After years of delay, China signed the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, stirring speculation about its motives. Some pundits said China yielded to international pressure for nuclear nonproliferation in the post-Cold War world. Oth ers said China took into account Japanese moves for partial suspension of aid to Beijing.
In my view, China is unlikely to abandon its nuclear test program, since its nuclear arms development is incomplete. I assumed that when it signed the CTBT, China saw clear prospects of a technical breakthrough that would make it possible to suspend nuclear tests.
The nature of the breakthrough was unclear, but at the time I thought that two New York Times reports were noteworthy. One report said that then U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, while visiting Beijing in 1994, had proposed to offer computer-simulated nuclear test technology in exchange for China's signing of the CTBT. The other report said Perry warned Russia and Ukraine in 1996 against moves to transfer technologies for intercontinental ballistic missiles to China. The ICBMs, strategic arms owned by the former Soviet Union, had targeted the United States. The ICBMs were to have been dismantled under the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks.