Zhou Bo’s overly simplistic rationale and false logic for CCP-China’s rapid build-up of nuclear arsenal is suggestive of the U.S. posing an existential threat to China, a flipping of the reality that CCP-China is in-fact, in a U.S.-led world rules-based order environment where it thrived and rose to power (and now defying), rushing in its pursuit of diplomatic, economic, militarily global hegemony, threatening neighbors and the world. My take, an enumeration of CCP-China’s 75-year track record.
6Jan25 – 351am Taipei time. 1st draft.
Some Facts
— Between the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) and Cultural Revolution (1966-76), 10s of millions have died, jailed, tortured, murdered including countless elderly, disfavored and suspected communist sympathizers (and even enablers and co-revolutionaries of Mao Zedong who helped him capture power and oust then China’s legitimate government). Many were ruthlessly, publicly executed. Countless ones were summarily, brutally, barbarically killed
— More than a million now killed in the Russian war on Ukraine, among them tens of thousands of civilians, infants, babies, children, the elderly, the pregnant women. CCP-China is deliberately supporting Russia with its secret supplies of dual-use (miltary use) components for Russia’s weapons, drones, logistics equipment. Not as many as those suspected or estimated for the Philippines in the period of mid-2016 to mid-2022, but not a few thousands were also murdered in Venezuela during Maduro’s reign since 2013, and CCP-China gave support of tens of billions to the Maduro communist dictatorship. Murderous dictators got empowered by CCP-China’s support, emboldening them to think they could kill so many people with impunity especially with economic and political risks being hedged by CCP-China’s funds and regime support, and exports of advanced weapon systems. (I added this from my phone notes.)
— North Korea exported industrial scale quantities of illegal drugs “meth”. Not only countless deaths, but imagine the kind of violence that it fueled in societies, communities, streets, and the insane profits it generated for organized crimes and corrupt public officials in destination countries (organized crimes can corrupt entire institutions and governments). Pre-cursor chemicals of course were mainly sourced, exported from China. CCP-China — or at least severely corrupt Communist Party officials in cahoots or making use of organized criminal groups and legal companies that engage in activities facilitating the advancement of China’s interests in targeted parts of the world, CCP-China being known to engage in grey-zone covert statecraft, to advance its geopolitical intentions — is it merely complicit or a deliberate enabler?
— I remember the export of more than half-million machetes to Rwanda before the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It empowered it’s Hutu rulers then to initiate the killing of almost a million Rwandans (accounts as to actual victims vary), many of it committed by then government Hutu rulers, its controlled militias and gangs, by family members, neighbors, relatives and even church mates. Victims were almost all Tutsis but non-conforming moderate Hutus were also targeted. There were reports, or accounts, of some Western country questioning similar orders from Rwandan entities, but for CCP-China, it was a go.
— Tens of thousands a year, as per some reports, were murdered in CCP-China. For their organs. It’s called mass organ harvesting. Many of these grotesque extractions of organs from unwilling helpless victims were conducted without anaesthesia or sedatives. These are executions! Prisoners from among Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghur Muslim minority, among others, were and still are targeted. I have posted about this extensively in my Facebook account, to inform a population in Asia and Duterte’s followers about the grave incompatibility between a democratic society and that of CCP-China, after he declared a foreign policy pivot to China, and it was at a period of time when it was very dangerous to do so for ordinary citizens
— CCP-China actively supported, not only propped up but empowered Venezuelan illegitimate election-fraudster narco-terror communist dictator of Venezuela, Maduro. Most of the fentanyl-related deaths were caused by illegal exports of fentanyl, later pre-cursor chemical from vast array of suppliers from China, many of these chemical manufacturers getting state-assistances from the Communist Party rulers of China who knew that such exports to Mexican cartels, some of which later tagged as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, would seriously harm Western societies (U.S., Canada, etc.) and cause countless deaths and bankroll very violent acts by these syndicates
— Back to North Korea. Treaty-ally of CCP-China. Hundreds of thousands, if not at least a million according to some estimates, perished in North Korea over the last few decades. In prisons, also called gulags, children, infants, the elderly, are among those executed, tortured, starved to death, died after being forced to do hard labor. All the while, billions of dollars were, and still are being spent for nuclear and other weapons and missile development programs, with a dinner meal for the North Korean dictator’s family costing what could feed a thousand hungry families for the night. CCP-China ensures that the repressive, brutal dictatorship and not only survives but able to improve on its crazy weapons development threatening South Korea, Japan and other countries.
