[Politics] China is rapidly building new nuclear-missile silos

[Mr.Talha]

https://www.economist.com/china/2021/07/31/china-is-rapidly-building-new-nuclear-missile-silos

 

 

On a hot and sticky day in the northern city of Tianjin, America and China held their highest-level meeting on Chinese soil since Joe Biden was sworn in as America’s president in January. But the encounter on July 26th between Wendy Sherman, America’s deputy secretary of state, and counterparts from China’s foreign ministry failed to clear the air. Instead, it merely deepened the gloom that hangs over the world’s most critical great-power relationship.

According to an American spokesman, Ms Sherman promised “stiff competition” with China and raised its “ongoing genocide” in the far-western region of Xinjiang, among other sore issues. She suggested co-operation on tackling problems such as climate change, narcotics and Afghanistan. But that olive branch was snapped by Xie Feng, a deputy foreign minister, who said relations were at a “stalemate” and thundered that America’s aim was to “bring China down”. His boss, Wang Yi, told America to choose between improving ties or “clashes and confrontation”.

Mercifully, the two nuclear-armed countries do not appear as close to military conflict as the Soviet Union and America sometimes did during the cold war. But as the diplomats were sparring in Tianjin, the Federation of American Scientists (fas), a research group, said it had spotted China building as many as 110 silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles (icbms) near the city of Hami, in eastern Xinjiang (see picture). A month earlier, the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, an ngo in California, had identified 120 silos being built in Yumen, in the desert of Gansu, a neighbouring province. Both outfits found the sites by poring over satellite imagery from Planet, an American firm.

Nuclear wonks were shocked. For decades, China has hewed to a policy of “minimum deterrence”, involving the maintenance of a relatively small arsenal that would allow it to hit back at aggressors but not wage an elaborate nuclear war. The Pentagon reckons the country has 200 or so operational warheads—about the same number as Britain or France—and only 100 or so icbms. (America and Russia have nearly 12,000 warheads between them.)

The fas says the satellite pictures suggest the “most extensive” building of silos since the construction of them by America and the Soviet Union during the cold war. On July 27th America’s Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear weapons, reacted with a tweet: “This is the second time in two months the public has discovered what we have been saying all along about the growing threat the world faces and the veil of secrecy that surrounds it.” America’s State Department said the discoveries were “deeply concerning” and demonstrated that China was “deviating” from its long-established nuclear strategy.