A Nuclear Revolution Forms Deep in the Mountains of China.
Satellite imagery of secretive nuclear facilities reveals Beijing’s efforts to expand its arsenal, just as the last global guardrails on nuclear weapons vanish.
Satellite imagery reveals the country’s accelerating nuclear buildup in the lush, misty valleys of southwest China, a force designed for a new era of superpower rivalry. In the province of Sichuan, engineers have been constructing new bunkers and ramparts in a valley known as Zitong. A new complex bristles with pipes, suggesting the facility handles highly hazardous materials.
Another valley is home to a double-fenced facility known as Pingtong, where experts believe China is making plutonium-packed cores of nuclear warheads. In recent years, new heat dispersers and vents have been installed in the main structure, which is dominated by a ventilation stack that is 360 feet high. Nearby, additional construction is in progress. “Stay true to the founding cause and always remember our mission” appears in characters so large they can be seen from space above the Pingtong facility entrance, a signature admonition from China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
In Sichuan Province, a number of secret nuclear-related sites have expanded and been upgraded in recent years. After the expiration of the last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, China’s buildup makes it harder to reactivate global arms controls. Beijing has shown no interest, despite Washington’s argument that any successor agreements must also bind China.
“China’s broader objectives of becoming a global superpower are in line with the changes we see on the ground at these locations.” Renny Babiarz, a geospatial intelligence specialist who has analyzed satellite images and other visual evidence of the sites and shared his findings with The New York Times, stated, “Nuclear weapons are an integral part of that.” He compared each nuclear site in China to a piece of a mosaic that shows a pattern of rapid growth when viewed as a whole.
He stated, “There has been evolution at all of these sites, but generally, that change accelerated starting in 2019.” Tensions between China and the United States have been growing as a result of China’s nuclear expansion. Thomas G. This month, China was publicly accused by DiNanno, the undersecretary for arms control and international security at the State Department, of violating a global moratorium by secretly carrying out “nuclear explosive tests.” Experts have debated the strength of the evidence in favor of Mr. Beijing has denied the claim as false.
DiNanno’s claims. According to the most recent annual estimate from the Pentagon, China had more than 600 nuclear warheads by the end of 2024 and is on track to have 1,000 by 2030. China’s stockpile is much smaller than the many thousands held by the United States and Russia, but its growth is still troublesome, said Matthew Sharp, a former State Department official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He stated, “I think without a real dialogue on these topics, which we lack, it is really hard to say where it is going, and that, for me, is dangerous” because “now we are forced to react and plan around the worst-case interpretation of a concerning trend line.” Six decades ago, as part of Mao Zedong’s “Third Front,” the Sichuan sites were constructed to protect China’s nuclear weapons production labs and plants from strikes from the United States or the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of scientists, engineers and workers labored in secret to carve into the mountainous interior what Danny B.
In a book he co-authored, American nuclear scientist Stillman referred to the region as “an inland nuclear empire.” Many of China’s “Third Front” nuclear facilities were decommissioned or reduced in size in the 1980s as tensions with Washington and Moscow eased, and their scientists frequently relocated to a new weapons lab in the nearby city of Mianyang. Dr. said that sites like Pingtong and Zitong continued to operate, but in the years that followed, little changed, reflecting China’s policy at the time, which was to maintain a relatively small nuclear arsenal. Babiarz.
About seven years ago, that period of restraint began to fade. China began rapidly building or upgrading many nuclear weapons facilities, and construction at the sites in Sichuan also accelerated, Dr. Babiarz stated In Mianyang, there is a huge laser ignition lab that could be used to study nuclear warheads without actually using weapons. Dr. says that the Pingtong complex’s design suggests that it is being used to make the pits of nuclear warheads, which are the metal cores that typically contain plutonium. Babiarz.
He pointed out that its design reminded him of pit-making facilities in other nations, such as the United States’ Los Alamos National Laboratory. Experts say that the new bunkers and ramparts in Zitong are probably being used to test “high explosives,” which are chemical compounds that explode to set up a chain reaction in nuclear materials. The shock wave simultaneously explodes into the center as you have a layer of high explosives. This needs blast tests to perfect them,” said Hui Zhang, a physicist who researches China’s nuclear programs at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, who examined Dr. Babiarz’s findings.
An oval area about the size of ten basketball courts is included in the complex. The precise goal of these upgrades is still up for debate. Dr. According to Zhang, satellite imagery provides only limited information. He stated, “We just see the plant expansion, but we don’t know how many warheads have been produced.” Dr. said that some of the recent changes might just be safety improvements.
Zhang, the author of a new book, The Untold Story of China’s Nuclear Weapon Development and Testing. He stated that in order to modify the designs of warheads for brand-new weapons like submarine-launched missiles, Chinese nuclear engineers might also require additional Zitong facilities and test areas.
Washington is particularly concerned about how China’s behavior in a crisis, particularly with regard to Taiwan, might be altered by this more advanced arsenal. According to Michael S., China would like to be “in the position where they believe they’re largely immune from nuclear coercion by the United States.” Chase, an ex-U.S. Senior political scientist at RAND and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China. “I think they probably judge that could play a role in a traditional Taiwan conflict.”
