China’s nuclear arsenal at more than 500 warheads -Pentagon report

According to the Pentagon’s yearly assessment of Beijing’s military, published on Thursday, China already has more than 500 operable nuclear weapons and will likely have more than 1,000 by 2030.

China now has more nuclear weapons, but still much less than Russia and the United States.

There are around 3,700 nuclear warheads in the United States’ arsenal, 1,419 of which are strategic. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia maintains a stockpile of 4,489 nuclear warheads and 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon said that China’s more than 500 weapons as of May 2023 were on course to surpass predictions in the comprehensive assessment.

The Pentagon predicted that Beijing will have more than 400 operable nuclear bombs in 2021 in a prior analysis.

During a briefing on the assessment, a senior U.S. official told reporters, “We see the PRC (People’s Republic of China) continuing to quite rapidly modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces.”

“What they’re doing now if you compare it to what they were doing about a decade ago, it really far exceeds that in terms of scale and complexity,” said the official.

According to the study, China’s Navy has more than 370 ships and submarines, up from 340 ships the year before.

Beijing already has the largest Navy in the world, and President Xi Jinping’s effort to make China the leading military force in the area depends on his growing naval force.

The study highlighted worries about Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan, a self-governing island China views as a renegade province.

The world’s two largest economies have been at odds with one another on various issues, including Taiwan, China’s record on human rights, and its military activities in the South China Sea. Relations between the two countries have been difficult.

Nevertheless, Washington has been keen to reopen military-to-military contacts with China.

The Pentagon said last week that it had accepted an offer to attend China’s premier annual security gathering in late October, the most recent indication of perhaps improving ties between the two forces.