China Expanding its Arsenal.

For the first time in years, China’s nuclear arsenal looks to be growing significantly. China possessed just approximately twenty silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the last couple of decades. However, fresh information suggests that the government is set to build around 200 additional missile silos. China’s current nuclear weapons modernization and updating program is operating at an unparalleled pace and scope. Over the next decade, China’s nuclear weapons arsenal is likely to increase (if not triple or quadruple. If this is the aim, the new silos may be able to help China achieve it. The country’s growing concern is that the US military capabilities, including the likes of missile defense and conventional precision strike weapons, might damage China’s ability to respond to a nuclear assault. The potential vulnerability of China’s nuclear deterrence is continuously reminded by new developments in US capabilities. As a corollary, Chinese experts have repeatedly agreed that the country’s nuclear capabilities must be gradually modernized. For decades, it appeared that China’s senior political officials felt the country’s top goals were more vital than a huge nuclear buildup—especially at a time when China saw no imminent external danger, but that time is passed.

The actions of the other major nuclear weapons nations have had a significant impact on China’s development of a sea-based nuclear capability. Only four years after the United States launched its first nuclear submarines and one year after the Soviet Union, China chose to begin manufacturing nuclear submarines in 195810. Land-based ballistic missiles were prioritized above nuclear submarines and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) development during the Cold War. However, when China’s economy grew rapidly, it began to devote more resources to the nuclear submarine and SLBM projects, making significant advances since then. China has deployed four 094-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), China’s second-generation SSBNs, and is developing two more, according to official US estimates and open-source information. Twelve JL-2 SLBMs are installed on every 094 submarine. China is also working on the JL-3 SLBM and the next-generation 096-class SSBN. For China’s entire nuclear deterrence, this developing capacity will become increasingly significant. However, with this increased capability comes a slew of new concerns for China.

China’s continuous steps towards the development of a nuclear arsenal are being accompanied by increased disagreements with Western countries over topics such as human rights, democratic principles, the rule of law, and international conventions under its present leadership. These developments have led China’s leadership to conclude that the country is confronted with a new geopolitical reality in which Western countries are purposefully causing trouble and inventing excuses to demonise and contain China, fearful that the country’s rise will threaten the West’s dominance in the international system. Beijing believes that Western antagonism is the outcome of larger structural changes in the international system and that the only answer is to cement its own power until Western countries accept the new reality—that China’s success and strength are undeniable.

President Xi Jinping stressed the importance of the Second Artillery—the Chinese military’s missile branch, which was eventually raised to full military service and renamed the Rocket Force—shortly after taking office in 2012, calling it “a strategic foundation of China’s great power status.” He urged the military to “accelerate the building of sophisticated strategic deterrent” capabilities during a major national political conference in March 2021, which was the toughest and most specific public command on the matter to come from China’s highest-ranking leader. With China’s national decision-making authority increasingly concentrated in one person, the present paramount leader’s support for increased nuclear capabilities might go a long way toward shifting the country’s nuclear development strategy away from its previous moderate path.

In 2020, Beijing also began to deploy the dual-capable hypersonic glide-vehicle system paired with a medium-range ballistic missile, known as DF-17. The U.S. intelligence alleged that China tested in July a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle, carried on a rocket, that flew through low-orbit space and circled the globe before striking within two dozen miles of its target.

The stakes are raised by the possibility of a clash over Taiwan:

Experts have felt that the free decline in US-China ties since 2020 has increased the risk of a crisis or confrontation involving nuclear weapons use by either side. As the conventional (non-nuclear) military balance in East Asia continues to favour China, one major concern is whether the US would be more tempted to threaten nuclear use as a deterrent to China’s use of force against Taiwan.

Analysts have expressed concern that the US may use low-yield nuclear weapons against a Chinese navy en route to attack Taiwan. If the United States’ nuclear weapons and missile defences combined to severely limit China’s capacity to react, that temptation may be much stronger. In this sense, a greater nuclear arsenal has improved China’s prospects of preventing the US from using nuclear weapons, but it may also raise China’s confidence in using conventional weapons. 

Conclusion:    

Beijing’s nuclear buildup is ultimately an attempt to persuade geopolitical power to abandon the ostensible strategic assault in favour of a mutual vulnerability relationship in which no country has the capability or inclination to threaten nuclear war without risking destruction. China’s expanding capabilities are aimed at strengthening its capacity to fight and win wars, a euphemism for controlling the geopolitical scenario, pressure Taiwan and rival claimants in territorial disputes, counter a third-party involvement in a conflict along the periphery, and project dominance internationally.