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"The casual talk about nuclear war is antithetical to Chinese strategists. Their principal concern is preservation of kith and kin, followed by their place in history. No general who gets 500m Chinese killed is going to look good in the history books. Leaders go to war to enhance, not blacken their reputations."

"The Secret Speech of General Chi Haotian" agrees with that, explaining that nuclear war would not serve the purpose of the CCP. According to the document, the General preferred bioweapons.

I posted some excerpts including the General's advice in favor of bioweapons here. The explanation against using nukes is in the copy of the lecture behind the link (where "genetic weapons" are also mentioned favorably).

[”The Secret Speech of General Chi Haotian” agrees with that, explaining that nuclear war would not serve the purpose of the CCP. According to the document, the General preferred bioweapons.

I posted some excerpts including the General’s advice in favor of bioweapons here. The explanation against using nukes is in the copy of the lecture behind the link (where “genetic weapons” are also mentioned favorably).]

The other objections remain. A speech in which an American general referred to Trump as President Donald in a speech to the rank and file would be a gigantic no-no. In a place like China, it would probably be viewed as the unforgivable insult it is. Which is why no speech would be written like that. It’s just wrong, the way a purported State of the Union speech written in the style of a Speedy Gonzalez monologue would be.

It’s also hard to think of instances in Chinese history where the ruler attacked a strong power before attacking a weaker one or attacked a distant power before attacking a nearby one. It’s a question of cost-benefit calculations. Rulers have to contend with domestic rivals and potential unrest from the costs and fallout from unsuccessful campaigns. In the case of bio-weapons, they have to figure in the cost of an all-out nuclear attack that kills hundreds of millions of Chinese. I’d argue they’d have to factor in genocidal revenge attacks that zero out the entire Chinese population.

Basically the strategy bruited in the speech is a giant roll of the dice for a country that doesn’t need to take any risks. Just from catch-up gains in technology, the Chinese economy will catch up to the US economy in the next decade. When Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor, it had an economy roughly 1/3 of the US (based on Angus Maddison’s massaged PPP numbers, but likely much lower in reality, given many things that make no sense) https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.590.924&rep=rep1&type=pdf Using PPP numbers, China’s GDP is already 20% bigger than the US’s.

Point being there is no real hurry, except for a given leader’s race against Father Time before his personal clock runs out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) You might argue that Xi Jinping doesn’t have 30 years left in him to get his name up in neon lights. But to roll the dice on the complete annihilation of China by using a biological weapon just to get ahead of Father Time? While the gains would be huge, the risk is simply too big.