As Donald Trump continues his second term in the White House, China will be the greatest shaper of his administration’s defense and foreign policy. Officials from Beijing to Tokyo to Brussels to Moscow and beyond will be watching and waiting to see how he chooses to approach the security relationship with China.
Recently, I was able to travel to China and speak with experts on international security, China-U.S. relations, arms control, and nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons and each side’s perception of the other’s nuclear strategy and policy are at the very heart of this dynamic, and the outlook is currently negative. The United States and China are at an impasse on arms control; according to the Pentagon, China’s arsenal has grown significantly in recent years, spurring calls for a U.S. buildup. While the U.S. arsenal remains several times larger than China’s, Washington has expressed concern that China’s recent expansion indicates a corresponding change in nuclear strategy.
Perhaps most worryingly, Trump is reportedly considering a resumption of explosive nuclear testing, which would run the risk of China and Russia doing the same.
China’s well-known secrecy around its arsenal and nuclear strategy makes U.S. decisionmakers uncertain, while also opening the door to analysis based largely on speculation. The Pentagon is one of the main sources of information on the Chinese arsenal and Chinese nuclear intentions, but documents like the annual China military power report hedge many of their claims with “probably.”
With this in mind, Chinese experts can provide more detail to help us better evaluate prevailing claims and assumptions about China’s nuclear situation.
The experts I spoke to felt worried that the China-U.S. relationship is deteriorating across the board, and that communication and mutual understanding are at an all-time low. On the nuclear side, many expressed that many U.S. intelligence assessments of Chinese nuclear intentions and plans simply do not make sense, pointing out that past assessments have generally been wide of the mark. While no one source can be authoritative on the Chinese government’s nuclear thinking, Chinese experts do not see a change in Beijing’s nuclear strategy.
Trump and Arms Control
Despite Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping issuing a joint statement on maintaining final human control over artificial intelligence used in nuclear decision-making, the prospects for progress on arms control between China and the United States under Trump are thin. However, trilateral talks are in the news again after Trump promised to bring Russia and China to the arms control table in a recent speech at the World Economic Forum. Trump made a similar attempt during his first administration, which Beijing rejected.
China has always insisted that its much smaller arsenal necessitates less transparency. While Beijing has not officially addressed the claims that it is increasing its supply of nuclear weapons, government spokespeople continue to insist that China’s arsenal is defensive in nature. They argue that the United States should take the first steps in reducing the size of its arsenal and the role of nuclear weapons in its defense strategy, and that Washington should adopt a no first-use policy.
Experts I spoke to in Beijing reiterated some of these points on arms control, acknowledging that while the Chinese side is open to talks, it is unlikely to participate on U.S. terms. Several experts mentioned concerns around the astronomical risks of miscalculations and misunderstandings in nuclear relations. This is the one area, one said, “where we simply cannot risk misunderstandings.”
However, the general consensus among Chinese experts is still that Russia and the United States have to take the first step in reducing the sizes of their arsenals and the role of nuclear weapons in their respective defense postures. China, one expert said, is “not in a position” to join a trilateral deal, due to the discrepancy in warhead numbers; the Pentagon estimates that China has around 600 warheads, while the United States has 5,225 and Russia has 5,580.
Chinese experts were very interested to see what Trump’s impact on both Chinese-U.S. nuclear relations and the broader global nuclear situation would be. While Trump left international organizations and agreements during his first presidency, and is likely to do so again, one expert felt that Trump was genuinely interested in arms control, but that progress was scuppered by the pandemic.
The same expert, however, expressed concern that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) could be at risk, citing the Trump administration’s potential interest in resuming explosive testing. Similarly, they questioned whether Trump’s commitment to the non-proliferation regime might be shaky, especially regarding policy toward the Korean Peninsula. That concern was echoed by another expert, who noted that Elbridge Colby, who was recently named under secretary of defense for policy, has expressed support for South Korea acquiring a nuclear weapon in the past. They also noted that the first Trump administration’s negotiators “offended” the Chinese side during bilateral meetings at a time when the Chinese were genuinely willing to explore arms control.
On the optimistic side, one expert pointed to the successful joint Chinese-U.S. mission to retrieve highly-enriched uranium from a research reactor at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in Accra, completed in 2017. They hoped that similar cooperative work could build trust and provide a foundation for bilateral cooperation on nuclear issues.
Confidence-building will be key to any progress on arms control or reducing tension; most experts I spoke to expressed concern about bigger-picture trends in bilateral security dynamics. One point of concern was that with the worsening of relations, it seems that the United States government feels it can only communicate with China militarily. In other words, the focus is increasingly on military developments to deter China, with diplomacy and reassurance to stabilize relations marginalized.
