China’s nuclear arsenal has grown faster than any other country, reaching an estimated 600 eyelets in early 2025, adding impulse to the global arms race and raising strategic concerns, an international group of experts said Monday.
The country’s nuclear reserve has expanded in approximately 100 eyelets per year since 2023, said the International Peace Research Institute of Stockholm (SIPRI) in its 2025 Sipri Yearbook, warning that a new and dangerous nuclear arms career is being taken form in the middle of a generalized weakening of weapons control frames.
According to the report, for January of this year, China built or almost completed around 350 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and could have at least as many ICBM as Russia or the United States in exchange for decade.
However, the report said that even if China reaches 1,500 eyebrows by 2035, this would still represent only one of the current Russian and American stocks.
Beijing said that a nuclear strategy follows that “focuses on self -defense.”
“China … always maintains its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level as required by national security and never gets involved in the arms race,” said the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun, a press conference in Beijing.
He said that Beijing “follows a policy of use of any first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstance and has promised not to use nuclear against non -nuclear states.”
China is the “only nuclear state to adopt such a policy,” he said, added that Beijing “will remain firmly committed to safeguarding his own legitimate security interests and keeping the peaceful and stable world.”
Nuclear capacities expand
The report revealed that almost all nine nuclear weapons states, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, continued to modernize and expand their nuclear abilities in 2024.
The general global nuclear inventory decreased slightly to 12,241, according to the report, while expressing concern that a “new hazardous nuclear arms race is emerging.”
Russia maintains the largest arsenal in the world, with 5,459 eyelets, while the United States has 5,177 eyelets. The two nations represent about 90 percent of the total world, according to the report.
It is believed that rivals for a long time Pakistan and India have expanded their nuclear programs in 2024, according to the report.
It is believed that India has once again expanded its nuclear arsenal in 2024 and continued to develop new types of nuclear delivery systems. It has 180 nuclear eyes compared to 172 last year.
Pakistan also continued developing new delivery systems and accumulating fistible material in 2024, according to the report. It is believed that it has 170 nuclear eyes, as in 2024. A brief armed conflict between the two nations in May highlighted the risks of climbing.
Israel has 90 eyes, although the country has not confirmed its nuclear arsenal. It is believed that it is modernizing its capabilities, and tested a missile propulsion system in 2024, and seems to be updating its plutonium production reactor site in Dimona.
It is estimated that North Korea had about 50 nuclear eyelets from January, the same as last year. It has sufficient fistible material to produce up to 40 more nuclear eyes.
