First Taiwan Strait Crisis
There are strong indications that Mao used the crisis in order to provoke the United States into making nuclear threats, which would give him home support to pour money into research and production of Chinese nuclear weapons and missile technology. After American nuclear threats during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Politburo gave the green light in 1955 to pursue nuclear weapon and missile research. The first of China's nuclear weapons tests took place in 1964 and its first successful hydrogen bomb test occurred in 1967.