The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force has increased its stockpile by almost 50 percent in four years, to about 3,500 missiles, while rocket brigades on China’s east coast have built bigger bases with more launchpads, the New York Times reported on Monday.
This buildup is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “ambitions to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control and counter US power in Asia through the threat of overwhelming force,” the report said.
The bases are deploying increasingly advanced missiles such as the Dongfeng-17, a maneuverable hypersonic missile, and the Dongfeng-26, nicknamed the “Guam express” for its ability to strike US military bases in that region, it said.
Photo: AFP
Missiles are “the starting point for any type of military coercion campaign that China would use against Taiwan,” the Times quoted Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the research group Defense Priorities, as saying.
For China, “having an overwhelming number of missiles is also intended as a political signal — to Taiwan that there’s no point in fighting back, to the US that you can’t intervene,” she said.
China relies on its missile arsenal to intimidate Taiwan and its allies during peacetime and would use it to threaten Taiwanese and US forces in the event of a conflict, the article said.
Xi showed his commitment to the rocket force, which controls nuclear and conventional missiles, by visiting Brigade 611 in China’s Anhui Province last year, it said.
Satellite images show that Brigade 611, 708km from Taiwan, has doubled in size in the past few years, it said.
The unit is now deploying Dongfeng-26 missiles, which can be armed with conventional or nuclear warheads, and the Pentagon estimates that China has about 500 of them, it added.
Brigade 616 in China’s Jiangxi Province, about 580km from Taiwan, has also grown rapidly and is being prepared to handle Dongfeng-17 missiles, the report said.
“If there is a Taiwan conflict, particularly if there’s some level of US involvement or the threat of US involvement, then from the start it has a nuclear dimension,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based foreign affairs think tank.
“A system like the Dongfeng-26 makes this potentially even more dangerous,” the article quoted Grieco as saying.
Despite these advances, “China’s rapid buildup of its missile systems has not been without problems,” the New York Times reported, citing a Pentagon assessment that said corruption in the rocket force might have compromised China’s new nuclear missile silos.
In addition, while China’s missile accuracy has improved, experts question how its missiles would perform in real combat conditions, it said.
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