When Chinese military planners, and probably even the Chinese leadership itself, think about a hypothetical future war with the United States, they are very likely worried that the U.S. military will attempt to decapitate the Chinese leadership. This may sound far-fetched to Americans, but there is very strong evidence that Beijing really does worry about U.S. decapitation strikes—and that these fears mean a U.S.-China conflict runs higher escalation risks than previously understood.
The escalation risk comes not just from actual U.S. decapitation strikes but from any U.S. actions that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership view as attempts, or even preparations, for decapitation. Chinese misinterpretation of U.S. actions could lead to an escalation spiral, including Chinese nuclear first use. While it is unlikely that the United States can fully allay Chinese fears, there are steps the U.S. military can take to reduce the risks. These include being particularly cautious about any strikes around Beijing during a potential conflict, evaluating the impact of potential U.S. acquisitions on Chinese perceptions, and clearly communicating that any strike on mainland China would be for stopping an invasion of Taiwan, not decapitation.
The Chinese military has long studied its U.S. counterpart, not only to track the general evolution of warfare but also to specifically redesign itself in preparation for a potential conflict with the United States. One of the key takeaways for Chinese military planners has been that the U.S. way of war includes leadership decapitation strikes, especially at the outset of a conflict. For example, an official Chinese military book from 2020 explains: “The U.S. military, at the start of several recent local [limited] wars, always selected the enemy’s military and government heads, command organs, and TV and radio stations as important strike objectives.”
Chinese officials are very clear about the threat posed by the United States to their capital. An official 2013 PLA book notes that a “large-scale strategic raid” is one of China’s greatest foreign security threats. Moreover, PLA researchers likely responsible for Beijing’s air defense wrote in a 2019 article that their main mission in the future would be defending against U.S. “high-intensity continuous airstrikes.” While these writings may reflect typical military worst-case planning, the threat perception and assessment of U.S. intent are still revealing.
These concerns appear to extend beyond the PLA rank and file all the way to the top of the Chinese leadership. In a July 2017 internal speech devoted to Beijing’s capital air defense, the text of which was seen by the author, Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping warned the PLA that the risk of airstrikes to capitals had grown dramatically and complained that the service was still weak in its ability to manage Beijing’s air defenses. He exhorted the PLA to innovate its defenses and repeated his call for more realistic training.
Revealing how much Xi and the senior leadership are personally focused on the topic, Xi said, “I have always attached great importance to the issue of joint air defense of the capital,” and later added that the “Central Military Commission should strengthen its overall coordination and guidance” of capital air defense. To drive home the U.S. threat, Xi specifically said that “during the [Korean War], the United States considered bombing major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai and even launching an aerial nuclear strike against our country.”
Emerging technologies that enable leadership targeting, such as long-range precision strike and hypersonic weapons coupled with exquisite intelligence, have likely increased Chinese concerns. Xi reportedly said in a 2014 speech that the United States had “accelerated development of global rapid-strike” capabilities, obviously alluding to the U.S. Prompt Global Strike program that has since been renamed to Conventional Prompt Strike. Xi went on to explain that “once actually deployed, [this and other advanced weapons] will fundamentally change the traditional pattern of offensive and defensive warfare.” In his 2017 internal speech on capital air defense, Xi also tied this concern to weapons trends, noting that there are “more long-range, precise, stealthy, unmanned, intelligent, and high-speed [weapons]. … Aerospace strategic strikes are having an increasingly greater impact on the outcome of wars.”
This Chinese perception may perplex U.S. officials, who recognize that China’s secure second-strike nuclear capability means that leadership decapitation would carry immense escalation risks. But Beijing’s fears are not unfounded if one looks at past U.S. behavior. The United States did try to strike Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in both Gulf wars and also routinely targeted the leadership of terrorist organizations over the years. More recently, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian senior military official and Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani. And Beijing is not alone: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly has similar concerns about U.S. decapitation strikes. Moreover, of course, the Pentagon does have many euphemisms for leadership decapitation strikes, such as high-value targeting, targeting command and control (C2) nodes, or even counter-C2 targeting.
And whether Chinese concerns are rational or not, the country’s leadership is acting on them by trying to defend their capital. A 2016 RAND report documenting PLA Air Force surface-to-air missile training found that China’s air defense systems are concentrated around the capital and that Beijing always receives the newest, most capable systems. Chinese media reporting from 2022 suggests that the HQ-19, at the time China’s newest and most capable surface-to-air missile, was first deployed in the Central Theater Command around Beijing.