— Iran, similar to North Korea, has its mullahs, and IRGC who created, supported, sustained entire networks of terror organizations, who in turn alongside the IRGC conducted bombings and other horrific acts of mass violence against innocent civilians across many countries. To counter this, to destroy entire ecosystems breeding terrorism, rebellion, internal conflicts and acts of terrorism, I am sure I can say more than (at least) 3 trillion dollars of more of taxpayers’ money on top of regular military long-term budgets have been spent by the United States and other Western governments (and others) since 9/11 alone, to be most conservative, and if at least 1/3 of that amount were instead funneled into investments, infrastructure development, social development, peace-building developmental agendas and nation-building among developing and especially poor countries, in interventions and long-term solutions to conflict-prone societies, it’s a much different world we would be living in right now. CCP-China did not only not impose global sanctions on China and North Korea, even Russia, and Venezuela, it exploited Western nations’ sanctions to its maximum practical and geopolitical and diplomatic benefits. At the costs of empowering of oppressive and brutally violent dictator-governments, with countless lives killed, grave human rights violations, to add disruption in global food production, supplies, trade and affordability of food and basic needs to hundreds of millions of poor and even middle-class families in all of the developing and even affluent world.
— The genocide committed, still being committed against the Muslim Uyghur Muslim minority in China, and China’s statecraft suppressing active dissent on this by many Muslim countries with economic interdependence with CCP-China.
— The erasing, deleting, of entire culture and traditions, and unique identity in broad approaches of the ethnic Mongolians in northern China. Same program against the Tibetan people, for many decades now, people of a land CCP-China illegitimately conquered. These were, and are, not without the use of repression, imprisonment, torture and murder too, even collective punishment of families including minor children for as “grave” an offense as openly expressing support of their spiritual, religious leaders and peaceful acts of protests
— The Covid pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China. Does the world really knows, any scientific body, how many actually died in China? Countless deaths were from acts of the Chinese government to hide the real extent of the pandemic in China, with mis-reporting and mis-categorization of deaths in hospitals and health facilities designed to conceal real numbers, and with countless others having died in rural areas where there were impossibly difficult access to appropriate health care facilities much more health establishments that could have helped save lives. In an estimate I heard somewhere, more than 90% of global infections could have been prevented, meaning tens of millions of lives around the world could have been saved if the CCP did not suppress information, and acted responsibly to warn the world and work honestly with global bodies and Western health institutions and agencies to contain it in the pandemic early outbreaks in China, the infections spread like hell to the world after the Chinese New Year’s travels of millions of Chinese all over Asia and all regions of the world. China’s population figures to this day cannot be trusted for this. Then CCP’s tentacles, including in the Western media, and its state media bureaus, and influence operations, directed all blame to 1 single person, it seemed even to casual observers and occasional viewers of the multimedia news and readers of printed and online websites, that then President Trump was at fault and he should lose the election in 2020. All of the media was like ganged up on then President Trump on his first term, even as he acted swiftly to mobilize his emergency powers to rush the development of the vaccines that saved the world from this virus that came from and spread to the world from Wuhan, China. Trust ratings of mainstream media have been going down consistently since the time period, although it’s not a trend solely attributable to this, and that this has been the trend for a long time before the pandemic.
— For the dream of a unified Korea under communist rule, China supported the North Korean war to invade South Korea. Result: Up to 400,000 Chinese died (or have gone missing) in the war-related causes. Some estimates up to 20%, or 1.2 million North Koreans died in the war, majority of them civilians. Decades later, CCP-China’s attempt to invade northern Vietnam in 1979 resulted in the death of up to 60,000 Chinese, according to some estimates.
