Assassin's mace

[3][2]: 316 While the term as a figure of speech has been around for centuries and has been revived in contemporary Chinese pop culture, one of the main disputes is on its usage in a modern military context.

[9]: 69 [2]: 342 Doshi argues in his book The Long Game that China seeks to displace the United States as the world's dominant military and economic superpower.

[9]: 51–53  Doshi says that this caused China's military to re-orient itself against the United States by developing assassin's mace weaponry that could counter America's conventional superiority.

[9]: 83–86 [2] Doshi describes assassin's mace submarines as those that can attack American carrier battle groups using anti-ship missiles and sea mines, while being weak in land-attack capabilities.

[2]: 343  Bruzdzinski cites Chinese analysts Liu Xiaodu and Kang Fashun as supporting the view that the threat of nuclear weapons are able to deter a technologically superior force such as the United States from entering into a conflict with China.

[9]: 90–94  The Science of Second Artillery Campaigns, a textbook published by People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, says that ASBMs should be used as assassin's mace weapons to keep away enemy aircraft carriers.

[9]: 92 [15] Due to what Dong describes as asymmetry in defensive versus offensive technologies, ASBMs can be an effective way for poor states to defeat or prevent military intervention from an aircraft carrier.