Study: China Has the World’s Fastest-Growing Nuclear Arsenal

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published a report on Monday that warned China has the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world and its inventory of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) could reach parity with the United States and Russia by 2030 – although Beijing would still lag behind in deliverable nuclear warheads.

SRPI’s Yearbook 2025 report found that almost every nuclear power “continued intensive nuclear modernization programs in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” but China’s effort to catch up to the U.S. and Russia stood out.

The U.S. and Russia still hold about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, but both nuclear superpowers have made efforts to retire old warheads and both have encountered technical and funding “challenges” with their modernization programs.

“Nevertheless, it is likely that both Russian and U.S. deployments of nuclear weapons will rise in the years ahead,” the report predicted – in part because the U.S. will feel obliged to respond to China’s growing arsenal of ICBMs and warheads:

SIPRI estimates that China now has at least 600 nuclear warheads. China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than any other country’s, by about 100 new warheads a year since 2023. By January 2025, China had completed or was close to completing around 350 new ICBM silos in three large desert fields in the north of the country and three mountainous areas in the east. Depending on how it decides to structure its forces, China could potentially have at least as many ICBMs as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade. Yet even if China reaches the maximum projected number of 1500 warheads by 2035, that will still amount to only about one third of each of the current Russian and US nuclear stockpiles.

North Korea is also a problem, as SIPRI estimated it has around 50 warheads today, possesses enough fissile material to build 40 more in fairly short order, and is “accelerating the production of further fissile materials.”

North Korea still lacks the technology to deliver strategic nuclear weapons at long range, but it is clearly interested in developing such technology, and the South Koreans believe Pyongyang is close to developing a “tactical nuclear weapon” with long enough range to threaten South Korean cities.

SIPRI Director Dan Smith rolled out the report with grave misgivings about a new, more opaque, and much riskier nuclear arms race. Smith was dismayed by the fraying of arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia, but the growing nuclear strength of China argues in favor of replacing the old Cold War deals with new trilateral agreements, as President Donald Trump wishes to do.

“China is trying to catch up because they’re very substantially behind, but within five or six years, they’ll be even,” Trump warned in February. His prediction tracks closely with SIPRI’s report, as do Pentagon estimates of a thousand Chinese warheads by 2030.

The Chinese Communist government responded to Trump’s remarks by calling on the U.S. and Russia to dismantle more of their own nuclear arsenals, while ignoring China’s totally peaceful warhead surge. This suggests China has no intention of slowing its mad dash for nuclear parity with America and Russia.

Smith noted that trilateral negotiations “would add a new layer of complexity to already difficult negotiations,” but there is a relentless logic to the U.S. stepping up its nuclear strike and defense capabilities in response to China’s rising power, and Russia doing everything it can to keep pace with the United States. It seems unlikely that anything but a trilateral agreement could abort the new arms race.

“The idea of who is ahead in the arms race will be even more elusive and intangible than it was last time round. In this context, the old largely numerical formulas of arms control will no longer suffice,” Smith cautioned, pointing to the shadowy theater of cyber-warfare that did not exist when the previous arms race began.

SIPRI senior researcher Matt Korda added concerns about the danger of a nuclear conflict breaking out between second-tier powers like India and Pakistan, which came close to all-out war last month.

“The combination of strikes on nuclear-related military infrastructure and third-party disinformation risked turning a conventional conflict into a nuclear crisis. This should act as a stark warning for states seeking to increase their reliance on nuclear weapons,” Korda said.

A similar note of caution might be sounded about events that occurred on the eve of SIPRI releasing its report, as Pakistan supposedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against Israel if it launched any nuclear warheads at Iran.

The Pakistani government, while remaining unhappy with Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, dismissed this alleged threat as an Iranian fabrication on Monday. It remains a troubling example of how the new arms race is beginning in a fast-moving world of disinformation.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry refused to comment on SIPRI’s report on Monday, merely repeating its boilerplate that China’s nuclear weapons program “focuses on self-defense,” so it is no one’s business but China’s.

“China always keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required by national security, and never engages in arms race,” insisted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun.

“China follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances and has committed unconditionally to not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states and nuclear-weapon-free zones. China is the only nuclear weapon state to have adopted such a policy,” Guo claimed.