From the Magazine: US CONCERNED ABOUT CHINA’S RAPIDLY GROWING NUCLEAR ARSENAL

Chinese and US defence officials held talks in late November to discuss Washington’s concerns about Beijing’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal amid growing rivalry between the two sides could increase the risk of conflict. In a 2 December statement the Pentagon noted that the working-level meeting, which had been approved by President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to keep open the channels of communication, focused on the findings presented in the US Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) latest ‘China Military Power Report’, which was published on 3 November.

Very few details emerged from the meeting, but its relevance could be seen in the fact that the US delegation included representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while the Chinese delegation featured members of the Central Military Commission’s Office for International Military Cooperation (OIMC).

The key issue on the agenda was the Pentagon’s latest assessment that China is expanding its nuclear weapon capabilities at a much faster rate than US officials had predicted a year ago. More precisely, the authors of the 2021 ‘China Military Power Report’ warned that the “accelerating pace” of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) nuclear expansion “may enable the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027”, adding that Beijing “likely intends to have at 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the [US] DoD projected in 2020”.

Beijing itself does not release any data on its nuclear weapons arsenal, but in the 2020 edition of the same Pentagon report, US officials had estimated that the number of China’s nuclear warheads was “in the low-200s”. This was projected “to at least double in size” over the next decade as part of the PLA’s efforts to “modernise, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces”.

To accelerate the expansion, Beijing is investing in a number of land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the necessary infrastructure to support them, noted the Pentagon in its 3 November report. It also pointed out that China is increasing its capacity to produce and separate plutonium for warheads by constructing fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities.

“The PRC probably intends to develop new nuclear warheads and delivery platforms that at least equal the effectiveness, reliability, and/or survivability of some of the warheads and delivery platforms currently under development by the United States and/or Russia,” wrote the authors of the report, pointing out that the move is part of China’s nuclear deterrence strategy as well as plans to deter and counter third-party intervention in regional conflicts.

This is an excerpt from APDR. To read the full story, click here.

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