— Warning to socialists rallying in the free world: Don’t do that in communist China, because in a single stretch of 24-hours to a few days, up to 10,000 could have been killed, according to some estimates based on leaked reports. And your death might not be even ever be counted, you’re erased (and your family and relatives could not speak up because they would be collectively punished) as CCP only reported up to 300 deaths, killed by communist state forces. Please note that those killed were civilians peacefully protesting, so many young people lost their lives to the violence of their own state “security” forces.
— The 1-child communist state dictate, resulted in so many of girl-fetuses being aborted, many couples wanting a baby boy instead. I can’t find a good source as to estimates of numbers at this time, but even a thousand is not a few when you talk of babies being aborted, killed for their gender and for 1-child policy. Reports say tens of millions were like in ghost existence, suppressing their social growth, and deprived of regular benefits from the communist state, only later being forced to register in state records, these mostly girls children of couples who exceeded the 1-child quota (imagine the concept of illegal children, their parents having committed illegal acts by not having them aborted or their pregnancies by their mothers not deliberately prevented)
— In Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, elsewhere, CCP-China could have used its dictator powers, its authoritarian controls, its strict anti-crime laws and programs, its vast network of spies across sectors of societies and governments, to disallow large numbers of Chinese and men and women of other nationalities to be trafficked, sold and trapped as slaves, sexually abused, tortured, killed in scam centers run and financed by Chinese entities and organized criminal networks. These scam centers, called POGOs (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator) in the Philippines, corrupted large number of officials too, and facilitated malign-influence campaigns by China and corruption of public officials. President Marcos had the political will to stop these but many of these operations have evolved into many hard-to-track agile small-scale (physically, but not necessarily in revenues) underground or disguised operations. Victims of these scam hubs include retirees in the U.S., Australia, etc. who would lose their retirement money and even life savings to these operations, many going bankrupt and depressed for these, helplessly and sometimes inknown to their families. These operations are money-laundering nodes and hubs for organized criminals too, and even Chinese communist officials. One former key officer of a scam center has recently threatened us, and also threatened us for abduction-slay including in front of some police officers (so arrogant, even in the high threshold for arrogance in the country).
— The fentanyl death crisis in the U.S., killing hundreds of thousands of mostly young and pre-middle age Americans in only the last few years, only recently, after President Trump got elected again, used by the American President as a core non-negotiable issue with the Chinese communist dictatorship that merited imposition of exorbitant tariffs against Chinese exports to the United States (that entire industries in China depend on as a crucial largest market) and American exports of high-technology products coveted by CCP-China, is now rather under control. In other words, CCP-China could pull the lever on exports of fentanyl and or pre-cursor chemicals needed by Mexican drug cartels for its manufacture and export of this poison to mostly Americans in their north. Why did CCP-China then allowed its industries, many of these financially aided by the state, then not stemmed it in all of these years hundreds of thousands of American lives were being snatched, millions of family members getting into despair for lost loved ones? If CCP-China couldn’t care any less for the American consumers, lives that sustained their stratospheric, rapid rise to great economic wealth and relatively insane military power, who would think they would care about, say, Filipino, Thai, Japanese, Congolese, Estonian, Russian, Saudi or even Australian or so lives, and more so of rebels that communist Chinese entities sustain for their commercial and military hegemonic ends?
— The rules-based global order, the relative peace in the world was an environment that China took for granted as it grew its economy and financed their rise to great military power. It was guaranteed by institutional safeguards of agreements between community of nations, including within the United Nations. China for a good number of years now has sought to undermine entire United Nations bodies, including use of enticements, coercion and tacit threats to vulnerable countries, for its use and false legitimization of its rogue acts and behavior in the international arena, whenever its most convenient for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to do so. It sought to influence, if not dictate positions, policies and decisions, undermining meaningful open and free discourses (subtle repression of dissent) on serious and sensitive international issues. Now, whenever CCP-China wishes, and for its benefits, including geopolitically, it violates international norms, rules and laws. This is not abstract and victimless, for instance, its tacit sanctioning of crimes against nature in already vulnerable countries as it endangers entire environmental ecosystems like in northwestern Mexico and West Philippine Sea (where it committed acts of ecocide and after finishing off sustainability of ecosystems, after ravaging resources, then illegally restrict access by the very citizens of countries whose sovereign territories it grabbed control of). The communist-in-background WHO Director-General praised, not censured CCP-China, for its handling of the Covid pandemic.
