The United States is concerned about what a senior Defense Department official called China’s establishment of a “new normal” of increased military activity on the island. where it continues to rapidly build up its stockpile of nuclear warheads, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report.
According to military data, By 2035, China may have up to 1,500 warheads under its program, officially known as “Military and Security Development with the People’s Republic of China.”
The annual report approved by Congress confirms the National Defense Strategy’s assessment that China “poses the most serious and systemic threat to US national security and a free and open international system.”
Last year’s Pentagon report noted that China has begun quadrupling its nuclear weapons arsenal, predicting it could have 700 warheads by 2027 and possibly 1,000 by 2030.
A new report released on Tuesday said China now has more than 400 nuclear warheads and continues to accelerate its build-up of its arsenal, predicting that by 2035 it could have 1,500 warheads.
Even with China’s dramatic expansion, its nuclear arsenal will still be larger, albeit far smaller than the US’s declared arsenal of 3,750 warheads capable of being deployed by hundreds of ground-launched missiles.
China has publicly announced 2027 as a target date for its military so that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army can become “a more reliable military tool for the Communist Party (CCP) in its quest for the unification of Taiwan.”
2035 is aimed at completing the modernization of the PLA and 2049, when the Chinese military becomes a global power.
The report, released Tuesday, comes two weeks after President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia, and a week after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with General Wei Fenghe, China’s top military officer, in Cambodia.
In a meeting with Wei, Austin reportedly “expressed concern about the increasingly dangerous behavior of PLA aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region,” according to testimony from the Pentagon meeting.
Source: La Opinion
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