Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian security issues, and cross-strait ties between China and Taiwan. You can get in touch with Micah by emailing [email protected].
Based on the facts, it was observed and verified first through the journalist, or informed and verified of competent sources.
Timelapse images show China’s rapid construction of a military complex that U.S. officials say is on track to be at least 10 times the size of the Pentagon.
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry with an email request for comment.
The Financial Times cited former American officials who say the intelligence network is largely in the extensive 1,500 acres site (2. 3 square miles), which some call “the city of the Beijing army. ” Analysts have underlined the characteristics that they recommend that Chinese leaders are prepared for the possible nuclear war with the United States.
The FT investigation presents satellite photographs of the European Space Agency Sentinel-2 that appears in the project, the progression seems to start last year about 20 miles to the southwest of Beijing.
Experts said the obvious deep holes in the photographs would likely involve arrangements for the structure of the bunkers hardened to space out the control of China’s military in the war, and a nuclear first strike.
Lyle Morris, an analyst at the New York-based Asia Society Institute, drew parallels with deep underground bunker chairman Mao Zedong and other high-level Chinese leaders fleeing the 1969 border clash with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union.
Lyle Morris, a senior fellow for foreign policy and national security at the Asia Society Policy Institute, wrote in X: “One thing I can say with almost certainty: Deep relief suggests arrangements for a C2 nuclear command. Total paranoia of the CCP in a first strike opposed to the continent, it would be a complex for all the civilian leaders of the CCP and the PLA to move for command and control a war or a nuclear crisis.
Mathieu Duchatel, policy analyst at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne think tank, wrote on X: “The scale is amazing and the picturing it being built in Xiangshan is striking when you’ve been there. But what it tells us, that China does not only want military power parity with the U.S. but superiority, and that China’s leadership is vulnerable to a disarming first strike, is something we already know.”
Dennis Wilder, the CIA’s former deputy deputy director for East Asia and the Pacific, told the Financial Times: “If confirmed, this new underground command bunker complex for army administration, adding President Xi while the chairman of the Central Military Commission issues Beijing’s goal of building only the traditional global-class force, but also a complex nuclear force capability,”
Recent years have seen China steadily expand its nuclear capabilities and arsenal, and the Department of Defense projects the country will double its estimated 500 nuclear warheads by 2030.
The strong nuclear force is the key to the objective of President Xi Jinping to succeed in a wonderful force parity with Washington, according to experts.
Micah McCartney is a Newsweek reporter in Taipei, Taiwan. It covers U. S. -China relations, East and Southeast Asian security issues, and China-Taiwan trait-to-line ties. You can tap on Micah by emailing M. McCartney@newsweek . com.
Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian security issues, and cross-strait ties between China and Taiwan. You can get in touch with Micah by emailing [email protected].