— The Chinese Communist Party of China, rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal to the levels of that of the United States and Russia, is forcing, more than ever, not only whispers and debates among war planners in Japan, South Korea (partly due to North Korea too), Indonesia and some other major developing countries, maybe even Saudi Arabia to come up with plans for nuclear-weapons development. India is sure to vastly increase its number of nuclear warheads, in time, as it also becomes even more of an existential issue for the Indians to have a neighbor that could totally wipe out the sub-continent and its many-thousands-of-years-old civilization. Without the same kind of mandate from the governed as with the United States and other Western powers, without matured institutional controls and restraint, with the kind of intense nationalist sentiments being relentlessly used to rouse its military and people as a source of continued tolerance and approval for the communist dictator-government and the grave societal problems, lack of freedom, shrinking opportunities for hundreds of millions of families amidst a state flaunting great national wealth and powers, to cover up for the perception of, and real-life experiences of mainstream Chinese people’s going hopeless and left out, so many being repressed, not having a voice, not having freedom of choice — for CCP-China to have, say, 4,000 nuclear warheads including (presumably) tactical ones, is to invite an incident of (a first-use) nuclear-bomb use in a very tight and tense situation. What if after some decades, Russia becomes a key target for strategic deterrence by some new CCP dictators?
The mere size of Russian territory, resources, and practical encircling of China means a number of atomic bombs exceeding 5,000? How would Russia respond, with Chinese towns and cities, key hubs of infrastructures, military bases numbering in so many thousands across a territory so vast too? How is “strategic deterrence” then to be defined, by who and what factors? To add in the mix of grave uncertainties, how would very advanced AI-driven conventional and strategic weapons systems factor in the calculus? What if a balance of terror is achieved (even simply perceived) through AI-powered layered deterrence and defense systems, then resort to ever greater, sheer quantity-advantage (ever greater saturation, and / or proliferation of nuclear weapons) of all kinds of weapons? Where, or what is humanity’s destiny?
Conversely, the vastly superior (overall numbers, sheer quantity, never mind potency) weapons arsenal (air, sea, land, cyber, space) would be extremely dangerous in the hands of unelected communist dictators, because you don’t rapidly, almost senselessly build-up your weapons systems without intending to use it based on well-defined parameters and thresholds, but having overwhelming powers over your neighbors invite reckless, arrogant attitudes and behavior. That’s why we need the superpower United States in the Indo-Pacific region (and the Philippines), more than ever.
The United States and Russia built-up such weapons in a peculiar period of history after (WWI and then) WWII when countries were reeling from war devastations, the traumas of entire governments and populations were relatively fresh, the widespread destructions still vivid in the memories of the people. But what is present CCP-China’s defining moment in the rapid build-up of its nuclear arsenal, the relative global peace and West and environment of U.S.-led international rules-based order where it thrived and rose to economic and military power?
The United States helped save millions of lives during and after the WWII, led the world to recovery, and decades after consented to China’s rapid ascencion to industrialized status and economic development. The U.S. fought wars so that others didn’t have to, and fought the rise of terrorism the world over, spending hundreds of billions to trillions of American taxpayers money, these benefited the world.
— Under communist Stalin’s rule, that overlapped with Mao of China for some years, up to 20 million people have been murdered, perished for various reasons. Under Maoist-communist Pol Pot (Khmer Rouge regime, 1975-9) the Cambodian population of less than 10 million was reduced by roughly 25%, the pace of the harrowing mass killings is also unthinkable for any human being to execute. The communist system knows no bound in threshold for feeling numb and in pain, but we are in pain even thinking about these magnitudes. My point here is that this Stalin-era deaths of millions did not deter Mao from pursuing similar purges and in employing radical solutions by the communist ideology.
