The pace of Chinaʼs build-up of nuclear weapons exceeds previous US forecasts: over the past year, according to the Pentagon, Beijing has created about a hundred nuclear warheads.
This comes from a Pentagon report on China policy.
Analysts of the US Ministry of Defense believe that as of May of this year, China had more than 500 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, which is about a hundred more than last year.
In a report last year, the Pentagon noted that Beijing was rapidly modernizing its nuclear forces, but estimated that it would build up its nuclear forces at a slower pace and have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035.
Now the Pentagon predicts that by 2030, China intends to deploy more than a thousand nuclear warheads. Thus, it will consolidate its status as the third nuclear power in the world after the USA and the Russian Federation.
To do this, China is likely to use new fast neutron breeder reactors and processing facilities to produce plutonium — which Chinese authorities officially call part of "peaceful atomic research".
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, as of January of this year, Russia had 5,889 nuclear warheads, while the United States had 5,244.
China, on the other hand, refuses to participate in negotiations with the United States and the Russian Federation regarding the limitation of nuclear weapons, claiming that the arsenals of these two countries are much larger than its own.
The report also notes that China may be developing a new intercontinental ballistic missile system using conventional weapons that, if deployed, would allow Beijing to "threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States, Hawaii and Alaska."
- On March 30, Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged China to prepare for war and announced an increase in the defense budget. This comes amid growing aggressive rhetoric about Taiwan and even threats to seize the island by force.