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WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (PTI) China is expanding its nuclear forces and could have an inventory of about 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, up from a current estimate of 400, the Pentagon said in a report, boosted through domestic and foreign policy initiatives its national strength.
Over the next decade, Beijing aims to modernize, diversify and expand its nuclear force, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its annual report to Congress on China’s ambitious military buildup.
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China’s current nuclear modernization exercises exceed previous modernization attempts in scale and complexity, the report said.
According to the report, China is investing in and expanding the number of its land, sea and air nuclear delivery platforms, and building the necessary infrastructure to support the massive expansion of its nuclear force.
China is also supporting this expansion by building fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities to increase its ability to produce and separate plutonium. In 2021, Beijing is likely to accelerate its nuclear expansion, it said.
The Pentagon said it estimated China’s stockpile of active nuclear warheads had exceeded 400.
The PLA plans to “basically complete the modernization of national defense and armed forces” by 2035, the report said.
“If China continues its pace of nuclear expansion, it could stockpile around 1,500 nuclear warheads by its 2035 timetable,” it said.
China’s strategy is a resolute pursuit of accumulating and expanding its national power, changing at least some aspects of the international system to make it more favorable to its political system and its defined national interests, a senior defense official said.
“Their goal is to expand national power through domestic and foreign policy initiatives. So President Xi Jinping’s global security initiative … is one of them, and China is trying to portray itself as a provider of global public security goods,” the official said Say.
The official pointed to more coercive and aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region, including some that the United States has highlighted as dangerous.
“As a result, there has been an increase in unsafe and unprofessional behavior by PLA ships and aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region, including aircraft aerobatics, discharging chaff, and other activities that may pose a risk to the safe maneuvering of nearby aircraft,” the official noted.
Among other things, China has stepped up diplomatic, economic, political and military pressure on Taiwan, the report noted. The report highlights increased military pressure through 2021 and 2022, particularly in relation to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
China sees Taiwan as a rebel province that should be united with the mainland, even by force.
The Pentagon report also offers some very important new insights into how the Chinese military views future warfare. The Chinese Army calls system sabotage warfare the next way of warfare.
“They also started discussing a new concept of operations for them, which they call the core concept of operations. It’s called multi-domain precision warfare,” the official said.
Last year, the Pentagon said China’s nuclear warhead count could rise to 700 within six years and could exceed 1,000 by 2030. China currently has about 400 nuclear warheads, a number that could rise to 1,500 by 2035, the new report says.
By comparison, the United States has 3,750 active nuclear warheads.
The Pentagon said in its most recent Nuclear Posture Review that Beijing’s growing nuclear arsenal creates uncertainty for the United States as it explores how to deter two nuclear powers, Russia and China, simultaneously.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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