According to one expert, this fits a bigger-picture trend of the nuclear weapons states acting illogically. For example, after a statement from the leaders of all five nuclear powers opposing nuclear war and nuclear threats in January 2022, Russia made nuclear threats against Ukraine months later and the United States placed nuclear-capable medium range missiles in the Philippines. Both developments are of great concern to China.
Strategic Implications
The main question from U.S. officials and analysts is whether China’s arsenal expansion does indeed indicate a change in strategy; they feel that something must have changed to prompt the growth. There is also a robust debate among nongovernmental analysts and academics over just what that “something” might be. Scholars have floated many possible goals associated with a larger arsenal; these include extracting greater concessions from the United States in non-nuclear areas, greater regime status, a pivot away from no first use to credible threatening of first use of nuclear weapons, and a more secure second-strike capability.
Overall, the Chinese experts I spoke with expressed a belief that Beijing has not changed the role of nuclear weapons in its strategic thinking or lowered the threshold for nuclear use. They also rejected the idea that the growth of China’s arsenal indicates a departure from its long-held no first use policy. The reported numbers, one expert said, would not be incompatible with the same nuclear strategy China has maintained in the past. Of the theories listed above, Chinese experts lent the most credence to the idea that concerns around U.S. damage limitation capabilities and an interest in shoring up its second-strike capability might be driving the growth of China’s arsenal.
Maintaining that second-strike capability, one expert said, is the be-all end-all of Chinese nuclear strategy, and a possible increase in warhead numbers does not change this. The expert suggested that U.S. missile defense and other damage-limitation measures should take Chinese concerns about the vulnerability of its retaliatory capacity into account.
While some commentary in U.S. media has suggested that China might have sought to make its nuclear strategy more aggressive as far back as 2012, further analysis showed that this was based on a misreading of official Chinese sources and unauthoritative secondary Chinese sources. On this topic, the same expert said that there are generally no prominent Chinese researchers or experts supporting a change to a more aggressive nuclear doctrine.
However, another expert mentioned a theory he had heard around addressing damage limitation capabilities. Since a gradual addition of a small number of warheads over time runs the risk of U.S. missile defense or conventional counterforce capabilities negating the utility of those added warheads, perhaps the addition of many warheads all at once is intended to leapfrog those U.S. capabilities to such an extent that the second-strike capability is secured long-term.
Fissile Materials
Beyond theories about changes to strategy, how many warheads China has made and is planning to make is unclear. The Pentagon estimated that China currently has about 600 warheads, and that it will have over 1,000 warheads by 2030. While these numbers would be hard to achieve given previous estimates of Chinese military plutonium stockpiles, the Pentagon said that China will “probably” acquire the extra plutonium it needs from its fast breeder reactors, one of which came online in 2024.
Despite the acknowledged proliferation risks of fast reactors, other international experts have questioned whether China would plan to acquire its plutonium from a new, more inefficient and unreliable technology. As a recognized nuclear weapons state, it would be within its rights to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium, which it ceased in the mid-1980s. Beyond this, one U.S. expert has told me he believes that if plutonium from a fast-breeder reactor was used in a warhead, it might have to be accommodated with changes to the warhead design.
On this topic, one Chinese expert said that Chinese analysts are “confused and annoyed” by the Pentagon’s high estimates of China’s warhead numbers. While not briefed on the exact size of China’s arsenal, the expert argued that the United States should know that China “doesn’t have enough fissile materials for that,” referring to the Pentagon’s estimates. As for the idea that extra plutonium will come from the fast breeders, the same expert was unconvinced, feeling that was an unrealistically complicated route for Chinese decisionmakers to take. Overall, it is hard to believe that China would voluntarily introduce more uncertainty to something as important as its nuclear arsenal.
Beijing’s Decisions Do Not Happen in a Vacuum
While it is hard to know exactly what to expect from the Trump administration, which is just over a month into its four-year term, any engagement with China on nuclear risk reduction or arms control should not assume that Beijing’s priorities have shifted. Despite Trump’s apparent dislike for international treaties and organizations, the road to meaningful progress on arms control runs through treaties like the CTBT and the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty.
Similarly, the United States must acknowledge its role in spurring China’s arsenal expansion. At times, both the U.S. government and many independent analysts seem to prefer to believe that the growth in its arsenal means China has pivoted to a more aggressive nuclear posture. The alternative – that China has decided it needs to shore up its second-strike capability due to improving U.S. damage limitation capabilities – appears more plausible. However, like acceptance of mutual vulnerability between U.S. and Chinese arsenals, it seems too tough a pill for the U.S. side to swallow.