Fears China’s aggressive stance heralds a new cold war

Published date22 November 2021
IT was already a dangerous race: China versus the United States, each pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into missiles, submarines, warplanes and ships, vying to dominate the Indo-Pacific.

That race may now go nuclear.

A Pentagon report released this month estimated that China may have 700 nuclear warheads by 2027 and 1000 by 2030 — a dramatic increase from last year’s assessment that China’s 200 or so warheads would only double over the next decade.

The Pentagon noted that China’s nuclear delivery platforms and supporting infrastructure indicate it may already possess a ‘‘nuclear triad’’ capable of launching missiles from the air, ground and sea. China may also be moving towards a ‘‘launch-on-warning’’ posture, it said, meaning it would have ready-to-fire missiles in response to an immediate threat, similar to the ‘‘high alert’’ postures the US and Russia have had in place since the Cold War.

The sudden build-up of nuclear force suggests a possible change in China’s strategy from its traditional ‘‘minimum deterrence’’ stance to one that is tactically prepared for war.

The shift comes as tensions between Beijing and Washington are rising over China’s recent reported test of a hypersonic missile and its more aggressive actions in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in a three-hour summit last week, hoping to ease the acrimony and suspicion between their nations.

A move away from minimum deterrence would be ‘‘totally contrary to everything I have ever read or talked about with the Chinese about how they think about nuclear weapons,’’ Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said.

‘‘The US and its intelligence is always worried when we get something wrong. And we clearly got this nuclear piece wrong.’’

Beijing’s build-up is adding to a dangerous arms race across the Indo-Pacific. It is a setback for nuclear nonproliferation, which was already backsliding this decade, experts say, and raises the risks of conflict.

‘‘The big picture is that there will be many more nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to launch at a moment’s notice,’’ Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, or FAS, said

Kristensen is one of several independent experts who discovered through satellite imagery earlier this year that China is building at least three new nuclear missile silos in the deserts of...

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