The Washington Times | 12 November 2020 | Read the originally news here

China is rapidly building up its nuclear forces, including the expansion of plutonium and uranium plants as part of a secretive, crash program to add warheads to its growing missile and bomber forces, according to declassified U.S. briefing slides obtained by The Washington Times.

The four slides were part of a recent briefing for NATO allies in the past month on Chinese nuclear forces and show three facilities that appear to have sharply increased in size since 2010.

One plutonium production area, the Jiuquan Atomic Energy Complex, doubled in size at a nuclear reprocessing zone in the past two years alone and added another reactor in the past year.

U.S. officials view the significant construction at Jiuquan as part of what the Pentagon said recently is a plan by Beijing to double the size of its warhead stockpile in the next decade. China has more than 200 warheads and is building more for its growing force of multiwarhead missiles.

Intelligence from the briefing challenges widely reported studies on Chinese fissile material production. As recently as 2017, international experts concluded that China ended plutonium production for weapons in 1991 and uranium production for arms in 1987.

“But it is clear from imagery that China is engaged in a secretive crash buildup of its infrastructure. There is no doubt that China wants to be on par with the United States and Russia in terms of its military and nuclear capabilities,” he added.

The information from the slides is part of the Trump administration’s effort to persuade China to join New START nuclear arms talks with the United States and Russia. Beijing so far has rebuffed U.S. appeals to join the arms talks.

A second satellite photo made public shows extensive expansion of the nuclear-weapons-related research complex at Mianyang, in south-central China. Mianyang produces warheads and conducts research, development and testing of nuclear arms under the direction of the China Academy of Engineering and Physics, or CAEP.

The academy has been compared to a combination of the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons were designed, and the Pantex plant in Texas that assembles the warheads that can deliver nuclear weapons to targets.