US ‘proof’ Beijing is stepping up nuclear arms race

China is engaged in a ‘crash nuclear program’ at its huge, secretive Lop Nur site, according to US intelligence assessments.

A satellite photo taken March 29 of the Chinese nuclear test site at Lop Nur. Picture: Maxar Technologies

China is engaged in a “crash nuclear program” at its huge, secretive Lop Nur site in the northwest of the country, according to the latest US intelligence assessments.

The 100,000 sqkm nuclear test site, the largest in the world, has been involved in an unprecedented build-up of nuclear-capable missiles of every range and type.

US intelligence on what is described as China’s “secretive and destabilising” nuclear program was revealed by senior American officials this week to permanent representatives of NATO’s North Atlantic Council.

“You have to look at what they’re doing at Lop Nur, where they have moved in effect to year-round activity,” Marshall Billingslea, US special presidential envoy for arms control, said in a video briefing. US satellite monitoring of the site has registered a significant increase in the pace at which China is “pushing out a wide range of different kinds of missile systems – short-range, medium-range, long-range ballistic missiles, ICBMS [intercontinental ballistic missiles], road mobile, rail mobile”.

US President Donald Trump, left, and China's President Xi Jinping in 2018. Picture: AFP

“You name it, they’ve got a full panoply of missile systems they’re pushing out the door,” Mr Billingslea said.

He described the activity at the Lop Nur site in Xinjiang province as an “extremely worrisome crash nuclear program”.

China has always resisted joining nuclear arms control talks. No Chinese official turned up at this week’s meeting of American and Russian negotiators in Vienna.

Beijing had been sent an invitation from Washington to join the meeting to discuss the future of the New Start Treaty, which was signed by the US and Russia in 2010 and expires in February next year. President Trump wants a trilateral agreement with Russia and China to replace it.

China has insisted that it is comparable with the United Kingdom and France, both nuclear powers but maintaining what they declare to be a “minimum credible deterrent”.

According to a report published this month by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), China has a total of 320 nuclear warheads, the UK has 215 and France has 290. This compares with the US, which has 5,800, and Russia with 6,375.

Mr Billingslea said, however, that China had moved on from minimum deterrence and had demonstrated a “shift in thinking”.

“Apparently they intend to achieve some form of nuclear parity with both the United States and Russia, and whether that parity is qualitative at the outset or perhaps quantitative, this seems what they are determined to do,” he said.

Under this “radical shift” China was now pursuing a nuclear triad capability, involving nuclear-armed ICBMs, submarines and bombers.

It was no longer true that China was at the same level of nuclear capability as the British and French, Mr Billingslea said, and it was time that Beijing agreed to join the arms control talks.

“The Russians have a wonderful saying, their version of the apples and oranges analogy, which is to say that drinking tea is not like chopping wood,” he said.

“So to suggest that the United Kingdom and France, who are cordially drinking tea and simply maintaining their nuclear deterrence, while the Chinese are busy chopping wood very actively, we can’t agree to that characterisation,” he said.

The Times