Since becoming a nuclear state in 1964, China has maintained one of the smallest and most vulnerable nuclear forces among the great powers despite possessing the resources to build a larger force, presenting a puzzle to international relations scholars. I argue that the influence of China's Mao-era strategic culture caused China's nuclear weapons program to be limited in size, a pattern that then persisted in a path dependent manner throughout the history of the program. To establish this argument, this dissertation analyzes the historical development of China's nuclear weapons program across three major periods. During the first period, China's Mao-era strategic culture caused its nuclear weapons program to emphasize technical achievement over force production, limiting the development of the program in a path dependent manner. During the second period, China's strategic culture transformation caused Chinese leaders to improve aspects of the state's nuclear deterrent capability, yet only within an ongoing context of path dependent restraint for the nuclear weapons program. This then continued during the subsequent historical period, revealing that even as China has periodically improved certain aspects of its nuclear deterrent capability, this has occurred within a pattern of path dependent restraint for the nuclear weapons program.
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