BBC News:
China has significantly expanded its nuclear stockpile over the past year and is now holding some 500 operational warheads, the US has said.
An annual report released by the Pentagon also said Beijing hopes to double its arsenal to over 1,000 warheads by 2030.
But it said China remained committed to a “no-first strike” policy.
While the report said the growth exceeded projections, China’s stockpile is still dwarfed by Russia and the US.
Russia has a nuclear arsenal of some 5,889 warheads, while the US can field 5,244, according to the independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
In 2021 the Department of Defense estimated China had around 400 warheads.
“We’re not trying to suggest a very large departure from where they [China] looked to be headed… but we are suggesting that they’re on track to exceed those previous projections,” a senior US defence official told reporters on Thursday, adding that the issue “raises a lot of concerns for [the US]”.
President Xi Jinping has declared China will field a “world-class military” by 2049. Since he came to power in 2012, he has sought to modernise the country’s armed forces.
Thursday’s Pentagon report said China’s current drive to grow its nuclear arsenal was set to “dwarf previous attempts in both scale and complexity”.
US officials said Beijing had probably completed the construction of three new clusters of missile sites in 2022.
These fields include at least 300 new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBMs) silos, the report said.
ICBMs are ballistic missiles with a range greater than 5,500km (3,400 miles).
