The New York Times said on February 15 that satellite images taken between 2022 and 2026 showed a notable increase in Beijing’s nuclear arsenal in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, indicating Beijing’s aspirations in a time of escalating superpower competition.
The nuclear expansion of China
One such nuclear facility location is in Sichuan Province, next to Zitong, where engineers have built reinforced ramparts and new bunkers. The facility’s recently constructed structure, which is lined with a variety of pipes, shows that it is equipped to handle extremely hazardous compounds.
Pingtong is a double-fenced complex in another valley where researchers think China is manufacturing plutonium cores for nuclear bombs. A 360-foot-tall ventilation stack marks the main building, which has just undergone renovations with new heat-dispersion systems and vents. According to the article, more construction is currently taking place in tandem with it.
Among the many covert locations in Sichuan Province that have grown in recent years are the nuclear-related sites in these valleys. Following the expiration of the last nuclear pact between the United States and Russia, Beijing’s determination to expand its nuclear arsenal makes efforts to resurrect global arms control even more difficult. Washington has previously maintained that China must be a party to any future agreements, but Beijing has demonstrated little to no interest in doing so.
A key component of China’s ambition to become a superpower is nuclear
Renny Babiarz, a geospatial intelligence specialist, examined the satellite photographs and told The New York Times, “The changes we see on the ground at these places match with China’s broader ambitions of becoming a worldwide superpower.” A crucial component of that is nuclear weapons.
Babiarz compared the several nuclear sites in China to fragments of a mosaic, explaining that when taken as a whole, they show a pattern of rapid expansion. “All of these sites have undergone evolution, but generally speaking, that transition increased starting from 2019,” he continued.
Tensions between the US and China
Tension between the US and China is increasing as a result of Beijing’s construction of nuclear sites. The State Department’s assistant secretary for arms control and international security, Thomas G. DiNanno, officially charged earlier this month that China was secretly testing nuclear explosives in defiance of a worldwide moratorium. Beijing has deemed the report “untrue” and rejected it.
The nuclear warheads of China
According to the Pentagon’s most recent yearly estimate, China reportedly has more than 600 nuclear warheads by the end of 2024 and is on course to reach 1,000 by 2030. Even though Beijing has a far lesser number of weapons than Washington and Moscow, its expansion is nonetheless concerning, according to Matthew Sharp, a former State Department official who is currently a senior scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy.
According to the study, Sichuan Province’s nuclear facilities were constructed 60 years ago as part of Mao Zedong’s Third Front initiative, which sought to defend China’s nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities against attacks by the US or the USSR. The scientists frequently relocated to a new weapons lab in the neighboring city of Mianyang after several of the “Third Front” nuclear installations were either closed or reduced as China’s tensions with the US and Moscow decreased in the 1980s.
Global nuclear warhead stocks, estimated
An Arms Control Association estimate stated that there were about 12,400 nuclear weapons in total, with the US and Russia owning almost 90% of them. The following is a list of nations that possess nuclear weapons:
5,580 in Russia
5,225 in the United States
China: 600
France: 290
UK: 225
India: 172
Pakistan: 170
Israel: 90
North Korea: 50
