This piece will discuss the intentions and drive of China‘s nuclear weapons modernization, the meaning of Chinese minimum deterrence, and the trends of the Chinese nuclear weapons program.

China currently has far fewer nuclear weapons than the U.S., possibly the fewest of the five original nuclear weapons states. But if China feels threatened by the deployment of U.S. missile defenses, that could well change.

A presentation to the International Symposium on Nuclear Security and the Korean Peninsula on the policy considerations of China's plutonium recycling plans.

This paper will discuss the status of China’s nuclear power reactors, breeders, and civilian reprocessing programs. In addition, this paper will examine whether the breeders and civilian reprocessing programs make sense for China, taking into account costs, proliferation risks, energy security tradeoffs, health and environmental risks, and spent fuel management issues.

This new, groundbreaking study by Reaching Critical Will explores in-depth the nuclear weapon modernization programmes in China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and analyzes the costs of nuclear weapons in the context of the economic crisis, austerity measures, and rising challenges in meeting human and environmental needs. 

In a post to the Belfer Center's Power and Policy blog Hui Zhang considers the purposes of China's extensive system of tunnels for ballistic missiles, known as the "Underground Great Wall"

A study by Georgetown University's Phillip Karber claims that a vast network of tunnels in China, often called the "underground great wall," could hide up to 3,000 nuclear weapons. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hui Zhang argues that the study leaps to unwarranted conclusions based on simplistic reasoning and questionable extrapolation from decades-old estimates of Chinese weapon levels. New information on fissile materials inventories and other authoritative data indicate that China has a nuclear arsenal of a few hundred weapons and that the underground great wall is meant to protect this small deterrent from a first strike.

Hui Zhang presented his paper "Reassessing China’s Military Inventory of Highly Enriched Uranium," at the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management 52nd Annual Meeting, in Palm Spring, CA, 17-21 July 2011.

Hui Zhang presented his paper "China’s Stockpile of Military Plutonium: A New Estimate," at the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management 52nd Annual Meeting, in Palm Spring, CA, 17-21 July 2011.

Hui Zhang's article "China's HEU and Plutonium Production and Stocks" was published in the January-April 2011 issue of Science & Global Security. This article discusses the history of China’s production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons and uses new public information to estimate the amount of highly enriched uranium and plutonium China produced at its two gaseous diffusion plants and two plutonium production complexes.