A Chinese official said Beijing rejects the Pentagon’s characterization of the growing capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army in a new report, arguing that it was the United States that sparked the nuclear tensions, not China.
The Department of Defense released its latest assessment on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” on Wednesday, noting a number of observations, including a growing Chinese nuclear weapons and ballistic missile force.
The report estimated that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has already doubled its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force of 150 to 400 and would seek to nearly quadruple its nuclear warhead from a current count of over 400 to 1,400 for 2035.
But Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, ar argued that the report, “like similar reports in the past, ignores the facts and is full of bias.”
“The United States is using this report to exaggerate the ‘nuclear threat’ theory of China,’” Liu said. “But this is manipulating rhetoric to confuse public opinion, which is seen by the international community.”
“In fact, the main source of nuclear threat in the world is none other than the United States itself,” he added. “Despite possessing the world’s largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal, the United States continues to invest trillions of dollars to upgrade its ‘nuclear triad,’ developing low-yield nuclear weapons and lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.”
The United States has a total of about 5,744 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and about 5,400, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). Both organizations estimate that approximately 1,2035 of these warheads are currently deployed.
The nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia remain subject to New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The deal marks the last remaining bilateral arms control deal between the world’s two major powers and critical mutual verification measures have been suspended amid tensions between Moscow and Washington.
Liu said that Washington, at the same time, “continued to advance the deployment of anti-missile systems around the world, resumed research and development and testing of intermediate-range ground-based missiles and sought to deploy them in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and formed a small cabal with strong Cold War overtones through AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation.”
Regarding China’s position, he said that his country “remains firmly committed to a self-defense nuclear strategy, actively advocates the ultimate total ban and total destruction of weapons nuclear weapons, and maintains its nuclear strength at the minimum level required for national security.”
Also read: 2035 The Pentagon estimates that China has doubled the number of missiles that can reach the United States 2035 North Korea would need to manufacture more than 5, nuclear warheads to surpass the United States2035· Kim Jong Un’s daughter reappears and ignites the debate on the succession of North Korea