There has long been a concern in Taiwan that China will use EMP weapons as part of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In 2001, China expert Michael Pillsbury, in a hearing of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, linked nuclear EMP attack to the Chinese “Assassin’s Mace” concept of defeating the superior by the inferior. In addition to the possibility of Chinese EMP attacks against the continental United States, there is concern that Chinese non-strategic ballistic missiles could be used for tactical EMP attacks. A 2005 report on a Hong Kong website owned by China’s official news agency quoted an unidentified Chinese official as saying that China might not only stage EMP attacks against Taiwan, but that it might also “conduct an announced nuclear EMP ‘test’ 1,200 km east of Taiwan to keep US forces at bay.” A declassified 2011 U.S. intelligence report discussed potential Chinese use of a nuclear EMP weapon against Taiwan by detonating the device at a non-optimum altitude of 30-40 km in order reduce the risk to China from the attack. This tactic could also be used against U.S. military bases without resorting to an all out EMP attack, with its inherent risk of in-kind retaliation.

China reportedly has long been developing “super” or enhanced EMP weapons. A September 2023 report by L.J. Eads, Ryan Clarke and Xiaoxu Sean Lin concluded, “China’s rapid advancements in the field of EMP weaponry have emerged as a significant concern for the strategic landscape of global security, particularly concerning the vulnerabilities of United States military and civilian operations.”

In 2021, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten revealed that China had conducted hundreds of hypersonic missile tests. Chinese hypersonic missiles are reportedly nuclear-armed. The 2023 United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission report stated that, “In 2018, China also tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic prototype named the Starry Sky-2…” Nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles have a variety of strategic and tactical uses.

In addition to its domestic nuclear weapons development and testing program, China has obtained a large amount of detailed U.S. nuclear weapons design data through espionage. The House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, generally known as the Cox Committee, concluded:

The stolen U.S. secrets have helped the PRC fabricate and successfully test modern strategic thermonuclear weapons. The stolen information includes classified information on seven U.S. thermonuclear warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal. Together, these include the W-88 Trident D-5 thermonuclear warhead, and the W-56 Minuteman II, the W-62 Minuteman III, the W-70 Lance, the W-76 Trident C-4, the W-78 Minuteman III Mark 12A, and the W-87 Peacekeeper thermonuclear warheads. The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced radiation weapon (commonly known as the ‘neutron bomb’)….

The disconnect between the very visible growth in Chinese strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (the public became aware of the massive Chinese ICBM silos construction program not because of the Pentagon but because non-governmental organizations detected them using commercial satellite imagery) and the relatively low assessed number of operational Chinese nuclear warheads, appears to be getting even less plausible. The 2022 and 2003 Pentagon reports said that at least 300 new ICBM silos for solid fuel ICBMs (plus an unannounced number of new silos for the liquid fuel DF-5/CSS-4) and that these silos could house a mix of DF-31A/CSS-10 Mod 2 (obviously assuming single warheads) and DF-41. The Pentagon’s assessed 500+ Chinese “operational” nuclear weapons in May 2023 cannot assume a significant number of MIRVed DF-41 even if one accepts the Pentagon report’s estimate of three warheads each. Apparently, the Pentagon report is assuming that the silos are largely empty and those that are loaded house older less capable single warhead DF-31A.

In addition to strategic nuclear weapons, China has a growing force of non-strategic or tactical nuclear missiles. Many of the Chinese medium- and intermediate-range missiles are dual-capable (nuclear and conventional.) In 2004, China expert (and later Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense) Brad Roberts wrote that Chinese ground-launched missiles were being developed for “nuclear conventional dual-use.” The 2006 Chinese Defense Ministry White Paper said that China has nuclear “tactical operational [i.e., ranges to about 1,000-km] missiles of various types.” In 2012, Russian expert Aleksey Arbatov said that China had 150 operational tactical nuclear ballistic missiles. The Pentagon’s China military reports have said that the Chinese DF-26 IRBM and the DF-21/CSS-5, including the anti-carrier version the DF-21D, are nuclear–capable. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry has said that the Chinese M-11/DF-11/CSS-7 missile “can fire a variety of warheads ranging from nuclear and chemical warheads to electromagnetic pulse warheads.” The Chinese DF-15 is reportedly nuclear-capable. The Chinese CJ-20 cruise missile is also reportedly nuclear-capable. The Pentagon reports do not credit China with nuclear artillery, despite the fact that a declassified CIA study revealed that one of China’s last announced high-yield nuclear tests may have been a nuclear artillery round. Russian sources report that China has nuclear artillery rounds.

