China has conducted a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time in four decades. To learn more about the test, and why Beijing has carried it out now, TaiwanPlus spoke to Ping-Kuei Chen of National Chengchi University in Taipei.
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00:00What's the significance of China's intercontinental ballistic missile test and what was China
00:05hoping to achieve?
00:06I think this test is about showing the capability.
00:10So the significance of it is that China hasn't tested long-range missile for a very long
00:15time.
00:16So the timing of the test is very important.
00:20Apparently, China is going to send a diplomatic signal to the United States and its allies.
00:27Which ballistic missile did China use for the test and what does that tell us about
00:31Beijing's nuclear posture?
00:34As far as we know, the missile being tested in this test is DF-41, which is the latest
00:41intercontinental ballistic missile by China.
00:43It has a range between 12,000 to 15,000 kilometers, which means this long-range intercontinental
00:52ballistic missile can reach the mainland of the United States from China.
00:57And I think this is the important point about this test.
01:01It's a show of force that the U.S. homeland will be within the attacking range of the
01:11PLA.
01:12Is China sending a message to the U.S. with the missile test?
01:16I do think that it raised the alarms of the U.S. and its allies that China now has the
01:23competence and the capability to fulfill its own interests.
01:28To those countries, I think this works as an intimidation to their disputes with China.
01:35For example, the dispute in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
01:40This will have implications about how the U.S. and its allies operate in those disputed
01:48areas.
01:49Pentagon says that China is rapidly expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, including the
01:54construction of a large number of missile silos.
01:57How will the U.S. and its allies respond to the latest missile test?
02:00Pentagon has already known that China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, and the Pentagon
02:07has already put out plans to respond to such expansion.
02:13We know that even though China is changing its nuclear arsenal, it still does not match
02:19the U.S.'s.
02:21The problem is, during the Cold War, both superpowers have greater, larger nuclear arsenals,
02:29and it has been decreased since the end of the Cold War.
02:33So we may see another round of nuclear competition, but at the same time, I think this time the
02:40competition about nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, is that they will compete for the
02:49quality of nuclear weapons instead of the quantity of nuclear weapons.
02:53I think from this test, we know, we just confirmed the information that we already knew.
03:01We knew that China has this capability.