WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- China has accelerated expansion of its nuclear arsenal due to a change in the country’s assessment of the threat posed by the U.S., the Wall Street Journal claims.
The U.S. government’s wariness about getting directly involved in the Ukraine conflict along with Beijing’s emphasis on creating a credible deterrence has led Beijing to work on the construction of more than 100 missile silos that can house nuclear weapons, the paper said.
The report quoted sources familiar with the Chinese leadership’s thinking as saying that the country’s leaders see a stronger nuclear arsenal as a way to deter the U.S. from getting directly involved in a potential conflict over Chinese Taipei, which has been a scene of confrontation between the two sides.
The Chinese government has already rejected such allegations, saying that it plans to only maintain enough nuclear arsenals necessary to ensure the protection of national security interests.
“On the assertions made by U.S. officials that China is expanding dramatically its nuclear capabilities, first, let me say that this is untrue,” Fu Cong, director-general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s arms control department, said earlier this year.
The WSJ report says according to Chinese military officials, the country’s nuclear weapons are too “outdated” to act as an “effective deterrent” against a potential American attack.
The report said Chinese leadership was fearful about the U.S. trying to topple the country’s government, citing the Trump and Biden administrations’ more aggressive policies, including recent attempts to ban Chinese apps from lucrative U.S. markets, deploying aircraft carriers to disputed waters in the South China Sea, selling arms to Taiwan and even accusing Chinese diplomats of espionage.
The report comes in the wake of an earlier claim by the Pentagon that the Chinese Communist Party aimed to “modernize, diversify and expand” its nuclear forces, investing in “land, sea and air-based nuclear delivery platforms”.
The Pentagon claimed that if China maintained its pace in developing its nuclear arsenal, it would have just over 1,000 warheads by 2030.
The U.S. State Department has reportedly sent overtures to Beijing on engaging China on arms control, asserting that it was “ready and willing”.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan had earlier said that President Biden was keen to “carry forward discussions on strategic stability”.
“All of these capabilities work together to say to the U.S. that there is no world in which you can engage in a nuclear first strike against China and not expect nuclear retaliation back on your cities, even with your missile defenses, even with your great counterforce capabilities,” Caitlin Talmadge, an associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said.