BEIJING: China’s defence ministry on Wednesday (Oct 25) denounced the US Defense Department’s annual report on China, saying it distorts the country’s security policy and military strategy.
Over the next decade, the People’s Republic of China will rapidly modernise, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces, the Pentagon said in its report to US Congress, laying out China’s national ambitions, including its defence policy and military strategies.
The Pentagon said China has more than 500 nuclear warheads and will probably have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030. The report said China would use new fast-breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons, despite publicly saying the technologies are intended for peaceful purposes.
“We express our strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to this report,” Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said in a statement, adding that it “exaggerates and hypes the non-existent ‘Chinese military threat'”.
Wu said the development of China’s armed forces is aimed at containing the threat of war, safeguarding its own security and safeguarding world peace, and is not aimed at any specific country or target.
China and the United States have recently traded barbs over global and national security concerns, military interactions in the South China Sea and over Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
Source: CNA
