US moves arms control talks as China’s nuclear arsenal grows

Washington has been pushing for arms-control talks with China because the country, also a longtime nuclear runner, has rapidly expanded its nuclear arsenal and has more weapons and more weapons to carry.

US officials say President Biden and his counterpart, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, agreed this week in a virtual summit to explore talks White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described as “strategic stability”.

Beijing did not mention any such developments in its description of the meeting. A Chinese official informed of the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the two sides could initiate a so-called Track II dialogue between non-governmental defense analysts and academics.

According to the Pentagon’s latest annual assessment of Chinese military power, China has about 350 nuclear warheads. This is a fraction of the 3,750 warheads the US has stockpiled. But the Pentagon says China is on track to have 1,000 weapons by the end of the decade.

The Pentagon says Beijing has also developed missiles and other systems that can carry weapons. A test of a hypersonic glide vehicle in August showed a new way Beijing might try to evade US missile defense – what General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, described as a “Sputnik moment”.

All this makes it more likely for a Chinese nuclear arsenal to survive an initial nuclear exchange in a full-blown war and potentially useful in a more limited conflict. US officials and defense experts say the concern for the Pentagon is that Beijing has yet to publicly explain the reasons for its creation.

“At a basic level, the US wants to understand what is happening in China and what is the basic motivation behind China’s expansion,” said Zhao Tong, a Beijing-based nuclear weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

As with Washington’s arms control talks with Russia, Mr. Zhao said, “there are no easy solutions.”

China’s defense ministry has said little about its nuclear weapons. The defense ministry and the foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

In the past, foreign ministry spokespersons, when asked about media reports and scholarly comments in the West that pointed to more missile silos, have said they are unaware of any increase. He referred to the hypersonic-missile test, first reported by the Financial Times, not a missile launch but as a routine spacecraft test to verify its reusability.

US officials say China has long kept its nuclear stockpile at relatively low levels – enough to ensure it can respond to a nuclear attack with nuclear weapons of its own. But some analysts believe Beijing’s concerns about recent US progress in its ability to detect and defend small numbers of such weapons may be driving its efforts to expand the arsenal.

Some analysts say tensions between the US and China over areas such as the South China Sea and Taiwan may have encouraged Beijing to ensure that its nuclear capabilities are strong enough to deter the use of nuclear weapons by its rivals. be.

“Chinese leaders believe there is some risk of a conventional war between China and the United States, so they may have to escalate nuclear deterrence,” said Wu Riqiang, an arms control expert at Renmin University in Beijing.

During China’s annual legislative session in March, Xi called for an accelerated creation of high-level strategic deterrence systems, which some analysts have interpreted as a sign that Beijing is looking to restructure its nuclear program in a major way. The attempt may be in the early stages.

Mr. Xi has also overseen steps to build up China’s ability to launch nuclear strikes from submarines and aircraft and from land-based missiles. “There is a need to comprehensively develop our sea-based nuclear capabilities,” Mr. Xi said during a visit to a submarine base in 2018.

On Wednesday, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan panel, warned in its annual report to Congress that the scale of China’s nuclear construction was intended to support a “new strategy of limited nuclear first use” and use It is possible. Chinese leaders attempted to block American intervention in the war on Taiwan.

At the Carnegie Endowment, Mr Zhao said that in addition to achieving a “second strike” capability – the ability to withstand an initial nuclear attack and then respond in kind – Beijing has found ways to respond to the small-scale use of nuclear weapons. Can seek the opponent.

He added that it can be difficult for nuclear powers that once they go down this road, it can be difficult to determine which capabilities are sufficient. “The competition pretty much becomes zero sum,” he said.

According to its limited disclosures, the Chinese military has been developing the ability to respond rapidly in the event of a nuclear attack for years, although independent analysts say neither its intent nor the extent of such capabilities is clear.

US officials say China keeps a portion of its nuclear arsenal on high alert, and has conducted exercises since 2017 that include launch-on-warning responses, where radar and satellite data are used to detect nuclear weapons from the enemy. Can be used to launch counter-attack. Beat.

In 2018, the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology reported that China has two types of remote sensing satellites for ballistic missiles. The following year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was helping China develop an antimissile early-warning system.

Last year, Yang Chengjun, a retired Chinese senior colonel who served in the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, wrote in a domestic media article that China could launch a pre-warning nuclear counterattack within minutes.

Nevertheless, reports on Rocket Force exercises by Chinese state media, including the People’s Liberation Army Daily, have not disclosed whether the weapons used are nuclear or conventional.

“it’s clear that [China’s] The security establishment has come to the conclusion that it needs a more robust nuclear posture,” said David M. Finkelstein, a retired US military officer and director of China and Indo-Pacific Security Affairs at CNA’s Center for Naval Analysis, a is a federally funded think tank. in Virginia. “But why this is so is still under question.”

Even with the leaders of the two countries agreeing to hold talks, analysts do not expect any major breakthrough in the near future. US-China relations, despite signs of thaw on issues such as climate change, remain fraught with mistrust on a number of controversial topics, including Taiwan, Hong Kong and industrial policy.

The US has for years called on China to send officials rather than independent experts to meet and discuss nuclear issues, but Chinese officials have been reluctant to join.

The Track II format would represent a step back from previous nuclear-weapons meetings between the two countries. Between 2004 and 2019, analysts from China and the US as well as officials met in a non-official capacity, although talks eventually broke down, said Mr. Zhao, who had attended some of the earlier meetings. US participants later expressed disappointment that China was slow to schedule talks in Beijing, and was sending very low-ranking delegates, he said.