China is set to quadruple its stockpile of world-ending nuclear warheads in just over a decade, the Pentagon revealed today.
Last year, the military warned China is expanding its nuclear force much faster that Washington had predicted and rapidly closing the gap with the United States.
Their report highlights a broad and accelerating buildup of military muscle designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass U.S. global power by mid-century.
The Pentagon said the number of Chinese nuclear warheads could increase to 700 within six years and may top 1,000 by 2030. The new report says China currently has about 400 nuclear warheads, and that number could grow to 1,500 by 2035.
The United States, by comparison, has 3,750 active nuclear warheads.
Beijing's growing arsenal is creating uncertainty for the US as it navigates how to deter two nuclear powers, Russia and China, simultaneously, the Pentagon said in its recent nuclear posture review.
And China's build-up also creates uncertainty about its intentions, said Bonny Lin, director of the China power project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Will the actual increase in capability start impacting how Chinese experts think about the use of nuclear weapons?" such as whether it would change Beijing's no "first use" policy, Lin asked.
"That's the uncertainty. We can't assume that if they have more capabilities, that their policy is going to remain the same."
The report looks at China's activities in 2021 and therefore does not assess what impact Russia's invasion of Ukraine may have had on China's militarisation priorities or strategy.
It also looks at what extent the invasion has weakened or strengthened China's relationship with Russia, said a senior defence official who briefed reporters in advance of the report's release on the condition they not be named.
While China has not provided Russia with weapons in the current conflict, its amplification of Russian disinformation and its continued support for joint military exercises with Russia is something the U.S. is monitoring closely, the official said.
China is also closely watching how the international community reacts to Russia's threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, said John Erath, senior policy director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
"If Russia is able to gain its objectives by means of nuclear threats, China will derive lessons from that and could be potentially making these kinds of threats against Taiwan or other neighbouring countries in connection with China's territorial ambitions," Erath said.
The report was released as China is seeing its most widespread protests in decades, with demonstrators denouncing the country's "zero-Covid" policy, but the timing is unrelated.
Congress requires the Pentagon to prepare the report annually.
Its release also comes just two weeks after President Joe Biden met with China's President Xi Jinping on the sidelines the Group of 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, their first in-person meeting since Biden became president in January 2021.
During their nearly three-hour session, Biden objected directly to China's "coercive and increasingly aggressive actions" toward Taiwan, but also said the US is not looking for conflict with the communist power.
