CHINA'S NUCLEAR RACE

If anything, the latest yearbook of the Swedish thinktank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has confirmed the apprehensions of the strategic elites that China possesses more warheads than the UK and France combined and that it is expanding its arsenal faster than any other nation.

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However, what is confounding the experts is China's seemingly nontransparent nuclear expansion and the growing ambiguity over its stated nuclear strategy that Beijing always keeps its nuclear capabilities at minimum level, that it follows a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons, and that it is committed to not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear weapon states and nuclear-weapon-free zones.

In its report released on June 16, SIPRI said that China has the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, adding about 100 warheads to its arsenal every year since 2023. At present, China has at least 600 nuclear warheads, it said.

Remarkably, SIPRI’s estimate is similar to that of the Pentagon's last “China Military Power Report” brought out in December 2024, which had also said that China had over 600 operational nuclear warheads. It had even talked of China being on track to grow its arsenal to 1,000 warheads by 2030. According to SIPRI, China could have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) as that of the U.S. or Russia by 2030, though it has clarified that its maximum nuclear warheads, which could go up to the number of 1500 by 2035, will remain behind that of either Washington or Moscow.

The U.S. has 5,177 warheads while Russia has 5,459, as per SIPRI estimates.

As of January 2025, China had completed or was nearing completion of around 350 ICBM silos across three desert regions in the north and three mountainous areas in the east. The Chinese manner of organising its forces could match the ICBM counts of Russia or the United States by the end of the decade, SIPRI report said. “Depending on how it decides to structure its forces, China could potentially have at least as many ICBMs as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade, although its stockpile of nuclear warheads is still expected to remain much smaller than the stockpiles of either of those two countries”.