Missile shield may spark China nuclear upgrade: officer

• Visitors walk past a Chinese-made …

VIENNA (Reuters) - China may need to modernize its nuclear arsenal to respond to the destabilizing effect of a planned U.S.-backed missile defense system, a senior Chinese military officer said on Wednesday.

"It undermines the strategic stability," said Major General Zhu Chenghu of China's National Defense University about the U.S.-led development of a missile shield, which has also alarmed Russia.
"We have to maintain the credibility of deterrence," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a panel discussion on nuclear disarmament, referring to the military doctrine that an enemy will be deterred from using atomic arms as long as he can be destroyed as a consequence.
The United States is spending about $10 billion a year to develop, test and deploy missile defenses, which would include a European shield as part of a layered system.
The defenses would also include ship-based interceptors that could be deployed in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific - for instance as a hedge against North Korea - plus ground-based missile interceptors in silos in Alaska and California.
The United States says the system in Europe - which is to be deployed in four phases by about 2020 - is intended to counter a potential threat from Iran and poses no risk to Russia.
But Moscow says the interceptors that the United States and NATO are deploying will be able to destroy its own warheads in flight by about 2018, upsetting the post-Cold War balance of power.
The comments by Zhu - who stirred controversy in 2005 by suggesting China could use nuclear weapons if the United States intervened militarily in a conflict over Taiwan - indicated this is an argument that also resonates in China.

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