Since 2020, China is believed to have tripled its nuclear arsenal to 600 warheads—enough to begin to shift the strategic balance, if still well short of the thousands held by the United States and Russia.

“China’s trying to catch up because, you know, they’re, they’re very substantially behind, but within five or six years they’ll be even,” President Trump said in February.

But will they? Perhaps the biggest unknown of this new nuclear age is how many weapons Beijing will ultimately hold. Its buildup has a few logical endpoints, and by examining each possibility, observers can better understand what China is seeking.

The best place to start to game out where China’s nuclear program is going is to look back at where it has been. Beijing first tested a nuclear weapon in October 1964 a

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