China’s nuclear arsenal is expected to more than triple to 1,500 warheads by 2035, the Pentagon said in a report on Tuesday, also noting the growing sophistication of the country’s air force.
Washington has identified Beijing as the biggest challenge facing the United States, and China’s annual military strengths report has highlighted progress in both its nuclear and conventional forces.
“The Defense Ministry estimates that (China’s) stockpile of operational warheads has exceeded 400,” the report said. “If China continues the pace of its nuclear expansion, it is likely to stockpile about 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035.”
However, this number would fall far short of the arsenals of the United States and Russia, which each contain several thousand nuclear warheads.
China is also working to modernize its nuclear-deliverable ballistic missiles, about 135 of which will be launched in tests by 2021 — “more than the rest of the world combined,” excluding those launched during conflict, it said. report. And Beijing’s air force is making headway, “rapidly catching up with the Western air force,” the report said.
A senior defense official said ahead of the report’s release that China’s air force is “trying … to make rapid progress on all fronts,” including the equipment it uses, as well as its pilots and other personnel.
The report highlights how China is deploying its military in the Indo-Pacific region “adopted more coercive and aggressive actions”.
This is especially true around Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own.
A visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August enraged China, which responded with the largest and most aggressive exercises around the island since the 1990s. Since then, both sides have taken action to ease tensions, but the senior defense official said that although Chinese military activity around Taiwan has decreased, it is still higher than before.
Beijing is “establishing a sort of new normal in terms of the level of military activity around Taiwan,” the official said.
“While we don’t see an imminent invasion, this kind of heightened level of … intimidating and coercive activity in Taiwan is clearly a cause of concern,” the official added.
Source: DN
