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We can understand China’s military buildup as a straightforward response to the divergent Chinese and US interests, just sketched, combined with China’s increasing power. This interpretation is complicated, however, by uncertainty about whether China is driven by security motives or by a mix of security and non-security motives.

Taiwan is the linchpin to China’s security/territorial integrity concerns, which, as explained, are intimately related to military competition over the East Asian SLOC and to China’s possible interest in pushing the United States out of Northeast Asia. Two decades ago, China had little ability to invade or blockade Taiwan, although it did have the ability to inflict costly punishment. Its ability, then, to promise a costly war may have been sufficient to deter Taiwan from declaring independence (or moving too far in that direction), but standard deterrence arguments suggest that a state would find this capability inadequate, especially when vital interests are at stake.

A state would usually prefer to have the capability to deny its opponent the ability to successfully pursue undesirable actions. To deter Taiwan from declaring independence or to force it to retract such a decision, China should find substantial appeal in possessing the ability to invade. Short of this capability, the ability to coerce Taiwan by inflicting severe economic costs via blockade is a good alternative. These defensive rationales are largely sufficient, in combination with China’s increasing wealth and military potential, to explain China’s conventional military buildup.

In addition, there could be a more proactive dimension to China’s buildup. At some point, China might shift from accepting deterrence of Taiwan to insisting that Taiwan quickly accept unification. China’s increasing conventional capabilities could be used to make compellent threats or to actually invade and conquer Taiwan. During the compellent phase, conventional threats could be combined with an array of increasingly potent economic threats and sanctions. In short, given the importance it places on Taiwan, we should expect China would optimize its conventional buildup for a variety of Taiwan scenarios, which is what it has done.⁵¹

We also can understand China’s nuclear buildup, at least partly, in terms of its desire to protect its interests in Taiwan. Preceding its modernization, China’s nuclear forces would have left it at a bargaining disadvantage in a large conventional war. For example, if the United States and Taiwan were losing a conventional war, the United States could threaten nuclear escalation with the expectation that it would suffer far less damage than China. China’s awareness of this asymmetry in anticipated damage would increase the credibility of US threats, thereby increasing the US ability to compel China to concede in the conventional war. Recognition of the United States’ nuclear advantage might even contribute to convincing China not to launch a conventional war in the first place. By increasing its ability to inflict damage in a retaliatory attack, and eventually closing this gap, China is eliminating these possibilities. In addition, by essentially the same logic, China’s acquisition of comparable nuclear retaliatory capabilities could enhance its ability to compel the United States to drop out of a Taiwan conflict that the United States and Taiwan were winning. Finally, and related, China’s conventional and nuclear modernization might, over time, contribute to convincing the United States to terminate its commitment to Taiwan. As the probability of conventional success declines and the costs of a nuclear war rise, the risks of protecting Taiwan increase. The possibility that the United States would abandon Taiwan is reinforced by the extent of US interests—Taiwan is not a vital US interest, which limits the risks the United States should be willing to run to defend it.

The preceding arguments depend on a long-standing debate over nuclear strategy. Analysts disagree over the sensitivity of states’ coercive capabilities to differences in the size of their retaliatory capabilities. Some believe that once China had even a very small retaliatory capability, increases in its size would make little difference to either US or Chinese decisions. Others believe the difference between very small and large retaliatory capabilities does influence coercive capabilities, while holding that the shift from large to very large makes little difference. Still others argue differences in retaliatory capabilities matter even at very high levels. One’s position in this debate obviously influences assessments of the change in China’s nuclear force. The preceding analysis relies on the middle position—very small to large matters.

The forces required for these various purposes—deterring Taiwan from declaring independence, deterring the United States from supporting Taiwan, and compelling Taiwan—make distinguishing which purpose drives China’s policy quite difficult. Chances are that all of them have contributed to China’s commitment to the modernization of its military forces.

China’s military buildups could also be a component of a strategy for pushing the United States out of East Asia, which, as we have seen, has a clear security component and a possible greedy—specifically, ideational—component. By reducing, or even drawing into question, the US ability to defend allies and partners, China can increase the investments that the United States needs to make to be an effective security partner. By increasing the economic costs of meeting its commitments, China may be able to increase the probability that the United States will decide that its interests in Northeast Asia do not warrant the required military investments. And even if the United States could not be arms-raced out of Northeast Asia, China may believe otherwise or at least be willing to make a bet on this possibility.

A second way China’s conventional buildup might contribute to pushing the United States out of the region is by raising doubts among US allies and partners about the US ability to protect them. Although states tend to balance instead of bandwagon, the latter becomes more attractive when the potential balancer’s capabilities are in question.⁵² This strain in US alliances could be reinforced by China’s attractiveness as a trading partner and by its willingness to use economic incentives as both inducements and punishments.

China’s assertive policies in the SCS could complement its military buildup in an overall strategy for pushing the United States out of East Asia by creating situations that raise doubts about the willingness of the United States to protect its allies’ and partners’ interests. Assertive policies could create wedges between the United States and an ally by creating situations in which the ally believes the United States has failed to meet a commitment or adopt a sufficiently strong stand. Related, although China’s recently built military bases would likely be of little value in a war that involved the United States, these bases would be of greater value for challenging regional states—including the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. US experts have described the challenge: “The United States has a critical interest in providing reassurance to its allies and partners in the region that it will maintain a strong security presence to prevent a power vacuum from developing as China rises. That requires continuing active engagement in the South China Sea, taking steps that encourage responsible behavior and discourage coercion by all parties.”⁵³

Beyond this possible reason, China’s policies in the South China Sea are hard to understand in material and geopolitical terms. In this vein, some US officials have wondered whether Chinese officials appreciate the extent of the costs that China’s assertive policies have generated, including increasing neighboring countries’ desire for security assurances from the United States.⁵⁴