Washington, DC: China is developing a “new generation” of nuclear weapons and has conducted at least one underground explosive test in recent years, US intelligence agencies have concluded.
China’s effort to significantly expand its nuclear arsenal beyond its current 600 operational warheads could signal a major shift in the country’s overall nuclear strategy, US officials told CNN.
“They have a brand new generation of weapons for which they have no database,” the outlet has quoted an unnamed US source as saying, as reported by News18.
This development reportedly includes a covert nuclear test in February that is backed by substantial, though undisclosed, financial investment.
According to the report, China is continuing to develop low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons for the first time – planning to use them in potential scenarios where the US defends Taiwan militarily.
The country is said to have carried out an explosive nuclear test in June 2020 at its highly secretive Lop Nur facility in the country’s remote northwest, defying a self-imposed testing moratorium that has been in place since 1996.
Details that have emerged about that test have confirmed US suspicions that China is accelerating its nuclear program, officials in Washington said. Assistant secretary of state Christopher Yeaw has claimed that the explosion registered a magnitude of 2.75 on the Richter scale.
“I’ve looked at additional data since then,” he said. “There is very little possibility I would say that it is anything but an explosion, a singular explosion.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, told CNN, however, that the US has “distorted and misrepresented China’s nuclear policy.”
