China test warning to regional security

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): China appears to have successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which is mobile, and uses solid rather than liquid fuel as a propellant. The new ICBM may therefore indicate that China has taken a major stride towards the superpower status which the Beijing government still officially denies that it is seeking.

News of the successful test appeared confirmed Thursday by a combination of media and official Japanese sources. Initially, news of the test broke in stories printed by the right-wing Japanese daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun and by the Japanese news agency Jiji Press.

From these reports it merged that "Dong Feng (East Wind) 31" ICBM had been fired from a mobile launcher and was estimated to have a range of 8,000 kilometers (4960 miles). Whereas presently deployed Chinese ICBMs require liquid fuel, the DF-31 is said to be using a more sophisticated solid fuel.

But whereas the Sankei Shimbun said that the DF-31 test was carried out on Monday, the Jiji report quoted Western diplomats as saying that the missile was tested sometime last week.

Asked about these reports the Japanese government's chief spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashi, said that the Japanese government had "tentatively confirmed" that the "Chinese test took place at the end of May."

Precisely why the Japanese are unable to be more assertive regarding the test is not yet clear.

Earlier, on May 25 Japan's top soldier Gen. Tetsuya Nishimoto, chief of Japan's Joint Staff Council, told a press conference that he had information that China was about to test-fire a ballistic missile.

It must be assumed that, if the DF-31 was tested at full range, the missile was fired out into the Pacific Ocean, since any other direction would have been too hazardous and the test could not have taken place within China's own landmass.

But if it was a Pacific test, it is extremely curious that so far the United States, with its monitoring capability, has had nothing to say about it.

The fact that the first news of this test originated from Japan is significant, coming as it does shortly after Japan, for the first time, linked its grant aid for China to Beijing's failure to halt its underground nuclear explosions. When China carried out its latest nuclear test, within days of the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Japan reacted more strongly than usual, and announced that China's grant aid would be cut as a sign of Tokyo's displeasure.

When the Japanese government did not immediately announce the exact amount of the cut, it was assumed that Tokyo was waiting to see if China conducted any more tests.

It was speculated, at the time of the Chinese nuclear test, that the low yield of the explosion meant that China was experimenting with miniaturization of nuclear warheads for missiles. The need for such miniaturization is now made clear: a mobile missile needs as small a nuclear warhead as possible.

Needless to say, if the emerging facts about the DF-31 are confirmed, the mobile missile could reach all parts of Indonesia's territory. It could also reach all parts of Russia, and most of Europe, depending where it was deployed. It would also have the capability of reaching the west coast of the United States.

At present, according to publications of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, China has 14 liquid fuel ICBMs currently deployed on land in fixed silos. It has four Dong Feng 5 (DF-5) ICBMs with a range of 15,000 kilometers, capable of reaching the whole of the United States. It has ten DF-4 missiles with a range of 7,000 km.

Evidently the DF-5 ICBM has never been test-fired.

Additionally, China's one nuclear submarine has 12 submarine- launched ballistic missiles, with a modest range of between 2,200 and 3,000 km.

It goes without saying that their arsenal of ICBMs is small compared with the nuclear capabilities of the United States and Russia, and is less than that of France or the United Kingdom.

Still, the DF-31, together with the recent nuclear test, underlines China's remorseless march towards superpower status.

If the facts so far reported about the DF-31 are confirmed then it will represent a considerable advance in China's ability to wage nuclear warfare, and, as such, will inevitably increase growing regional concerns about Beijing's ultimate military- political intentions.