then elaborate a preliminary agenda for exploring with China the requirements of strategic stability in the emerging era and of testing Beijing's intention to continue some form of restraint in the years ahead."--BOOK JACKET.

The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.

Through the Cold War years, the US nuclear strategy and arms control policies demonstrated diminutive concern over China's nuclear capabilities primarily since it did not figure as a major factor in the US nuclear calculus which, in any case, remained centred on Soviet nuclear arsenals. However, the end of the Cold War witnessed China increasing its regional influence on the plank of rising Chinese economic and military power and growing diplomatic and political interchange abroad. From Washington's perspective, Beijing showed a darker side in its dealings in the realm of proliferation and technology transfer. Of greatest concern to Washington was the documented Chinese behaviour contributing to the spread of technology relating to the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) along with their means of delivery to states that were a cause of concern to Washington. This book analyses these issues in the backdrop of the changing trends in the American and Chinese conceptions of security in the post-Cold War age. Although China claims to abide by non-proliferation norms, riding on a campaign to garner a greater international image, its participation has been tarnished on many accounts when it has violated the terms and conditions of non-proliferation arrangements. While Washington was critically vocal regarding China's contribution to the nuclear and missile capabilities of nations such as North Korea and Iran, it was conspicuously soft on the similar issue vis-a-vis Pakistan and the nuclear black market web woven by disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan. These developments compel us to ponder over whether a few countries can be trusted with WMD and their means of delivery, while others cannot, and this trust would ultimately depend on, and consequently shift, as American attitudes, interests and policies change-thus, setting the theme of the book."

A little remembered aspect of the Korean War is an issue of great importance to those concerned with arms control and allegations of the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), namely nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. During and after the war, North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union alleged that the United States used biological weapons (BW) on an enormous scale in areas of both China and North Korea. Despite the public disclosure of Soviet Central Committee documents in 1998—eighteen years ago—which revealed that the allegations were fraudulent, China and, much more noisily, North Korea still maintain the charges.2 The purpose of this Working Paper is to describe recent publications in Chinese journals of an unprecedented nature on the subject. In addition to discussing these new Chinese writings about the BW allegations, the Working Paper reproduces a number of newly declassified documents which demonstrate the extent of communications between Mao, Stalin, and Zhou Enlai, as well as two documents which authenticate the 1998 Soviet documents which disproved the allegations. Based on what we know about the US BW program in 1952 as well as the proof contained in the Soviet Central Committee documents released in 1998, the Working Paper concludes that the Korean War BW allegations against the US, an accusation of the use of a weapon of mass destruction, were false, a grand piece of political theater.