Blinken Warns of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Buildup—China Warns That U.S. Is Threatening War

Aug. 7, 2021 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Tony Blinken, speaking at the East Asia Summit foreign ministers meeting on Aug. 5, expressed his “deep concern” about the “rapid growth” of China’s nuclear arsenal, based on recent satellite reports of new weapon silos being built in Gansu and Xinjiang. He said this was “sharply deviating from its decades-old nuclear strategy based on minimum deterrence.”

Hu Xijin, the hardline editor of Global Times, responded today in a signed article stating that the danger is coming from the war build up and war-mongering by the U.S. “It is important to note that China has never abandoned its minimum deterrence nuclear strategy,” he wrote.

“However, due to the comprehensive strategic threat that the U.S. keeps posing to China, the nuclear capabilities Beijing needs to achieve ‘minimum deterrence’ are now different from the past. As the potential risk stemming from U.S. nuclear coercion against China is clearly increasing, China needs to have sufficient nuclear forces to contain such a risk.”

Hu points out that China is the only nuclear-armed country which has pledged not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, nor to even threaten to use them against a non-nuclear country. Since China is “gradually achieving dominance in conventional warfare in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea,” the danger is that the U.S. could start a war which it cannot win with conventional weapons, and would choose to use nuclear weapons. Therefore, China’s nuclear deterrence must be “so powerful that the elites in Washington will tremble in fear” at the thought of China’s response. He concludes that U.S. policy toward China over the past years “has demonstrated a certain derangement,” requiring that China “increase our second-strike capability.”