I get your argument. Personally I would prefer a force of 4 boats with 24 missiles each. SSBNs are expensive luxuries to have with the hope for not using them ever. So having less boats at sea is cheaper on the operational budget. Plus each boat is now a true nation killer. Just like each one Ohio class submarine. Imagine having 12 boats with 24 missiles each. The US and friends will not ever think of trying their luck with pushing that button.
I think that China's "minimal deterrence" posture is both ethically praiseworthy and strategically sensible and I would certainly not endorse building nuclear capabilities to excessive levels. For as you say, SSBNs and other nuclear armaments are expensive tools that one hopes will never be used. But they are not luxuries. They have a very limited purpose, but that purpose is of the utmost importance: to prevent nuclear blackmail by another nuclear-armed state. Reducing the cost of the nuclear weapons capability, making it efficient, is a laudable goal but one that should be pursued only after a
credible deterrent has been established, and the credibility of the SSBN force is
in part about numbers. Having more boats both increases the CCP's confidence in the efficacy of its nuclear deterrent, and reduces an adversary's confidence that they could effectively neutralise that deterrent.
To be clear, in terms of enhancing the credibility of China's nuclear deterrent I think that the number of SSBN hulls is a distinctly lower priority than increasing the survivability of each of those hulls and the performance of their missiles. But if we assume that 096 and JL-3 are more or less complete from a design perspective and will get China most of the way towards addressing those high priority areas, the next area to be addressed is the
size of the SSBN force. The number of SSBNs that are required depends on the deployment, maintenance and crewing patterns that are envisaged, which are informed by strategic doctrine in the context of geography, etc. But in any case I think 12 is a reasonable medium-term upper bound, for that is roughly the number that USA and Russia will be operating in the 2030s, and China should not be escalatory in the nuclear domain.