According to a declassified CIA document, a number of the last known Chinese high-yield nuclear tests conducted in the 1990s were related to tactical nuclear weapons. There are concerns about continued Chinese low-yield nuclear testing despite its supposed nuclear testing moratorium. These can be used to develop new type of nuclear weapons, particularly of the low-yield type.

The Strategic Posture Commission’s report noted that, “China will also for the first time have survivable (mobile) theater nuclear forces capable of conducting low-yield precision strikes on U.S. and allied forces and infrastructure across East Asia, in contrast to its historic practice of fielding only larger yield weapons. Theater range low-yield weapons may reduce China’s threshold for using nuclear weapons.”

The Pentagon’s China reports have notoriously underestimated the growth of the Chinese nuclear threat. The current estimate of 500+ Chinese nuclear warheads is only slightly above the 2011 Taiwan Defense Ministry estimate of 450-500 nuclear warheads deployed by China’s Second Artillery which is only part of China’s nuclear force. Typically, the Pentagon reports have been about five years behind what has appeared in open sources, particularly those in the Far East. Russian estimates of the number of Chinese nuclear warheads have been far higher than even the current Pentagon 1,500 estimate for 2035. For example, in 2012, Russian Major General (ret.) Vladimir Dvorkin said that China then had about 1,600 nuclear weapons. Colonel General (ret.) Viktor Yesin, former Chief of Staff of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, stated that China had 1,600-1,800 nuclear weapons. Estimates of the Chinese nuclear force range up to three thousand nuclear weapons, in the case of Dr. Phil Karber, President of the Potomac Institute. (According to Grant Newsham, a China expert, in a Center for Security Policy publication, “…reportedly, senior-most US intelligence officials instructed that Dr Karber be discredited.”) Since these estimates date from the early years of the Chinese nuclear buildup, they are mainly non-strategic nuclear weapons.

In 2021, the South China Morning Post reported that “…a source close to the Chinese military said that its stockpile of nuclear warheads had risen to 1,000 in recent years, but less than 100 of them are active.” This apparently reflects the fact that in 2021 most of these weapons were tactical nuclear weapons which are commonly stored detached from delivery vehicles when this is possible. In 2001, Dan Stillman, former Director of Intelligence at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, stated that China’s nuclear weapons are not designed to be one-point safe like American weapons. (One-point safe means in the case of an accidental detonation of the high explosives there is only one in a million chance of exceeding greater than four pounds of high explosive equivalent yield.)

Even 15-20 years ago, reports of Chinese development of MIRVed strategic missiles were appearing in the Asian press. Other than a short reference to Chinese research on MIRV technology, the Asian press reports were ignored in the contemporary Pentagon reports. The 2017 Pentagon China report was wrong when it assessed that the new Chinese MIRVed JL-3 SLBM would not be deployed until next the late 2020s when the 096 ballistic missile submarines were operational. It was deployed on the existing 094 submarines by 2022.

Even as late as 2020, all the Pentagon report stated was that the number of Chinese nuclear warheads would double from the existing assessed level of the “low-200s” in the next ten years. This is only fraction of the over 1,000+ “operational” nuclear warheads that the Pentagon now projects for 2030. The 2021 Pentagon China report assessed that by 2030 the number of Chinese nuclear warheads was going to triple. In the 2022 Pentagon report, the new numbers indicated that the projected growth was about seven times (200+ in 2020 to 1,500 in 2035). It is likely that this trend will continue and the scope of the underestimates may even increase.