These concerns about U.S. decapitation strikes and strategies are part of broader and long-standing CCP fears about the perceived U.S. desire for regime change in China, and these fears are likely to be especially acute during a conflict. For example, PLA researchers describe Washington’s attempt to drive Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi from power in 2011 as “public opinion decapitation.” In the CCP’s telling, the United States was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “color revolutions” of Eastern Europe in the early 2000s, and even the 2019 Hong Kong protests. In this context, Chinese military researchers are also concerned by nonkinetic actions they believe the United States could take to support regime change, including U.S. information operations.
In light of the Chinese leadership’s deeply held fears, the greatest risk is not actually of a failed U.S. decapitation attempt. Rather the risk is that Beijing will misperceive U.S. actions and retaliate, potentially with nuclear weapons.
U.S. strikes around Beijing could prove particularly risky. For example, Washington might seek to degrade the Chinese defense industrial base by striking key munitions facilities around the capital. In this case, a preoccupation with operational efficiency and force survivability might lead the U.S. Air Force to first target air defense systems around Beijing before sending bombers to target munitions factories. Chinese leaders, however, are unlikely to know that the United States is merely going after munitions production. They would instead see their capital’s air defenses being attrited, quickly followed by U.S. Air Force bombers flying toward the city.
But even U.S. actions away from China could be misinterpreted. For example, a former PLA researcher now working for a Chinese foreign ministry think tank claimed in a 2017 interview that U.S. long-range strike deployments to South Korea for a bilateral exercise that year were demonstrations of U.S. decapitation capabilities.
These concerns could drive Chinese escalation. The 2004 Science of Second Artillery Campaigns, a classified textbook for the Chinese missile forces, specifically identifies “medium- or high-intensity conventional strikes against our capital” as one of the four conditions that could trigger Chinese nuclear signaling. Moreover, a recent RAND report argues that these same conditions in fact represent some of the most likely triggers for Chinese nuclear first use.
While there may be benefits for deterrence in leaning into Chinese leadership fears, the challenge is that it is difficult to predict when these fears will spill over. In a worst-case scenario, Beijing could undertake a preemptive nuclear first strike to forestall a feared U.S. attempt at decapitation.
Washington is unlikely to convince Beijing that it will not conduct such decapitation strikes. But it can still mitigate the risk to better manage escalation by taking steps involving acquisition, targeting, employment, peacetime training, and public statements.
The first step is to simply acknowledge China’s perception and recognize that U.S. actions may be misperceived, regardless of U.S. intentions. Second, U.S. acquisitions should consider Chinese perceptions when procuring weapons that could be construed as intended for decapitation. For example, if the United States developed a limited number of long-range hypersonic weapons that are vulnerable to adversary strikes, Beijing might assume that they were intended as first-strike weapons and tailored toward decapitation. Similarly, procuring munitions that are explicitly designed for attacking hard and deeply buried targets (HDBT) could also appear to be focused on decapitation. The Pentagon should consider which very long-range, high-speed, and HDBT capabilities it truly needs to support a denial theory of victory.
These examples of strategic empathy and force structure adjustment are not giveaways to Beijing. Rather, they are logical measures to reduce the risk of uncontrolled escalation. Moreover, Washington has done it before—the Bush administration demurred on developing Prompt Global Strike in the mid-2000s in part because it acknowledged that the strategic escalation risk outweighed the hypothetical military operational benefit.
Third, the United States should carefully weigh the operational benefits against the strategic risks of any strikes in or around Beijing. To make this possible, planners should ensure that they have multiple targeting options for any operational goal they seek to achieve and be cautious about any launch trajectory that could be perceived as targeting Beijing.
Fourth, the United States could avoid collecting any targeting data on the Chinese leadership. In the case of a conflict, it could avoid degrading any air defense systems devoted to protecting the Chinese leadership.
Fifth, peacetime training should avoid activities that could be perceived as preparation for decapitation strikes.
Finally, if the United States ever does launch strikes against mainland China, Washington should at least be clear in its message that they are solely for the purpose of stopping an invasion of Taiwan and are not leadership decapitation attempts.
None of these actions by themselves will correct Chinese perceptions. However, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. Taken together, these steps would start to reduce the risks of Chinese misperception turning a conventional war between the United States and China into a nuclear one.