Comment: China’s non-disclosure of the ICBM test runs counter to its own strategic interests

SINGAPORE: China’s rare intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test last month in the South Pacific, its first in 44 years, has raised questions about Beijing’s strategic ambitions.

The sudden September 25 announcement by China’s defense ministry came less than two hours after the ICBM was launched at 8:44 a.m. from Hainan. Chinese state media reported that it had hit the target when the missile “fell in the expected maritime areas”.

Although not explicitly stated, French Polynesian media indicated that the projectile landed near the territory’s economic zone.

Having traveled more than 11,000 km from its launch site, twice the 5,500 km range of the most basic ICBMs, the offending object, likely the Dong Feng-31AG (DF-31AG), was loaded with a dummy warhead instead of 1 megaton. fissile material that this type of missile is designed to carry.

If the ICBM in question was indeed a variant of the DF-31, which first entered service nearly two decades ago, as opposed to the newer, more advanced DF-41, the decision to fire the older (i.e. , is more stable), but nonetheless powerful, the weapon can perhaps be interpreted as Beijing prioritizing a more reliable means of signaling its martial prowess to the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific.

In addition to saying the test was “routine” and not aimed at any country, some US officials praised Beijing for giving the Pentagon advance notice to avoid misperceptions and miscalculations.

France, Australia and New Zealand have also said they were given advance notice of the test. Accordingly, the information would have been passed on by some of them to their counterparts in the region, as well as to the relevant authorities operating in these waters and airspace. Meanwhile, Japan and the Philippines were alerted a few days before the launch of a possible landing of “space debris” in the sea, although it is unclear whether they were directly informed of the ICBM test.

Still, not everyone who believes they have a right to know was impressed. On the one hand, the president of Kiribati criticized the Chinese government for not reporting the status of the Pacific islands, and further alluded to the test as a threat to “peace and stability worlds”. In response, the Chinese embassy there stated that there was “no need to alert Kiribati” as the test did not target anyone in that part of the world.

The relative paucity of advanced strategic messages in this episode contrasts with the previous time the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fired an ICBM into the Pacific Ocean.

To understand the circumstances behind the latter, one must go back to a time when China was just emerging from the excesses of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution as his successors sought to reintegrate the country into the global economy.