China’s Forbearance Has Limits: Chinese Threat and Retaliation Signaling and Its Implications for a Sino-American Military Confrontation

by Paul H.B. Godwin, Alice L. Miller, Institute for National Strategic Studies

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has employed military force in defense of China’s security and territorial integrity. In many such instances, Beijing implemented a calculus of threat and retaliation signals intended first to deter an adversary from taking actions contrary to Chinese interests by threatening the use of military force and, if deterrence failed, to explain and justify Beijing’s resort to military force. This deterrence calculus was applied in each of the major instances in which Beijing has resorted to military force—in Korea in 1950, in the Sino-Indian border dispute in 1961 1962, in the Sino-Soviet border dispute in 1968–1969, and in China’s attack on northern Vietnam in 1979. It was also applied in instances in which Beijing’s effort at deterrence apparently succeeded and China ultimately stopped short of using military force.

115 pages, Paperback

Published May 29, 2013