One story about Mao Zedong, the founding president of PRC.

During the Zhenbao island conflicts between China and Soviet Union, the leadership of Soviet Union was said to be actually considering nuking China, after being on the losing side, to eliminate the threat of China once for all.

When the piece of intelligence was intercepted, the military committee of China held an emergent meeting, where none of the military leaders was afraid of Soviet Union launching nuclear weapons onto China, instead of offering truce they carefully analyzed the stockpile of enriched uranium and decided to retaliate Soviet Union while manufacturing nukes.

Mao was sitting there, quietly listening to each and every military head.

Approaching the end of meeting, Mao made a decision that they would not retaliate Soviet Union with nukes, followed by a strategic plan that overwhelmed the meeting attendants: forbid any intention to nuke Soviet Union, sending all field forces to the borders, once the Soviet Union launches nuclear weapons to China, the Chinese troops all charge into the USSR soil, followed by local troops and civil armies, all attack on the USSR and take their land, eventually all the Chinese will move to Soviet Union and settle there.

Everyone was overwhelmed and Mao continued to explain his plan, “if the USSR launches nuclear weapons, China will face large scale contamination, we have to move and it is not an option.”

“We attack one wave after another, we push forward to take over and destroy the military facilities and airports, the Chinese civilians arm themselves and march onto USSR.”

“Our military is the best in guerrilla battles, the USSR will find it impossible to stop us. There is more than 600 millions Chinese, all born, raised and trained in tough times through war and blood, we are unstoppable.”

The military heads were both shocked and excited. “What are we going to do with the nukes we have?” One asked.

“Attack all the USA military bases within reach, so that the USA cannot take advantage and destroy us after we are through with the USSR.”

Mao instructed the info sent to USSR and USA leadership immediately.

Henry Kissinger got the info via Poland, as China-USA was in a bad relationship, Nixon summoned the generals and they worried that as impossible as it looked, Mao would actually do it, especially given how Mao joined the Korean War without any heads up.

If China decided to launch all her nukes onto USA bases, then USA would lose all the capabilities in the APAC region. Moreover, if Mao moved the Chinese onto USSR, he might further push towards Europe, even the mainland USA.

The USA decided to side with China, rising the costs of wars for the USSR hence USSR would not impulsively attack on China. Later USA quickly summoned the USSR ambassador and made it clear.

While before the warning from USA, the leadership of USSR had already decided not to go to wars with China and take actions to repair the relationship with China. Alexei Kosygin reached to Zhou Enlai, the prime minister of China asking for an urgent meeting with Mao, but Mao decided to ignore and take a nap instead.

Alexei Kosygin requested meeting again on his way back from visit to Vietnam, Zhou agreed to meet him at the airport for half an hour.