The Ominous Expansion of China’s Nuclear Capabilities: Implications for India

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The growing and menacing nuclear threat from India’s Northern neighbour, the People's Republic of China (PRC), remains unabated and cannot go unchallenged. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the PRC is rapidly advancing its atomic weapons and their delivery systems. The SIPRI’s data demonstrates the PRC’s advancement in atomic weaponry, noting that it is not just qualitative, but equally quantitative. The latest SIPRI data shows that between 2024-25, China’s arsenal saw a 20-percent increase year-on-year in the PRC’ nuclear stockpile from 500 to 600 nuclear weapons. Indeed, its rapid expansion is greater than any nuclear weapons state, whether de jure or de facto. At least partially, this is unsurprising because the PRC has vehemently objected to a tripartite nuclear arms control agreement long before its current nuclear expansion involving the United States (US), the Russian Federation, and the PRC to reduce the size of their respective nuclear weapons stockpiles. As the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel Bo Zhou dismissively observed in 2019: “For such an agreement to work, either the US and Russia would need to bring their nuclear arsenals down to China’s level, or China would need to increase its arsenal drastically. Neither scenario is realistic.” Yet, as the current galloping pace of the PRC’s atomic arsenal indicates, Colonel Bo Zhou is at best partially accurate and betrays the fact that the Chinese atomic arsenal will never categorically come close to matching the US or Russia.

The latest SIPRI data shows that between 2024-25, China’s arsenal saw a 20-percent increase year-on-year in the PRC’ nuclear stockpile from 500 to 600 nuclear weapons.

These developments must be seen in the context and backdrop of the year 2023-24, when evidently, China finished the development and operationalisation of its new fast breeder reactors called the CFR-600, which are receiving Russian fuel support,  helping the PRC significantly augment its plutonium inventory. Breeder reactors are crucial because they produce more plutonium and fissile material than they consume. Fundamentally, these factors explain the distention in China’s nuclear weapons stockpile. In addition to these developments, the Chinese have already undertaken significant construction of their Lop Nur nuclear test site. It is a portent for things to come because the PRC may go in for a renewed round of testing to improve the reliability and performance of its nuclear warhead designs.

 While Beijing has sought to pass off the extensive nuclear test preparation activity in the Lop Nur test site as benign industrial activity, the geospatial intelligence from Earth Observation (EO) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites confirms or at least shows evidence veering towards Chinese test preparations for new warhead designs. Beyond the highly distinct prospect of China resuming larger yield atomic tests, sub-critical testing uses small quantities of fissile material, with the Chinese, in all certitude, conducting it. Indeed, in 2020, evidence revealed and identified that Beijing had conducted small-yield atomic explosions at Lop Nur’s Northern Tunnel Test Area, and very recently, it was decontaminated. These tests have been conducted under laboratory-based conditions in confined explosive chambers, which allow for small yield tests.  All these advances point to not just a vast increase in the size and quality of Chinese nuclear forces, but also Beijing’s delivery capabilities at an equally impressive speed. Indeed, if the PRC’s new nuclear weapons designs are to meet any standard of reliability and performance, they will also need to match the quality of the advanced vectors that will serve as their delivery systems. 

Beyond the highly distinct prospect of China resuming larger yield atomic tests, sub-critical testing uses small quantities of fissile material, with the Chinese, in all certitude, conducting it.

These delivery systems include the deployment of the Dong Feng-17 (DF-17), which is an intermediate-range road mobile ballistic missile armed with a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV). HGVs are designed to evade radar detection and missile defences. In addition, India should specifically pay attention to and  replicate, unless it is already doing so, China’s deployment of the Dong Feng – 26 (DF-26) Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) in Inner Mongolia, which is capable of enabling its crews to train for battlefield missions permiting them to “…swap between nuclear and conventional warheads”. Secondly, the Chinese have unveiled a dual-use Air Launched Ballistic Missile (ALBM) launched using their H6-KN bomber jets in the past year.

While China officially maintains that it keeps its warheads and delivery capabilities de-mated and only integrates them during a crisis, increasing evidence shows otherwise. At present, the PRC is moving away, if not already transitioned, from a posture that separates its warheads from its delivery systems. Further, the Chinese believe their move toward a Launch on Warning (LoW) posture, albeit evident since 2023, is every bit compatible with their declared No First Use (NFU) policy. This should seriously concern India’s strategic managers, compelling New Delhi to do the same to counter the PRC.

The Indian Navy (IN) also suffers from a complete absence of an SSN fleet for escort and protection for its SSBNs.

For India, the challenges are more complex in that it cannot merely match China pound for pound, but it will need to cushion itself with a nuclear arsenal that runs into the high hundreds to secure the country in the long run. The current Indian rate of production is at a modest 10 weapons per year, which is insufficient, but this glacial accumulation also owes as much to the lack of potent delivery systems, some of which are either under development or non-existent. Even if the the size of the Indian arsenal does not expand at a significant pace and considering that India has settled on adhering to its nuclear test moratorium since 1998, which precludes ‘hot’ testing for new warhead designs as China is preparing itself to do, New Delhi will need to double the urgency, intensity and vigour in improving and accumulating some key delivery systems. Despite the deployment of two SSBNs, namely the INS Arihant and the INS Arighat, with two additional vessels of the same class expected to follow in the coming years, the subsurface leg of its nuclear triad requires vast qualitative improvement along three metrics: stealth, operating range, and missile payload relative to its Chinese counterparts. The Indian Navy (IN) also suffers from a complete absence of an SSN fleet for escort and protection for its SSBNs. Finally, the airborne leg of India’s atomic triad faces two serious weaknesses: the lack of a long-range strategic bomber and two long-range missile systems, an Air Launched Ballistic Missile (ALBM) and an Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), which the bomber can be configured to deliver. China already deploys long-range ALCMs and ALBMs aboard its H6-KN bomber aircraft. In a nutshell, the acute challenges India faces and weaknesses in its nuclear capabilities vis-à-vis China mandate an accelerated and dedicated commitment to overcoming them.

Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

• International Affairs
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• china nuclear weapons expansion
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