Beijing slams zero-sum mentality after US warns of planned warheads boost

In its first public estimate of China's nuclear capacity, the Pentagon said on Tuesday that within a decade Beijing would double the number of warheads in the country's stockpile－a figure it now puts "in the low 200s".

China's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected the Pentagon report that Beijing would double the number of its nuclear warheads. Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news conference that the report is filled with bias, urging the US to abandon the zero-sum game and do more for the benefit of the two countries and their militaries, rather than the other way around.

The Chinese Defense Ministry, in a statement on Wednesday, said the report is full of the zero-sum Cold War mentality and the so-called China military threat. The report distorts China's national defense policy and military strategy, smears the Chinese army modernization and nuclear policy, and stirs up tensions across the Taiwan Straits, it said.

"This is extremely wrong and China firmly opposes to that. We will make further appropriate response," the statement said.

But even with the projected increase in China's warheads, that number is "far smaller" than those for the stockpiles of the United States and Russia－respectively, 3,800 and 4,300－and should serve to discourage Washington from dragging Beijing into the trilateral arms control negotiations, several US experts said.

The Pentagon's estimate has made headlines in the US and beyond as relations between the world's top two economies have plummeted to their lowest point in decades due to tensions building up on multiple fronts, including trade, technology and the South China Sea.

US President Donald Trump's administration has been urging China to join the US and Russia in negotiating a three-way deal to limit strategic nuclear arms, but China has declined. Beijing has repeatedly said that it has no intention of participating in the negotiations.

By pressing China to join in such talks, the Trump administration has created a pretext for walking away from the existing US-Russia arms treaty known as New START, The Associated Press said. That deal is due to expire in February but could be renewed for up to five years if Moscow and Washington agree.

The annual report, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China", was first issued in 2000 when the Pentagon assessed that China's military "was slowly and unevenly adapting to the trends in modern warfare".

Now, the 200-page report claims, China's objective is to have a "world class" military by the end of 2049, though it noted that the Chinese military strategy remains based on the concept of "active defense".

"Even if the Department of Defense is correct and China doubles its arsenal by 2030 to 400-500 warheads, China's arsenal will remain far smaller and less capable than that of the US and Russia," Kingston Reif, director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said in a Twitter post.

"The foolishness of throwing away an extension of New START due to concerns about China can't be overstated," he wrote.

Taking wind out of sails

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, tweeted: "Perhaps the most surprising (thing) about the 'low-200s' warhead estimate is that it takes some of the wind out of the sail of the Trump administration's push to get China into nuclear arms control."

In addition to its stockpile of 3,800 warheads, the US has a further 2,000 that are "retired" (still intact but awaiting dismantlement), according to an analysis Kristensen and his colleague Matt Korda posted on the federation's website on Tuesday.

The timing of the report's release is not necessarily political, but the Pentagon's assessment of Chinese military achievements will likely raise alarm bells in Washington and probably be picked up on the US presidential campaign trail, according to Jon Taylor, chair of the department of political science and geography at the University of Texas in San Antonio.

In the report, the Pentagon also said that pursuit of a constructive results-oriented relationship with China is an important part of US strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.

Although the US and China agreed at the January 2020 Defense Policy Consultative Talks on a series of military contact events to occur this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated delaying or canceling events, according to the report.

Taylor said military-to-military and security relations, marked by stability and open communication, is the key to avoiding any "unfortunate and avoidable problems".

Cui Haipei in Beijing and agencies via Xinhua contributed to this story.