As China Speeds Up Nuclear Arms Race, the U.S. Wants to Talk

The Pentagon thinks Beijing may build 1,000 or more weapons by 2030. But it’s the new technologies that worry strategists.

The United States has no nuclear hotline to Beijing. The two countries have never had an in-depth, serious conversation about American missile defenses in the Pacific, or China’s experiments to blind U.S. satellites in time of conflict.

And Chinese officials have consistently rejected the idea of entering arms control talks, shutting down such suggestions by noting — accurately — that the United States and Russia each have deployed five times more nuclear warheads than Beijing possesses.

President Biden is seeking to change all that.