Has China deployed more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles?
On December 23, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian responded to a Reuters reporter's claim that "the Pentagon report stated that China has deployed more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles and is not willing to participate in arms control negotiations," saying that such U.S. hype is intended to accelerate the modernization of its nuclear forces. As the country with the largest nuclear arsenal, the United States should genuinely fulfill its nuclear disarmament responsibilities and create conditions for other countries to join the nuclear disarmament process.
The "Pentagon report" mentioned by the Reuters reporter comes from a report released by Reuters on the 22nd, which claimed that a draft of a Pentagon report shows that China has already loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles into three missile silos, and that China is not willing to engage in arms control negotiations.
It is worth noting that this is not the first time in recent years that the United States has hyped up China's nuclear force development.
In recent years, U.S. think tanks and the Pentagon have frequently exaggerated and hyped up China's "unprecedented speed in expanding its nuclear arsenal" and demanded that China accept nuclear disarmament negotiations.
This actually reflects a very thought-provoking situation: as a nuclear power alongside Russia, the United States has more nuclear weapons than China, so why is it worried about China's nuclear force development?
Or we can ask in another way: does this "concern" of the United States about China's nuclear force development mean that the U.S. itself is facing problems in its nuclear arsenal that cannot be resolved in the short term, thus urgently requiring China to accept nuclear disarmament negotiations?
In fact, in recent years, U.S. media has indeed reported news about aging facilities and radioactive substance leaks at U.S. nuclear weapon bases. For example, in 2023, the Associated Press reported that carcinogenic substances were detected at an underground launch control center in a nuclear missile base in Montana, and several soldiers at the base were diagnosed with cancer.
Combined with the fact that the next-generation U.S. intercontinental missile "Sentinel" was halted due to cost overruns, these pieces of information seem to indicate that there are problems with the maintenance and upgrade of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1852295290997979/
Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.