China Hardens Military Stance Against U.S. With Nuclear Weapons and Tough Talk
Xi positions Beijing as powerful center of new global order as security forum convenes in capital
China is displaying its military might, including its nuclear triad, sending a warning to the U.S.
Defense Minister Dong Jun warned the U.S. against containing China, while Beijing’s navy sailed near Taiwan.
China aims to reshape the international system, seeking more influence and a stronger hand in its rivalry with the U.S.
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- China is displaying its military might, including its nuclear triad, sending a warning to the U.S.View more
BEIJING—China played down its rapidly rising military might for years. In the past few weeks, Beijing has broadcast a steady drumbeat of firepower displays and muscular rhetoric, carrying an unmistakable warning for the U.S.
It began on Sept. 3, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping brandished his country’s full nuclear triad—the means to deliver nuclear weapons by land, sea and air—together for the first time at an extravagant parade of military hardware and personnel.
Defense Minister Dong Jun followed up six days later with a warning to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that “acts of containment or deterrence against China will not succeed,” according to a Chinese account of a video call between the two men.
Then, on Friday, China’s navy went to the effort of announcing that its newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, had sailed through the waters between China and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own and has threatened to seize by force. The Fujian was on its way to the South China Sea, where Beijing has aggressively sought to enforce disputed territorial claims, risking conflict with the Philippines, a U.S. ally.
China’s military advancements were again in the spotlight this week at an international security conference in Beijing—where officials convened representatives from more than 100 countries to press their vision for a new international system in which China gets more say.
Dong, the defense minister, told the international attendees on Thursday that China is a global force for peace and stability. On issues such as Taiwan, however, Dong said China wouldn’t back down.
“We will never allow any separatist plot for Taiwan independence to succeed, and we are always ready to thwart any external use of force,” he said in a speech at the event, the Xiangshan Forum.
The hardening of Beijing’s posture comes as the U.S. and China pursue negotiations over trade and other issues and explore the possibility of a meeting between Xi and President Trump as soon as in the next few weeks.
Beijing has grown emboldened to punch back harder against Trump’s tariffs during his second term than in his first, for example by imposing limits on exports of rare earths that U.S. companies depend on.
“This time, the U.S. realized that China is a more intractable rival than it encountered during the first Trump term,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University at the Xiangshan Forum. “China has to show to the U.S. that if you challenge my core interests, I am going to do harm to you.”
In the defense chiefs’ video call last week, Hegseth told Dong that the U.S. doesn’t seek conflict with China, nor regime change, but would protect American interests in the region. The U.S. sent a defense attaché from its embassy to the Xiangshan Forum, according to a list of attendees, a step back from last year, when the participation of a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense signaled an effort to keep lines of military communication open.
Part of China’s confidence stems from the rapid growth of its firepower. The Pentagon estimates that China’s stockpile of nuclear warheads has more than doubled since 2020, alongside a growing array of options to launch those weapons, from mobile ground-launch systems to increasingly stealthy submarines.
China has long declared a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with other countries and says its nuclear arsenal is solely for deterrence, never to be used in a first strike.
Beijing’s rationale for the buildup can sound like Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” policy in the Cold War. “For every bit stronger China gets, the hope for world peace grows,” the official Xinhua News Agency wrote in a commentary in late August, borrowing a phrase from Xi.
China’s posture is a fresh indication that it is preparing for a prolonged era of rivalry—if not outright conflict—with the U.S.
Backing up the latest displays are deepening partnerships with nuclear-armed U.S. adversaries Russia and North Korea, whose leaders Xi welcomed as guests of honor to witness the Sept. 3 parade.
Beijing’s declaration that it is a stabilizing global force—in contrast to what it describes as a disruptive U.S. hegemony—has resonated with some countries, especially in the developing world.
“Xi and China are becoming more confident,” said Guangyi Pan, a scholar of Chinese politics and security issues at Australia’s University of New South Wales. “Not only in the military side, but also in how to build a new international order.”
Projections of strength and increasingly anti-U.S. positions have served as hallmarks of Xi’s rule since he came to power in 2012. But alongside the buildup of military hardware, Xi’s rhetoric has also grown more assertive.
During a military parade a decade ago, Xi presented the Chinese people’s desire for peace as essentially baked into their DNA. “No matter how much stronger it may become, China will never seek hegemony or expansion,” he said on the occasion, which marked the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II.
In his speech this year, marking the 80th anniversary, Xi didn’t repeat that promise. Instead, he issued a warning that the world today is being forced “to choose between peace and war”—before declaring that Chinese soldiers need to “speed up the building of a world-class military.”
That mission isn’t complete, and a critical unknown is whether Xi trusts that the commanders of China’s armed forces have the abilities to wage a large-scale war. His high-level purges over the past two years have called into question Beijing’s readiness for battle over Taiwan.
“It isn’t the equipment. It’s the trust in his people” that they can deploy the hardware effectively, said Frank Miller, a former longtime senior analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. “He’s much better off than he was, but he’s still not satisfied in what he’s got.”
Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com