A joint nuclear-capable bomber drill by Beijing and Moscow near Japan in late November 2024 drew condemnation and called into question Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping’s past pronouncements against nuclear proliferation.
The military exercise over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan also tightened the links between the CCP and Russia, which repeatedly has threatened to use nuclear weapons in its unprovoked war against Ukraine. The show of belligerence also underscored the contradiction between Xi’s stated stand against nuclear weapons and his authoritarian regime’s historic nuclear arms buildup.
The CCP’s nuclear stockpile has spiked from about 200 operational warheads in 2020 to more than 500 and is projected to surpass 1,000 by 2030, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) reported in 2024.
While the CCP’s nuclear arsenal lags behind those of Russia and the U.S., Beijing has not acknowledged the scale of its expansion, declared its end goal or engaged in substantive arms control discussions, the DOD reported.
Xi in November 2022 joined a chorus of world leaders in condemning nuclear weapons. He urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to reconsider his threats to deploy nuclear arms against Ukraine and implored the international community to “jointly oppose the use of, or threats to use, nuclear weapons,” according to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) state-run news agency.
More than five years earlier, Xi stated: “Nuclear weapons, the sword of Damocles that hangs over humankind, should be completely prohibited and ultimately destroyed over time to make the world free of nuclear weapons.”
The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aims to prevent the spread of such weapons, encourage peaceful uses of nuclear energy and promote nuclear disarmament. Worldwide, 191 states have signed the landmark treaty, including the PRC, Russia and the U.S.
Beijing claimed that the two-day exercise with Moscow, reportedly the regimes’ first joint nuclear-capable bomber patrol, did not “target any third party.”
However, Tokyo said that while the exercise did not violate Japanese airspace, it perceived the patrol as a threat worthy of scrambling fighter jets to monitor the CCP and Russian aircraft. South Korea also deployed fighter jets as a precaution. The Sea of Japan, also called the East Sea, separates Japan from the Korean Peninsula.
Japan criticized the CCP and Russia over a show of force that raised major concerns, Newsweek magazine reported. Fighter jets, spy planes and an aerial refueling aircraft accompanied two CCP nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and two Russian nuclear-capable Tu-95 bombers, Japanese defense officials stated.
