A new report has found that China continued to increase its nuclear arsenal last year to modernise its power, as global geopolitical tensions are on the rise.
China
In its 2023 yearbook that was released on Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimated the size of China’s nuclear arsenal to have increased from 350 warheads in January 2022 to 410 in January 2023, a number it predicts will continue to keep growing.
“Depending on how it decides to structure its forces, China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either the USA or Russia by the turn of the decade,” the report said.
Hans M. Kristensen, Associate Senior Fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said that China has started “a significant expansion of its nuclear arsenal.”
“It is increasingly difficult to square this trend with China’s declared aim of having only the minimum nuclear forces needed to maintain its national security,” he added.
Other Nations
The report also found that the eight nuclear states apart from China, namely the US, Russia, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel, also continued to modernise their nuclear arsenal last year and deployed several new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2022.
The nuclear arsenals of several countries, especially China, grew last year and other atomic powers continued to modernise theirs as geopolitical tensions rise, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) researchers report.
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 12, 2023
The bulk of the increase was from China,… pic.twitter.com/DVpraCVqTN
“Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,512 warheads in January 2023, about 9,576 were in military stockpiles for potential use — 86 more than in January 2022,” SIPRI reported.
It further said that, of those, “an estimated 3,844 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2,000 — nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the US — were kept in a state of high operational alert, meaning that they were fitted to missiles or held at airbases hosting nuclear bombers.”
In fact, Russia and the US jointly possess almost 90% of all global nuclear weapons. The sizes of their respective usable warheads “seem to have remained relatively stable in 2022, although transparency regarding nuclear forces declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”
“We are approaching, or maybe have already reached, the end of a long period of the number of nuclear weapons worldwide declining,” Dan Smith, director of SIPRI, told AFP.
Moreover, a recent study released by the Norwegian People’s Aid NGO found that the fear of nuclear weapons usage is currently at its highest since the Cold War.
India-Pakistan
India and Pakistan both “introduced and continued to develop” new types of nuclear delivery systems in 2022. SIPRI noted that. although Pakistan remained the “main focus of India’s nuclear deterrent,” New Delhi was placing a “growing emphasis on longer-range weapons, including those capable of reaching targets across China.”