The Pentagon’s 2019 China Report
Posted on May.06, 2019 in China, Nuclear Weapons by Hans M. Kristensen
By Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda
[Updated] The Pentagon has released its 2019 version of its annual report on China’s military developments. The report describes a Chinese military in significant modernization. There is much to digest but this review only examines the nuclear portion.
The DOD report does not indicate how many nuclear warheads China has to arm these forces. Our current estimate for 2019 is approximately 290 warheads.
Although China’s nuclear arsenal is far smaller than that of Russia and the United States, the growing and increasingly capable Chinese nuclear arsenal is pushing the boundaries of China’s “minimum†deterrent and undercutting its promise that it “will never enter into a nuclear arms race with any other country.†And the more the Chinese arsenal grows, the less likely it is that Russia and the United States will significantly reduce theirs.
https://fas.org/blogs/security/2019/05/chinareport2019/
