Arms Control and China

Within the past five years, China has significantly expanded its ongoing nuclear modernization program by fielding more types and greater numbers of nuclear weapons.

In a little under a year, China has continued to develop its three new missile silo fields for solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles, expanded the construction of new silos for its liquid-fuel DF-5 ICBMs, has been developing new variants of ICBMs and advanced strategic delivery systems, and has likely produced excess warheads for eventual upload onto these systems once they are deployed. China has also further expanded its dual-capable DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile force, which appears to have completely replaced the medium-range DF-21 in the nuclear role.

China has been refitting its Type 094 ballistic missile submarines at sea with the longer-range JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile. In addition, China has recently reassigned an operational nuclear mission to its bombers and is developing an air-launched ballistic missile that might have nuclear capability. China’s nuclear expansion is among the nine nuclear-armed states’ largest and most rapid modernization campaigns.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimates that China has produced a stockpile of approximately 440 nuclear warheads for delivery by land-based ballistic missiles, sea-based ballistic missiles, and bombers. Roughly 60 or more warheads are thought to have been produced, with more in production, to arm additional road-mobile and silo-based missiles and bombers eventually.

If expansion continues at the current rate, the Pentagon’s previous projections say that China might field a stockpile of about 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. These projections depend on many uncertain factors – how many missile silos China will ultimately build, how many silos China will load with missiles, how many warheads each missile will carry, how many DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missiles will be deployed, and how many of them will have a nuclear mission, how many missile submarines China will field and how many warheads each missile will carry, how many bombers China will operate and how many weapons each will carry, and assumptions about the future production of fissile materials by China.

Several US government estimates about China’s nuclear weapons stockpile growth have previously proven inaccurate, as stated by writers Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight in their story “Chinese Nuclear Weapons, 2024.” Like most other nuclear-armed states, China has never publicly disclosed the size of its nuclear arsenal or much of the infrastructure that supports it. The data for this story was obtained from Kristensen, Korda, Johns, and Knight’s story.

However, one must ask what motivates China, an old civilization, once one of the world’s greatest, until it fell behind the West and was subservient to it. The Chinese have changed over the decades. Since the free-market reforms of the 1970’s, the Chinese economy has come roaring back, and the country is seeking a larger military role in the Asia and the world, as it seeks to be a military hegemon in Asia. China is also flexing its muscle in the diplomatic world by building stronger relationships with poor countries; it will naturally develop a bond with these countries because it arose from poverty. China also presents an alternative political model that can redefine the rules of the international system. Its more aggressive posture ignited a power-balancing act where China and its ally, Russia, sought to check the United States and its allies. Unfortunately, we’re in another Cold War, and military budgets are increasing worldwide.

Samuel Huntington stated in his book “The Clash of Civilizations” that multilateralism does not define China’s views of international relations. Its views are shaped by its history, the days when the Middle Kingdom was the primary power and other states were tributary powers.

While China’s history and outlook differ from the Western world, there is some reason for hope. The country has signaled to the US that it’s interested in cooperating with the US to regulate artificial intelligence in the nuclear domain. This might be a starting point. Why would a state with its history want to negotiate with a Western state? Because it realizes that the regulation of artificial intelligence enhances its security, and it also realizes how dangerous nuclear weapons are.

Huntington didn’t understand how many people in foreign cultures are open to Western ideas. Russia, an Orthodox culture, at least since the fall of Communism, showed a Western orientation in the days of Boris Yeltsin and in the later Soviet era of Michail Gorbachev. Ideas are powerful – spread through the cultural interchange and not best spread through war (remember America’s Iraq experience) – and can change a culture.

In time, Western ideas could change China. The challenge will be waiting for those ideas to seep into Chinese culture and avoiding a disastrous war between China’s allies and the US. A deal on artificial intelligence would be a wonderful place to start.