What’s Up With China’s Nuclear Buildup?

Military vehicles carrying DF-21D intermediate-range anti-ship ballistic missiles participate in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Sept. 3, 2015. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

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In recent years, Beijing has spent billions of dollars adding to its nuclear arsenal—not just more nuclear bombs and warheads but also new missiles, transporters, silos, submarines, and bombers. But what’s behind this buildup of China’s nuclear forces in terms of nuclear strategy and geopolitics?

For decades, the Chinese were more or less satisfied with possessing a relatively small nuclear force. Beijing tested its first atomic (uranium-fission) bomb in 1964 and its first hydrogen (fusion) bomb in 1969. It also test-launched a nuclear-tipped missile in 1966.

And yet, for decades, China’s nuclear force remained small and on low alert, based on a “no first use” (NFU) strategy. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, various Western estimates put China’s atomic arsenal at no more than 160 nuclear warheads, which placed it last among the declared “nuclear club,” which included the United States, the Soviet Union, the UK, and France.

Moreover, China didn’t really possess a strategic nuclear force: It still lacked long-range bombers or ballistic-missile-carrying submarines (save for one clunky Xia-class submarine, which was so unusable it reportedly made only one deterrence patrol before being permanently docked).

The bulk of China’s strategic deterrence consisted of just 20 or so DF-5A intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—liquid-fueled behemoths that took hours (if not days) to prep for launch, thus reducing the likelihood that Beijing would initiate a surprise nuclear attack.

In fact, for most of the 20th century, communist China was simply too poor and too technologically backward to ever hope to match the nuclear might of the United States or the Soviet Union. A small nuclear force had to suffice, yet there had to be a strong strategic rationale for possessing and possibly using nuclear weapons.

The answer was “minimum deterrence.” According to the doctrine of minimum deterrence, China need only possess a nuclear force capable of surviving and retaliating against an enemy’s first strike. This meant a limited but durable second-strike nuclear force that would deter nuclear blackmail and also be compatible with the defensive-oriented doctrine of People’s War.

People's Liberation Army soldiers march past an old Chinese medium-range ballistic missile on display in front of Beijing's military museum on July 26, 1999. (Stephen Shaver/AFP via Getty Images)

This policy worked for decades, even in the 1980s and 1990s, when China opened up and began to modernize its economy and become wealthier. Nuclear modernization generally took a back seat to building up the People’s Liberation Army’s conventional forces.

Instead, Beijing simply updated its nuclear policy to “dynamic minimum deterrence.” This meant a greater stress on survivability, sufficiency, and reliability. Nuclear forces were still limited in size, but they would be better able to withstand a first strike so that China would still be able to inflict a damaging retaliatory second strike.

Dynamic minimum deterrence led to a modest increase in the country’s number of nuclear weapons, to perhaps 400 warheads. It also entailed an expansion in the types of new delivery systems. In particular, the number of ICBMs grew to around 55 to 65 missiles, most of them advanced, road-mobile, and solid-fueled systems capable of hiding from enemy attacks as well as firing on short notice.

Over the past decade or so, however, China has engaged in a truly substantial buildup of its nuclear arsenal—one that’s much too large to meet the definition of “minimum deterrence,” dynamic or not.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, for example, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has stated that China now has more ICBM launchers than the United States. STRATCOM argues that the number of Chinese ICBM silos has grown from 100 in 2020 to 450 in late 2022. Even if some of these launchers are currently empty, they imply that Beijing could significantly increase the size of its land-based nuclear force in the near future.

In comparison, the U.S. Air Force has 400 silos loaded with missiles, along with another 50 empty silos. Each U.S. missile carries only a single warhead.

In addition, about a decade ago, there were reports that China may have built thousands of miles of tunnels in which to store and move nuclear weapons. This was estimated at the time to imply a nuclear force of up to 3,000 warheads.

Of course, the bulk of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is sea-based. The U.S. Navy operates 14 Ohio-class missile-carrying submarines (SSBNs). Each SSBN is armed with 24 Trident II sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and each SLBM carries up to 12 warheads.

Even here, however, the Chinese are catching up, currently operating six Type-094 SSBNs. Each boat is outfitted with a dozen 4,600-mile-range JL-2 SLBMs, each containing a single warhead, although they could eventually carry three to eight warheads each. A new class of SSBN is in the works.

A type 094 Jin-class nuclear submarine Long March 15 of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy participates in a naval parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of China's navy in the sea near Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, on April 23, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)

Throw in a new bomber (the stealth H-20) and a large number of road-mobile missiles, and the Chinese nuclear buildup looks very impressive (or very bleak, depending on your perspective). According to the U.S. Department of Defense, China will likely possess 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 and as many as 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. This would be roughly equal to the number of total active warheads possessed by both the United States and Russia (admittedly, both countries have thousands more nuclear weapons in reserve or storage).

This massive buildup of China’s nuclear forces begs the question: to what purpose? The numbers are way beyond the need for minimum deterrence. Moreover, the increased accuracy of Chinese nuclear delivery systems is more indicative of a first-strike capability. Is Beijing shifting to a first-use nuclear strategy?

Perhaps, but even more worrisome than any purposeful, first-use/first-strike Chinese nuclear strategy is the possibility that even Beijing doesn’t know what it wants to do with its burgeoning nuclear arsenal. It could be building up its nuclear forces simply because it now has the money and technology to do so and it sees nuclear weapons as just one more tool in its strategic competition with the United States.

Chinese national strategy—that is, the “grand rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by the middle of the century—is so simply and sadly aggressive that it could conceivably lead to the impetuous use of nuclear weapons. Beijing may not even know what it’s letting itself in for.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.