From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, via A Glimpse of the World:
If you read the Washington Times, in addition to believing that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are hidden somewhere in Syria, you might believe that “China’s aggressive strategic nuclear-modernization program” was proceeding apace. [1] If munching on freedom fries at a Heritage Foundation luncheon is your thing, you might worry that “even marginal improvements to [China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)] derived from U.S. technical know-how” threaten the United States. [2]
So, it may come as a shock to learn that China’s nuclear arsenal is about the same size it was a decade ago, and that the missile that prompted the Washington Times article has been under development since the mid-1980s. Perhaps your anxiety about “marginal improvements” to China’s missile force would recede as you learned that China’s 18 ICBMs, sitting unfueled in their silos, their nuclear warheads in storage, are essentially the same as they were the day China began deploying them in 1981. In fact, contrary to reports you might have recently read that Chinese nukes number in the hundreds”if not the thousands”the true size of the country’s operationally deployed arsenal is probably about 80 nuclear weapons.
