[rsynnott]

Perhaps surprisingly, Europe has more nuclear weapons than China (France: 290 warheads, UK: 225 warheads, China: 500 warheads). China never really bought into the mutually assured destruction doctrine in the same way that the US and Soviet Union did.

[gruez]

Their stockpile is estimated to grow to 1500 by 2035.

https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...

[seanmcdirmid]

I don’t think the Chinese have been sitting still for the last 10 years, and I doubt they will sit still for the next 10 years.

[mrguyorama]

China invested heavily into hypersonic delivery vehicles instead of scale. They didn't want nuclear winter, they want to make sure that ANY attempt by the US to project power in "Their" waters evaporates in a plasma ball. They don't seem interested in nuking the US mainland.

Instead, their focus has been on building invasion barges so that they can take Taiwan. So that's exciting. Hope none of you like computer chips!

[seanmcdirmid]

They were able to nuke the west coast in the 90s. I don't think they have been sitting still with their ICBMs, the same ones that get your taikounauts into the space are the ones you use to deliver nukes.

Regardless, they only need enough to make nuclear war with them MAD, which I think they've had for a decade or so.

[rsynnott]

I mean, see Doctor Strangelove. If you have a doomsday weapon, that’s only helpful if you _tell_ people about it! If China had built loads of warheads, they’d hardly keep that secret, as most of these point of having loads of warheads is for everyone else to know you had them.

Realistically, by the time China and France got on the nuclear scene, doctrine had shifted from “nuclear torpedos, nuclear guns, nuclear landmines, nuclear everything” to “you have some submarines with missiles; you can have other stuff if you want, but no-one cares about it”. There’s little point in having thousands of warheads, these days.

(The UK did briefly go down the ‘nuclear everything’ road, but pulled back for cost/sanity reasons)

[seanmcdirmid]

I meant that your data is out of date, and China has moved quickly in the last ten years. They went in the last ten years from being able to just hit the west coast to hitting all the way up to the Midwest, do you think they won’t have some amount of increased coverage in the next, especially with their space program accelerating their ICBM program?

The truth is that China hit MAD awhile ago and doesn’t really need to play up or even build much more on its nuclear arsenal. They are better off investing in conventional warfare for the near term, and especially in new arms like drones that give them an actual advantage in future conflicts.

[ed_mercer]

Also China has a no first use policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use