China and Russia's strategic nuclear cooperation

Russia’s role in supplying China with highly enriched uranium for Beijing’s rapidly growing nuclear warhead stockpile is causing rising anxiety in Washington, a senior Pentagon official has said. China wants to increase the number of nuclear warheads from the current estimated 350-400 to 1,500 by 2035 which would approximately equal the strategic nuclear arsenal of the US – limited to 1,550 warheads by the New Start arms treaty with Moscow. Russia’s strategic partnership with Beijing is playing a crucial part in making that projected target possible, John Plumb , the Pentagon official, told a Congressional committee. The regular supply of enriched uranium, provided by Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation, was being used in China’s fast-breeder reactors to produce plutonium for weapons, he said. “It’s very troubling to see Russia and China cooperating on this,” said Plumb, assistant secretary of defence for space policy. “They may have talking points around it, but there’s no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons, and it matches our concerns about China’s increased expansion of its nuclear forces as well, because you need plutonium for more weapons,” he told the House armed services sub-committee on strategic forces. China has been building two fast-breeder reactors on Changbiao Island in Fujian province. The remote island is 136 miles off the northern coast of Taiwan. The first reactor is completed and the second is due to become operational in 2026. China says the reactors are civilian, each capable of generating 600 megawatts of electricity. But it is estimated they could also produce up to 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium each year. This would be enough for around 50 nuclear warheads. Under the fast-breeder technique, plutonium is wrapped in uranium-238 and bombarded with neutrons which produces plutonium-239, the fuel for nuclear bombs. The Pentagon has warned that China is building hundreds of new silos to house intercontinental ballistic missiles and already has more land-based and mobile ICBM launchers than the US. The US total, also limited by treaty, is 400 Minuteman III ICBMs spread among 450 operational launchers. China’s nuclear programme is not restricted by the New Start treaty signed only by the US and Russia in 2010. The latest annual US intelligence report assessing threats facing America presented to Congress on Wednesday said: “Beijing is not interested in agreements that restrict its plans and will not agree to negotiations that lock in US or Russian advantages.” Two weeks ago President Putin suspended Russia’s participation in New Start in retaliation for the continuing US-led arming of Ukraine. But there have been no indications that the Russian leader plans to breach the treaty limits on strategic nuclear missiles and warheads. Commenting on the growing relationship between China and Russia, Avril Haines, director of US national intelligence, said in testimony to the Senate intelligence committee that the strategic partnership between China and Russia had “some limitations”. Questioned by the committee on the threat-assessment report, Haines said: “We don’t see them becoming allies the way we are allies in Nato.” The report warned that China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal and the construction of hundreds more silos for ICBMs would give Beijing growing confidence and would ”bolster its resolve and intensify conventional conflicts”. In his evidence to the House sub-committee on strategic forces, Plumb said: “Our competitors have placed nuclear weapons, space warfare and long-range strike at the centre of their strategies to coerce and fight the United States and its allies and partners.”In a clear reference to China, the Pentagon official said America’s competitors were developing a range of capabilities to reach the US homeland, from “high-altitude balloons for intelligence collection to nuclear-armed hypersonic weapons”. “While the end state of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] nuclear force expansion remains uncertain, the trajectory of these efforts points to a large, diverse nuclear arsenal with a high degree of survivability, reliability and effectiveness and ever-opaque doctrine,” Plumb said. “This could provide the PRC with new options before and during a crisis or conflict to leverage nuclear weapons for coercive purposes, including military provocations against US allies and partners in the region,” he warned. Haines told the Senate intelligence committee that the US would continue to view China as “our unparalleled priority”. Beijing, she said, was challenging the US economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world. The annual threat assessment concluded that China would maintain its cooperation with Russia as part of that strategic challenge to the US. President Xi Zinping, China’s leader, who has begun his third term in office, is expected to use all means to undermine US influence in the world, the report said. One area of acute concern was Beijing’s stated determination to reunify the breakaway republic of Taiwan with the mainland. The intelligence report said the Chinese military was pushing to meet Xi’s timescale of 2027 for building up sufficient manpower and firepower to deter or prevent the US from intervening to defend Taiwan in the event of a decision by Bejing to take the island by force. As part of its efforts to maintain strategic superiority over China, the Pentagon is engaged in modernising all three components, land/sea/ air, of the US nuclear deterrent.