China test warning to regional security

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.