London, Feb 3 (IANS) During UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent visit to China, discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping avoided Beijing’s “dangerous, unexplained, secretive and rapid buildup” of nuclear weapons as well as other contentious issues such as human rights abuses, espionage and Taiwan, a report said on Tuesday.
Citing the 2025 report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), a report in the UK’s leading daily, The Guardian, stated that while China, with an estimated 600 warheads, lags behind other nuclear powers, it’s catching up at a fast pace.
“China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than any other country's, by about 100 new warheads a year since 2023 … [It] could potentially have at least as many ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] as either Russia or the US by the turn of the decade,” The Guardian quoted Sipri as saying.
According to the report, Beijing has provided no explanation or rationale for this dramatic increase – and rejected negotiations with multilateral arms control.
“An official white paper, published by China in November, restated its position that countries with the largest nuclear arsenals must make the first move, by unilaterally making ‘drastic and substantive reductions’. Until then, it said, China would keep its own nuclear capabilities 'at the minimum level required for national security’. The paper conveniently omitted to say what that level is,” it noted.
Despite its current advantages, the report said, the US remains concerned with the Pentagon warning in December last year that “China’s historic military buildup has made the US homeland increasingly vulnerable”.
The Pentagon also highlighted what it described as a more attack-ready, “hair-trigger” nuclear posture, claiming that about 100 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) were recently installed in silos in northern China. It added that Beijing was testing its capacity “to strike US forces in the Pacific”, potentially undermining future US military support to Taiwan.
“China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027,” The Guardian quoted the Pentagon as saying.
The report further said, “Whatever China’s President is thinking, these are alarming times for anyone worried about global thermonuclear war – which should be everyone. Starmer’s talks with Xi reportedly included Chinese threats to UK national security. What bigger threat is there than proliferating nuclear weapons? Yet as far as is known, he did not raise the issue.”
--IANS
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