China is continuing to rapidly modernize, diversify and expand its nuclear arsenal, possessing “more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May 2023 — on track to exceed previous expectations," the Pentagon has said in a major report on Chinese military power.
According to the U.S. Defense Department’s annual congressionally mandated report released Thursday in Washington, the Pentagon estimates that China will probably have “over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030,” many of which “will be deployed at higher readiness levels.”
“What they're doing now, if you compare it to what they were doing about a decade ago, it really far exceeds that in terms of scale and complexity,” a senior U.S. defense official told a briefing on condition of anonymity. “They're expanding and investing in their land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms, as well as the infrastructure that's required to support this.”
The report also said that China has "probably completed" the construction of a total of 300 intercontinental ballistic missile silos as it expands its launch facilities. At least some of these have been outfitted with ICBMs, the official said.
Last year’s report said China would likely field a stockpile of about 1,500 warheads by 2035, a pace the senior U.S. official said Beijing would eclipse based on the latest information.
“We're not trying to suggest a very large departure from where they look to be headed in last year's report, but we are suggesting that they're on track to exceed those previous projections,” the official said.
The estimated 500 nuclear warheads in China’s possession pales in comparison to the U.S. and Russia, which have about 3,700 and 4,500, respectively, according to estimates from June by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Beijing’s nuclear build-up comes amid its growing rivalry with the United States, triggering fears that the two superpowers have entered a new kind of cold war that could turn hot.
The Pentagon report details what it says is China’s more assertive use of its military on the global stage amid what leader Xi Jinping perceives as “an increasingly turbulent strategic environment for China's development.”
“Beijing views its international security environment as becoming increasingly complex, with intensifying confrontation with the United States raising the danger of conflict during this decade,” the report said.
In a speech last March, Xi Jinping told delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that “Western countries led by the United States have implemented comprehensive containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.”
In response to this, Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, has urged the military to deepen war and combat planning to increase the chances of victory in actual combat.
Earlier this week, the U.S. accused the Chinese military of “a sharp increase in coercive and risky” behavior in airspace above the East and South China seas against the U.S. and its allies and partners over the last two years, voicing concern over the moves as fears mount that an accident could erupt into full-scale conflict.
Thursday’s report reiterated these concerns, saying the Pentagon had documented nearly 300 such cases and more than 180 instances of dangerous air intercepts by China against American military aircraft alone over the past two years — more than in the previous decade combined.
The report also devoted large chunks of text to Taiwan, noting China’s “amplified diplomatic, political, and military pressure” against the democratic island last year and into 2023.
China claims the democratic island as a rogue province that must be united with the mainland, by force, if necessary.
The Pentagon said the Chinese military had “practiced elements of each of its military courses of action against Taiwan” during large-scale military drills in August 2022 and April 2023, while also sharply increasing flights into the island’s self-declared air defense identification zone.
It also said that China had been “testing joint capabilities in and beyond” the so-called first island chain, which runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas. This appeared to signal that the Chinese military’s joint capabilities had improved since last year’s report, which said those abilities were in their infancy.
As Sino-U.S. relations have plummeted across the board in recent years, the Pentagon also noted that military-to-military ties continued to suffer as China’s “refusal to engage” in the communications “only sharpened in 2023,” according to the report.
The U.S. claims the refusal, combined with the Chinese military’s worrying behavior, “raises the risk of an operational incident or miscalculation spiraling into crisis or conflict.”
“It's important that we have consistent, open lines of communication across all of these levels including the most senior levels,” the senior U.S. defense official said.
China, on the other hand, has repeatedly argued that Washington should show its sincerity with "practical moves" to create the "proper atmosphere" for reopening key military channels, saying that — at least for now — the maintenance of communication via diplomatic channels is enough. It’s unclear what this might constitute, but China has in the past hinted that removing its currently missing defense chief from a U.S. sanctions list could be one such move.
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