ABSTRACT
The appearance of nuclear weapons perhaps did not come as a complete surprise to all Chinese. The editorial also referred to the mistaken opinions of “some persons” who considered that an initial attack by an air force equipped with nuclear weapons would be decisive in a war, or who considered that nuclear weapons could be used to maintain world peace. Chinese communist party (CCP) concern over the possibility of American use of nuclear weapons naturally continued and perhaps intensified with the mid-1946 breakdown of George C. Marshall’s mediation efforts and the outbreak of full-scale civil war between the CCP and the US-supported Nationalist government. In literature pertaining to Chinese nuclear weapons policy, especially that from the 1950s and 1960s, there is often inconsistent or unclear use of terminology such as “nuclear,” “atomic,” “thermonuclear”.
