Small State Behavior in Strategic and Intelligence Studies by Patrick C. Coaty

Author:Patrick C. Coaty
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Decision and Action I: China’s Nuclear Program

Mao and the Chinese ruling elite were employing the elements of “traditional culture” and “genetic heritage” identified by John Boyd in his original OODA Loop to recruit over-seas Chinese that had come back to China to help make it a stronger state. This was fairly successful; China ’s first steps to recruit personnel resulting in, Tsien ;, plus, there were three others also from Caltech: Zhou Peiyuan a Physicists, and Zhao Zhongyao , Qian Weichang two aeronautical engineers. 24 This call to ‘come back home’ would be used by all the small states we studied to convince the foreign trained technicians to help in their efforts to increase their state’s capacity by bringing their tacit knowledge home.

At the same time personnel was recruited, budgets were increased dramatically, for example, the budget for scientific research in 1955 was estimated to be 15 million dollars. In 1956, it was estimated China was spending 100 million dollars on scientific research. The Chinese Academy of Science received three times the budget in 1957 than it received in 1953. Tsien’s influence can be seen, as most of the increase in resources was invested in purchasing scientific literature from the West, and not from the Soviet Union; although Tsien’s authority was primarily in the missile program, he did have impact in the nuclear program as well. 25

A state can recruit personnel, increase budgets; but guidelines and standard operating procedures, or rules must also be established in order to make progress in a program. The Central Military Commission established eight guidelines for developing nuclear weapons, for our purposes the fourth and fifth guidelines highlight China ’s penetration of society and its extraction of resources to increase its capabilities:4. In the process of developing nuclear weapons, we should not imitate other countries. Instead, our objective should be to take steps to ‘catch up with advanced world levels’ and to ‘proceed on all phases’ [of the nuclear program] simultaneously.

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