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China has increased its arsenal of operational nuclear warheads to 600 from 500 in just one year, while the People’s Liberation Army continues to rapidly expand its forces, according to the US defense department.

In its annual “China Military Power Report”, the Pentagon said that the PLA expanded its arsenal by 20 percent in the 12 months from mid-2023 and is on track to have 1,000 operational warheads by 2030.

The Pentagon in recent years has warned that the US will soon face two nuclear peers as ChinaIts arsenal is closer to the size of the US and Russia.

China has not denied increasing the size of its nuclear forces but dismissed US concern over the issue, saying Washington is using it as an excuse for its pursuit of “absolute strategic predominance”.

The Pentagon report estimates that China will continue to increase its nuclear forces until at least 2035. But this is not repeated. its 2022 projection has the PLA on track to have 1,500 warheads by the middle of the next decade, a number that roughly matches the number deployed by the US and Russia.

A US defense official said the Pentagon was being cautious in its latest forecast.

“The further we go . . . it’s more challenging to have a projection that you can have a lot of confidence in, because there are so many variables that can cause them to adjust what they think they should or what they can do,” he said.

The report said that the PLA Rocket Force, which oversees most of China’s nuclear arsenal, is developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles that will enhance its nuclear forces.

The report, ordered by Congress, comes as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in January. Defense experts are waiting to see what he will do with China and Taiwan.

US officials believe that President Xi Jinping has ordered the Chinese military to develop the capability to invade Taiwan by 2027, the centenary of the founding of the PLA. The defense official emphasized that the Pentagon does not believe an attack on Taiwan is “imminent or inevitable” and said the US has a “deterrence now that is real and strong”.

The report said the PLA has made “uneven progress” toward its modernization goal for 2027.

The report said the PLA was experiencing a new “wave” of corruption in senior ranks that “may have hindered” progress towards the 2027 milestone. “Beijing’s confidence in high-ranking PLA officials may have been shaken,” it concluded.

China’s defense ministry last month said Miao Hua, one of the top five military officers who commanded the PLA, under investigation for “serious disciplinary violations”.

The Financial Times reported last month that some US officials believed China’s defense minister Dong Jun was also under investigation. The US official said he could neither confirm nor deny whether Dong was being investigated. Beijing rejected the claim. Dong’s two predecessors — Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu — are both under investigation for corruption.

The Pentagon official said that in the second half of 2023 alone, China fired at least 15 high-level military officers and defense industry executives, including the head of the PLA Rocket Force.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Mao Ning said in August that Beijing’s nuclear strategy is focused on self-defense, that it has always kept its nuclear capabilities at the “minimum level necessary for national security”.

“It is the US that is the main source of nuclear threats and strategic risks in the world,” Mao said.