China is expanding its nuclear arsenal and is likely to have a stockpile of about 1,500 warheads by 2035, up from the current estimated number of 400, the Pentagon has said, with Beijing focusing on accelerating its nuclear capabilities as it seeks to challenge America's global dominance.
In its annual report to Congress on China's ambitious military build-up, the Pentagon said on Tuesday that over the next decade, Beijing aims to modernise, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces.
China's current nuclear modernisation exercise has exceeded the previous modernisation attempts in both scale and complexity, it said.
China is investing in and expanding the number of its land, sea, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces, the report said.
China is also supporting this expansion by increasing its capacity to produce and separate plutonium by constructing fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities. In 2021, Beijing probably accelerated its nuclear expansion, it said.
The Pentagon said it estimates that China's operational nuclear warheads stockpile has surpassed 400.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) plans to "basically complete modernisation" of its national defence and armed forces by 2035, said the report.
"If China continues the pace of its nuclear expansion, it will likely field a stockpile of about 1,500 warheads by its 2035 timeline," it said.
The Chinese strategy is a determined pursuit to amass and expand its national power to transform, at least, aspects of the international system to make it more favourable to its political system and its national interests as they define them, said a senior defence official.
"They aim to expand their national power through both domestic and foreign policy initiatives. So, the global security initiative that President Xi Jinping laid out at … is one of these in which the PRC seeks to kind of paint itself as a provider of global public goods,” the official said.
There have been more coercive and aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region, including some of which the US would highlight as being dangerous, the official noted. "So PLA vessels and aircraft have exhibited an increase in unsafe and unprofessional behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region, including for the aircraft aerobatics, discharging chaff and other activities that could make it dangerous for nearby aircraft to maneuver safely," the official noted.
Reacting to the Pentagon report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that in recent years, the US has been hyping up various versions of the “China threat”narrative simply to find pretext for expanding its nuclear arsenal and perpetuating military predominance. The world knows well that this is a go-to tactic of the US."