China, WMD proliferation, and the "China threat" debate

This article argues that Chinese WMD proliferation activities have played a unique and modest but also enduring role in the "China threat" debate in t he United States. Chinese arms sales have raised two types of concerns for the United States, both of which have shifted over time. First, the initial U.S. concerns in the late 1980s and early 1990s were narrowly based on dir ect threats to material U.S. national security interests stemming from Chin ese WMD-related exports to countries in the Middle East. In this sense, the intellectual origins of the "China threat" debate lie in Chinese prolifera tion activities. From the early 1990s onward, however the locus of U.S. con cerns about Chinese weapons exports shifted to the broader political issue of China's intentions as an international actor Many began to see Chinese p roliferation behavior as an indicator of whether China would accept or reje ct the norms and rules of the international system, whether China plans to challenge U.S. influence in particular regions, and whether China can be tr usted to adhere to its commitments. Furthermore, this article maintains tha t the U.S. discourse about Chinese proliferation has become detached from t he narrowing scope of Chinese proliferation activities and Beijing's limite d acceptance of the international nonproliferation regime In the last five years China's proliferation activities have declined significantly and to a limited extent have dovetailed with U.S. nonproliferation goals; little of this progress, however has been reflected in the current debates about the "China threat."