One of the most critical issues facing the next U.S. president is dealing with China’s nuclear expansion. Beijing’s buildup has already contributed to the Biden administration’s departure from its initially ambitious nuclear arms control and nonproliferation agenda. Instead, the White House and the Pentagon are preparing options to expand the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the first time since the Cold War to deal with the deteriorating global security environment. The next U.S. president is likely to implement such options unless China curbs its nuclear buildup and engages in risk-reduction measures with the United States.
This July, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party affirmed the policy of accelerating “development of strategic deterrence forces,” marking the latest indication of the PRC’s commitment to fortifying its nuclear arsenal. In recent years, international analysts have observed a rapid increase in China’s nuclear warheads and their delivery systems.
On August 1, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Vipin Narang delivered a prominent speech detailing the impact of China’s nuclear buildup on U.S. strategic thinking: “The growth in, and diversification of, the Chinese nuclear force—something we neither anticipated nor accounted for when we crafted the nuclear modernization program over a decade ago—will be a defining feature of this new nuclear age.”
Compounding the adverse effect of Beijing’s nuclear policies is how they relate to other nuclear threats. U.S. officials see China abetting Russian aggression in Ukraine, benefiting from Russian uranium to boost PRC fissile material production, and tolerating North Korea’s nuclear buildup. According to Narang, “the real possibility of collaboration and even collusion between our nuclear armed adversaries” is “forcing U.S. to think in new and careful ways about challenges such as escalation dynamics and deterring opportunistic aggression.” The administration subsequently confirmed adoption of a revised classified Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance to respond to these challenges.
U.S. officials have lamented how China has failed to engage bilaterally with the United States on nuclear arms control issues. The Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to induce the PRC to join strategic arms reduction talks with Russia and the United States. The Biden administration has instead tried to induce Beijing to discuss operational arms control, such as confidence-building and risk-reduction measures, to address how their conventional and nuclear forces might interact in unexpectedly escalatory ways.
On November 6, the State Department hosted the first official PRC-U.S. bilateral nuclear dialogue in almost five years. Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability, headed the U.S. team, while Sun Xiaobo, director general for arms control at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led the PRC delegation. The United States offered three specific strategic risk reduction measures for consideration: mutual notification of missile launches, a rapid communication mechanism between strategic commands, and space deconfliction measures.
The Chinese delegation did not accept these ideas, offered no proposals of its own, and then declined to schedule follow-up arms control talks. In July, PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian finally confirmed that China would not continue the dialogue, citing how, “despite China’s firm opposition and repeated protest, the U.S. has continued to sell arms to Taiwan and done things that severely undermine China’s core interests and the mutual trust between China and the U.S.” Resuming official government arms control communications requires that the United States “respect China’s core interests and create necessary conditions for dialogue and exchange.”
The Chinese government has now joined the Russian government in conditioning a resumption of bilateral arms control talks hostage to Washington’s making concessions on other issues. The United States has employed a similar policy of tactical linkage since at least the 1970s, when it was a key pillar of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy. But Beijing is demanding an end to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which have been occurring for decades.
Beijing’s holding talks hostage to an unrealizable strategic concession leads U.S. analysts to suspect that China will bide its time while its strategic forces grow further, meanwhile exploiting nuclear risks escalation to deter foreign intervention against Chinese military actions. When asked about these issues in late August, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Wu Qian accused the United States of trumping a fake "China nuclear threat" as a pretext to shirk its disarmament responsibilities, share nuclear technologies and materials with allies, and expand its already superior nuclear capabilities. China appears ready to shun legally binding caps on its nuclear forces or operational arms control measures until completing its current modernization effort, whose goal might be reaching rough strategic parity with Russia and the United States.
There is a consensus within the U.S. security community on the need to minimize China’s nuclear buildup, maximize PRC transparency, strengthen extended deterrence guarantees, and restructure U.S. nuclear forces to address the novel environment. The Biden administration has thus far been developing options for increasing the U.S. arsenal while deferring concrete decisions for future presidents. However, some favor taking actions now. For example, certain U.S. strategists want to return nuclear warheads to U.S. delivery platforms that were removed earlier in compliance with the New START agreement between Russia and the United States, which expires in February 2026. Such “uploading” would rapidly increase the number of available strategic warheads. Over the longer term, the United States could acquire additional delivery systems.
China’s nuclear buildup has elevated Japanese and South Korean interest in obtaining stronger nuclear guarantees from the United States. U.S. nuclear consultations with both countries have recently expanded. Last year, the United States and South Korea launched a new engagement platform, the bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group. This July, the two governments adopted the U.S.-ROK Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula. Some U.S., South Korean, and Japanese specialists desire formal nuclear-sharing arrangements with South Korea and Japan, like the United States has with NATO allies. Hoping to force concessions, they want to present China with “a stark choice: participate meaningfully in substantive negotiations or brave a massive U.S.-backed nuclear buildup in its own backyard.”
Following National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s recent visit to China, the Biden administration said it saw only “limited” opportunities for arms control this year. Addressing this issue will require strong leadership and substantial attention from future U.S. presidents.
