China expanding its nuclear stockpile
The underground military facilities also are used to protect and hide command posts and communications sites, to store weapons and equipment and to protect people.
Richard Fisher, a China military-affairs analyst, said the report is significant for listing strategic nuclear forces that show an estimated increase of up to 25 new ICBMs, some with multiple warheads, in a year, and the first references to China’s program for nationwide missile defenses.
In October 1995, Gen. Xiong Guangkai said of any conflict over Taiwan that “if you hit us, we can hit back.” The general then said that “in the end, you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei,” reported to the White House at the time as a threat to use nuclear weapons.
In 2005, Gen. Zhu Chenghu told reporters in Beijing that if the U.S. military used conventionally armed weapons on Chinese territory, “we will have to respond with nuclear weapons.”
China’s military in January rebuffed an appeal from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to hold strategic nuclear talks.