China has significantly increased its number of nuclear warheads in the last 20 years.
In 2003, the country had 235 warheads. A steady increase brought this number to 280 in 2018, and a more recent acceleration to 410 as of 2023.
China now has a larger nuclear arsenal than France and the United Kingdom, as the chart shows.
It is not the only country expanding its arsenal: India and Pakistan have also increased the number of their warheads; and the global distribution of warheads remains dominated by Russia and the United States, which each have several thousand warheads.
But China has been the country most rapidly expanding its number of nuclear weapons in recent years.
This increases the risk of accidents and the threat nuclear weapons pose to humanity.
