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.”