China excels in increasing its nuclear armament
China continues to develop its plan of action to become the great superpower of the 21st century to the millimetre. In the military domain, in addition to having increased the percentage of its GDP allocated to defence like no other country, it has diversified its investments, so that both naval forces and the recently established space forces have undergone considerable development.
Nor has Beijing neglected nuclear weapons, which still send shivers down its spine at the mere mention of them, not used in any conflict since Japan showed the world the devastating effects of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By 2022, China will have 410 nuclear warheads, up from 350 a year earlier, according to a compilation by the Stockholm-based International Peace Institute (SIPRI).
This is the most spectacular increase among the nine recognised nuclear powers: in addition to China itself, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan and Israel, although the latter has never officially acknowledged having a nuclear weapon in its arsenal.
Behind the country led by Xi Jinping, those who have also increased their production, albeit to a much lesser extent, are in this order: India, Pakistan and North Korea, followed at a distance by Russia, which is nevertheless going to expand the stockpiling of tactical nuclear warheads in Belarus as of next July.
The nuclear threat to the world thus stands at 9,576 warheads ready for potential use, according to SIPRI, 86 more than were in their storage and delivery silos in 2021. SIPRI Director General Dan Smith, speaking to Agence France Presse, noted that "we have virtually reached the end of the long period of progressive decline in the world's nuclear weapons". In this respect, SIPRI counts another 2,936 nuclear warheads globally, but which would no longer be operational, although their definitive dismantling would not yet have been completed, at least at the beginning of 2023.
Dan Smith does not believe that the war in Ukraine has directly influenced China's increase in operational nuclear bombs, given the time required to develop them. It is therefore obvious to say that this rearmament is the result of a strategy that has been thought out, defined and executed for at least a decade. In the case of China it is all the more evident in that the accelerated modernisation of its armed forces has gone hand in hand with the strong economic growth experienced by the great Asian power since the very beginning of the 21st century, a process that has been further boosted by President Xi Jinping, who has turned China's traditional foreign policy of meekness and appeasement into a much more aggressive behaviour, dressed up, of course, in major international cooperation projects that end up generating an enormous and decisive dependence on the beneficiaries of Beijing's "generosity".
China's ostensible rearmament obviously provokes a corresponding reaction from India, its main rival on the continent, with which it has unresolved border differences that threaten to erupt more widely from time to time. Pakistan, too, senses that its disputes with India may extend beyond the disputed Kashmir region. And, of course, North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-un seems to want to play his own game against the United States, although he remains under the watchful eye and tutelage of China. In Asia, the volcanic undercurrent of tensions, which in one way or another will tend to be unleashed in the near future, is making itself heard more and more loudly. Nuclear armaments do much to fuel this feeling. In the 1980s, 70,000 nuclear warheads were counted worldwide. They could potentially destroy the earth nine times over. It is scant consolation to know that today's 9,576 would reduce it to cosmic dust by only two.