Chinese nuclear doctrine is just to maintain a large enough arsenal to ensure survival of enough weapons in the event of a first strike to wipe out an adversari

Chinese nuclear doctrine is just to maintain a large enough arsenal to ensure survival of enough weapons in the event of a first strike to wipe out an adversaries major cities. The idea being that rather then spend the huge extra amounts of money necessary to ensure total obliteration of the enemy, its enough of a deterrent just to guarantee an attacker would lose a large percentage of their population/economic capital.