China's Nuclear Buildup Challenges U.S. Deterrence Strategy

Nuclear Weapons U.S.-China Relations Deterrence Strategy Arms Control Taiwan

May 1, 20263 min readAsia

China's Nuclear Buildup Challenges U.S. Deterrence Strategy

Beijing's arsenal expansion reshapes U.S. military planning.

China’s Nuclear Surge Is Rewriting U.S. Deterrence

Beijing’s arsenal buildup is changing U.S. war planning and Taiwan signaling, while the arms-control channel remains too weak to slow either side.

Beijing is using nuclear expansion to raise the cost of U.S. intervention in Asia; Washington is answering with a harder deterrence posture and a broader push for arms talks that China still resists. That is the real implication of Tong Zhao’s warning that China and the United States are “courting nuclear catastrophe”: the nuclear balance is no longer a background condition to rivalry over Taiwan and military power — it is becoming part of the leverage contest itself China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe.

Why Beijing thinks it is gaining

Zhao argues that China has nearly tripled its nuclear warheads since 2019, expanded its land-, sea-, and air-based deterrent, and broadened the industrial base behind that force, all while signaling a desire to “strengthen and enlarge” its strategic deterrent China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe. Separate public estimates put China at about 600 warheads, still far below U.S. and Russian totals but growing faster than either arsenal Which countries currently have nuclear weapons? | AP News.

The power play is straightforward. Xi Jinping does not need parity with the United States to change U.S. behavior; he needs enough survivable capability to make any crisis over Taiwan look less controllable to Washington. That benefits the People’s Liberation Army, which wants stronger deterrence against U.S. conventional intervention, and it benefits Beijing’s political leadership, which wants peer-status treatment from Washington China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe. It hurts U.S. planners who long relied on China’s comparatively small and opaque force as a manageable variable in a largely conventional Indo-Pacific balance.

Why Washington is hardening

The U.S. response is already moving beyond rhetoric. In February 2026, U.S. officials met Chinese and Russian delegations in Geneva to discuss a possible multilateral arms-control framework after the expiration of New START, but Reuters reported it was unclear whether the talks amounted to formal negotiations and China had previously signaled little interest in new limits US meeting Russian and Chinese delegations for nuclear arms control talks, official says | Reuters.

At the same time, Washington is keeping escalation tools visible. In March 2026, a senior State Department official said the Trump administration had not ruled out resuming underground nuclear tests, a signal that the U.S. is willing to widen competition if it believes China and Russia are exploiting restraint Top US official does not rule out resuming underground nuclear weapons tests | Reuters.

This is why Zhao’s article matters beyond the nuclear file. The danger is not simply bigger arsenals; it is a shift toward tripolar instability, where each side reads the other’s modernization as preparation for coercion rather than insurance against vulnerability China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe. That debate now sits squarely inside Global Politics and the strategic choices facing the United States.

What to watch next

The next decision point is whether the Geneva channel produces even modest risk-reduction measures — transparency, crisis communications, or notification mechanisms — or collapses into symbolic diplomacy US meeting Russian and Chinese delegations for nuclear arms control talks, official says | Reuters. If talks stall while U.S. testing debates intensify and China keeps expanding, the biggest loser will be crisis stability around Taiwan. The date that matters is the next round of U.S.-China strategic talks: if there is no concrete follow-through, both sides will assume the other prefers leverage to limits.

Originally published by Foreign Affairs.