Daily US Times: A new Pentagon report released Tuesday says China is attempting to at least double the number of nuclear warheads in its arsenal in the next decade and the country’s military has already equaled or surpassed the United States in a series of key areas.
The report suggests that China has made major strides in areas such as the development of ballistic and cruise missiles, shipbuilding as well as integrated air defense systems.
The report detailing China’s military capabilities comes amid mounting tensions between the US and China over a range of issues, including US-support to Taiwan and Chinese military activities in the South China Sea. It’s also published in the run up to the 2020 US election as President Trump is looking to make his increasingly aggressive stance towards Beijing a key campaign issue.
The report says: “Over the next decade, China’s nuclear warhead stockpile—currently estimated to be in the low- 200s—is projected to at least double in size as China expands and modernizes its nuclear forces,” adding that the number of warheads on Chinese land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that are “capable of threatening the United States is expected to grow to roughly 200 in the next five years.”
It says: “China’s nuclear forces will significantly evolve over the next decade as it modernizes, diversifies, and increases the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms,” adding that “China is pursuing a ‘nuclear triad’ with the development of a nuclear capable air-launched ballistic missile and improving its ground and sea-based nuclear capabilities.”
Beijing has resisted joining arms control talks
The Trump administration has long sought to include China in its nuclear arsenal control talks with Russia, but China has resisted to the move. And despite the number of Chinese nuclear warheads is growing rapidly, its overall stockpile is still dwarfed by that of the US and Russia.
The New START treaty limits the US and Russia to some 1,550 nuclear arsenal on deployed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments and deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon report also says that “China has already achieved parity with—or even exceeded—the United States in several military modernization areas,” including land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, shipbuilding and integrated air defense systems.
It also notes that Beijing is in possession of the “largest navy in the world,” with some 350 ships and submarines, “including over 130 major surface combatants. The US Navy’s battle force, In comparison, is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020.”
The report added that China “has more than 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers,” adding that in 2019 Beijing “launched more ballistic missiles for testing and training than the rest of the world combined.”
China’s possession of a large arsenal of intermediate range missiles was seen by some as a motivating factor to prompt the Trump administration to exit the 1987 INF treaty with Russia, that the US and all of its NATO allies said Moscow was violating by deploying its own intermediate range missiles.
While the US has begun developing intermediate range missiles of its own, China still enjoys a significant advantage in that area.
China continues to boost its military spending at a rate that exceeds Chinese economic growth, the report notes, adding that enabling Chinese defense spending to dwarf that of other countries in the region.
Beijing’s official defense budget was $174 billion in 2019 compared to the US budget of about $685 billion. However, the report of Pentagon says that the military budget published by China “omits several major categories of expenditures,” including research and development and foreign weapons procurement, saying that “China’s actual military-related spending could be more than $200 billion, much higher than officially stated.
South Korea’s defense budget in 2019 was about $40 billion, Japan’s was some $54 billion, and Taiwan’s was $10.9 billion.
The report also pointed out that China still has some ways to go with regards to its military investments and modernization campaign, saying that some Chinese infantry units were still using older “obsolete” military equipment that dates from the era when the communist country was governed by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.
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