Wrap Up, meantime
China is a great civilization, with the mainland China’s peoples having great and extraordinary achievements in all of thousands of years of its civilization (albeit not as per the whole of territory that China controls now).
The 21st century, is still an American century, it looks like it by all indicators. It is a democratic country governed by the rule of law, with people-elected governments in all of its 250-year history. It’s a religious country, and majority of its people practice 1 kind of faith or another, and even those who are not religiously active (who do not go to church regularly) subscribe or live lifestyles and have practices, habits, thinking, respect for human life and rights, and reasoning mirroring the country’s religious roots. It has the kind of government and prosperous, free society that is coveted, admired and source of inspiration as to what’s possible for citizens collectively accomplish and for a nation to achieve. It is the most technologically and scientifically advanced nation on Earth, with its pioneering explorations of space in our small part of the universe, giving us better understating of our place in the universe, inspiring us in our so far very unique existence in a very unique planet. It gave our modern world the greatest number of life-saving medicines and medical solutions, and continue to invest countless billions to improve the way we live our lives and how we overcome our physical imperfections and limits.
The United States, at present, is the most powerful economic and military superpower, and it is not going to change in the foreseeable future judging by its ability to adapt to the changing realities and to accelerate its pace in dealing with the dangers to the existence of free societies, of the free world. China is to remain ever growing in wealth and military power, and it should look more inward to address the looming crises within its borders and among its peoples, than forcefully drive for global hegemony that ends in its great society’s demise because it has the whole world of powerful affluent societies and faster-rising developing countries to contend now, as we predicted almost a decade ago in our many Facebook posts.
(I never make an outline, and never to use AI for composition except occasional fact-checking and confirmations, this is a problem for me, oftentimes making complex and poorly structured, sentences, wandering into different thoughts and topics and not re-composing statements and paragraphs. But this is me. Let me be a case study for some researchers out there, now and in the future. I stick to the DNA of my style of writing meantime, but I think I don’t have a completely monotonous, single-style kind of writing, but I’m not sure. Being in vastly distinct environments and psychology when I type my Facebook posts in the past and present, and compose articles here, my style of writing even my choice of words could be substantially different in some instances. Moreover, this website is intended not for those with PhDs in related subject matters, though I indeed give full and comprehensive briefings and also summaries on a wide range of topics some covered here to many with PhDs including nationally award-winning ones and from country’s top institutions of higher learning but my target main readers here are casual mainstream readers. I do create, compose, original pieces for formal reports with much better structuring and composition styles.)
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Zhou Bo
PLA Senior Colonel (retired)
Senior Fellow
Center for International Security and Strategy
Tsinghua University (Like the Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Oxford of China)
Author: Should the Word Fear China?
In an interview at
CNA Insider (You Tube)80 Years After WWII: China, Japan And Taiwan Expand Their Militaries For Peace? When Titans Clash.
Host: “There are some people in the world who fear China because of China’s rapid military build-up. What would be your message to these people?”
Bo: “After 1979, the Chinese military in spite of its rapid rise, in spite of its big population, hasn’t even killed a single foreigner overseas, isn’t that miraculous?” Further, he said “How many wars did the United States fight? You cannot give me an example of a Chinese PLA firing a bullet at anyone.”
Bo: “The United States has never talked about using nuclear weapons against Russia first. This is the last thing they want to talk about. So why would they sometimes, why would some people and some organization like the Atlantic Council talk about using nuclear weapons against China? That is because they believe China’s nuclear arsenal is small. The Chinese should increase it to the extent that the United States would never ever dare to think about using nuclear weapons against Chinese in any conflict. That is my conclusion.
A quote
War Secretary Pete Hegseth: “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia, no doubt. It hopes to dominate and control too many parts of this vibrant and vital region. Through its massive military build-up and growing willingness to use military force to achieve its goals, including grey zone tactics and hybrid warfare, China has demonstrated that it wants to fundamentally alter the region’s status quo. We cannot look away, and we cannot ignore it. China’s behavior toward its neighbors and the world is a wake up call. And an urgent one.”
