In the misty valleys of the southwest Kine, satellite images reveal accelerated accumulation nuclear weapons, a force designed for a new age of superpower rivalry.
One such valley is known as Zitong, in Sichuan province, where engineers are building new bunkers and ramparts. The new complex is full of pipes, which suggests that the facility handles highly hazardous materials, the New York Times writes.
In another valley is a double-walled facility known as Pingtong, where experts believe China is producing nuclear warhead cores loaded with plutonium. The main structure, dominated by a 117-meter-high ventilation chimney, has been renovated in recent years with new vents and heat diffusers.
A slogan visible from space
Above the entrance to the Pingtong facility, there is the characteristic slogan of the Chinese leader Si Jinping, written in letters so large they are visible from space: "Stay true to the founding purpose and always remember our mission."
These are just some of the secret nuclear weapons facilities in Sichuan Province that have been expanded and upgraded in recent years.
China's arms buildup is complicating efforts to revive global arms control after the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between of the United States and Russia. Washington claims that any subsequent agreements must also bind China, but Beijing has shown no interest.
"The changes we're seeing on the ground at these sites coincide with China's broader goals of becoming a global superpower. Nuclear weapons are an integral part of that," said René Babiartz, a geospatial intelligence expert who analyzed satellite imagery and other visual evidence of the sites and shared his findings with The New York Times.
"There has been an evolution in all of these locations, but generally speaking, that change has accelerated starting in 2019," he said.
Beijing denies the allegations.
China's nuclear expansion is a growing source of tension with the United States. Thomas G. Dinano, the State Department's Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security has publicly accused China of secretly conducting "nuclear explosion tests" in violation of the global moratorium. Beijing has dismissed the claim as false, and experts have debated how strong the evidence is for Dinan's claims.
China had more than 600 nuclear warheads by the end of 2024 and is on track to have 1.000 by 2030, according to the Pentagon's latest annual estimate. China's stockpiles are much smaller than the thousands held by the United States and Rusija, but their growth remains problematic, said Matthew Sharp, a former State Department official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I think without a real dialogue on these issues, which we lack, it's really hard to tell where it's going, and that, to me, is dangerous," he said, "because now we're forced to react and plan around the worst possible interpretation of a worrying trend line."
Photo: Prinstskin/New York TimesIn the Zitong valley, engineers are building new bunkers and ramparts
Inner nuclear empire
The Sichuan sites were built six decades ago as part of Mao Zedong's "Third Front," a project to protect China's nuclear weapons laboratories and facilities from a strike by the United States or the Soviet Union.
Tens of thousands of scientists, engineers and laborers worked in secret to carve into the mountain interior what Danny B. Stillman, an American nuclear scientist who visited the area, later called the "inner nuclear empire" in a book he co-authored.
When China's tensions with Washington and Moscow eased in the 1980s, many of the "Third Front" nuclear facilities were closed or scaled back, and often their scientists moved to a new weapons laboratory in the nearby city of Myanyang. Sites like Pingtong and Qitong continued to operate, but changes in the years that followed were gradual, reflecting China's policy at the time of keeping a relatively small nuclear arsenal, Dr. Babiarc said.
That era of restraint has faded since about seven years ago. China has begun rapidly building or upgrading many nuclear weapons facilities, and construction at sites in Sichuan has also accelerated, Dr. Babiarc said. Construction includes a massive laser firing laboratory in Myanyang that could be used to study nuclear warheads without detonating the actual weapon.
