China rapidly modernising nuke launch capabilities: Sipri report
BEIJING: China maintains at least 350 nuclear warheads, more than double of India’s 160, many fewer than the US and Russia, and has rapidly expanded its launch capabilities in recent years, a new report by a Swedish watchdog tracking arms trade and disarmament said in the report released on Monday.
“Since around 2017, China has started to put in place a triad of nuclear forces - solid-fuelled mobile and siloed land-based missiles, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), and bombers with a full, re-established nuclear mission - in order to strengthen its nuclear deterrence and counterstrike capabilities in response to what it sees as a growing threat from other countries,” the Stockholm international Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said.
The report said the ratio of stockpiled and stored warheads has changed because additional and new launchers became operational in 2021.
“These warheads have been assigned to China’s operational land- and sea-based ballistic missiles and to nuclear-configured aircraft,” the annual Sipri report, titled Armament, Disarmament and International Security, said.
In 2021 commercial satellite imagery revealed that China had started construction of what appeared to be more than 300 new missile silos across at least three distinct fields in northern China, the report said.
“If China eventually fills each suspected silo site with a singlewarhead missile, the number of warheads attributed to China’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, estimated at January 2022 as around 190 warheads, could more than double to approximately 450 warheads,” it said.
“If each suspected silo were filled with a missile equipped with three multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), this number could rise to approximately 1,000 warheads.”
Top US, Chinese security figures hold talks
The top Chinese and US security advisers have held lengthy talks, with both sides describing them as “candid” following days of acrimonious exchanges over Taiwan and other flashpoint issues.
Readouts of the meeting in Luxembourg on Monday were toned down compared with last week, when China’s defence minister warned his country would not “hesitate to start a war” over Taiwan, while the US defence secretary blasted Beijing’s “provocative, destabilising” military activity.
But US security adviser Jake Sullivan and top diplomat Yang Jiechi did not indicate any compromise on their core points of disagreement, especially Taiwan. China considers the self-ruled island a part of its territory, to be seized by force one day if necessary.
China focusing on ‘coercive diplomacy’
China has shown a “pattern of coercive diplomacy, irresponsible state-backed cyber activity, and theft of international property and sensitive technology”, and such “violations of rules and norms cannot be tolerated”, Canada’s minister of national defence Anita Anand has said.
Anand made these comments at the plenary session of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday.