Researchers in the US have identified the construction of 119 new international ballistic missile silos in a desert in northwestern China, indicating that the country is carrying out plans to strengthen its strategic nuclear capability.

The researchers spotted the construction in commercial satellite images of remote areas west and southwest of the city of Yumen, on the edge of the Gobi Desert in Gansu province.

The images show circular excavations, long trenches for communications and surface structures consistent with control centres and silos at other launch sites in China, according to Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on China’s nuclear programme with the James Martin Centre for Non-proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.

“It was a recognisable design,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s hard to imagine it’s anything else.”

The silo construction is likely to fuel debate in Washington over the Pentagon’s plans to modernise the American nuclear arsenal. It may also be driving efforts by the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, to bring China into strategic arms control negotiations that have until now involved only the US and the Soviet Union and Russia.

“This build-up — it is concerning,” the state department’s spokesman, Ned Price, said when asked about the construction, which was reported earlier in The Washington Post. “We encourage Beijing to engage with us on practical measures to reduce the risks of destabilising tensions,” he added.

China has refused to join arms control talks, arguing that its nuclear arsenal is far smaller than those of the world’s two major nuclear powers. At the same time, it has pursued a broad modernisation programme that has raised questions about its intentions.

China has approximately 350 nuclear warheads, compared to the US with 5,550 and Russia with 6,255, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

New York Times News Service