Years before Beijing actually deployed an ICBM in 1981, US intelligence estimated the possibility of the deployment of a “few operable, though probably relatively inefficient missiles” as early as 1971.

Prepared by Edward Hurwitz, a Foreign Service officer and future ambassador then on assignment to INR, this report treated ICBMs as China’s main weapons goal, an eventual means for a “credible threat” to Beijing’s U.S. and Soviet “arch enemies.”

Only months after China’s first nuclear test in October 1964, INR looked into whether Beijing would help other nations get the bomb.

This “Limited Distribution” report on possible Japanese reactions did not anticipate that a test would cause basic changes in US-Japan security relations or in Tokyo’s general approach to nuclear weapons.

Gromyko informs Liu Xiao of the Soviet position and strategy in its negotiations with the United States and the United Kingdom for halting nuclear tests.

With nuclear proliferation a policy priority for the Jimmy Carter administration, and Pakistan already a special concern, the possibility that China and Pakistan were sharing nuclear weapons-related information began was beginning to worry US government officials. These concerns did not go away during the Reagan administration. While nuclear proliferation was not a top priority, the administration was apprehensive about the implications of the spread of nuclear capabilities and that China may have been aiding and abetting some potential proliferators by selling unsafeguarded nuclear materials.