China’s buildup at its remote Hami nuclear silo field reflects a broader effort to transform a historically vulnerable nuclear force into a resilient deterrent capable of surviving attack, constraining US intervention and reinforcing its position in a Taiwan contingency.
Last month, Reuters reported that China is constructing a massive, defensive military network of over 80 concrete launch pads and three distinct, octagon-shaped installations near its remote Hami nuclear silo fields in the northwestern Xinjiang desert.
This previously unreported expansion — intensifying amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan’s sovereignty — is strategically designed to harden China’s land-based nuclear forces, diversify its strategic deterrent, and firmly secure its second-strike capability against potential US preemptive attacks.
The sweeping project features two major octagonal command, control and communications hubs built over the past six years, linked via dirt roads and fiber-optic conduits to versatile desert pads optimized for road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, electronic warfare, and air-defense batteries.
While a less developed third octagon serves as a target range for mock Western aircraft, recent exercises at the active installations highlight an unprecedented, rapid modernization effort.
This vast defensive network sets China apart from traditional nuclear powers like the US and Russia, which historically rely on sheer numbers and silo isolation rather than localized infrastructure.
As China fields roughly 100 ICBMs across its primary silo fields, the Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that China remains on track to field 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.
Hami exemplifies China’s broader effort to make its nuclear deterrent more resilient, able to survive attacks and guarantee retaliation in increasingly contested conditions.
Sajjad Ahamed mentions in a May 2026 article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Current Chinese Affairs that China is building a more survivable nuclear arsenal not to support routine nuclear coercion, but to serve as a strategic “backstop” for conventional and gray-zone competition, particularly over Taiwan.
A more survivable deterrent could also expand China’s options for nuclear signaling during a Taiwan crisis. Matthew Kroenig notes in a September 2023 Atlantic Council report that China could use its nuclear arsenal to signal to the US and its allies not to interfere in a conflict over Taiwan.
Kroenig suggests China could perform an ICBM test or test a nuclear weapon at one of its test sites, such as at Lop Nur, or more provocatively, in the waters surrounding Taiwan or near a US base in the Pacific.
He adds that China could use nuclear weapons against US and allied forces, if it deems using such weapons would confer a significant advantage, is necessary to stave off impending conventional military defeat, or if the Chinese leadership is threatened.
Ahamed says that as China strengthens its second-strike capability through new missile silos, submarines, and mobile missiles, China may believe that US leaders will face greater risks and uncertainty in any Taiwan crisis.
He notes that this nuclear backstop helps limit US escalation options, reinforces mutual restraint at the nuclear level, and supports sustained Chinese pressure through military exercises, air incursions, and other coercive activities directed at Taiwan and US regional allies.
However, Emily Gill mentions in an October 2025 article for the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) that Chinese leaders increasingly fear that advances in US missile defenses, precision-strike weapons, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems could locate and destroy China’s relatively small nuclear force before it can retaliate.
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) show that as of January 2025, China has an estimated 600 nuclear warheads, which is relatively few compared with the US’s estimated 5,177 and Russia’s 5,459.
Gill argues that concerns about a potential US conventional or nuclear first strike have led China to expand silo fields, deploy more road-mobile missiles, harden infrastructure, and improve concealment and survivability measures.
The Hami network appears tailored to address precisely those vulnerabilities by dispersing launch assets, hardening support infrastructure and complicating efforts to locate, track and destroy Chinese nuclear forces.
Hami’s expansion also reflects a broader nuclear buildup that the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) describes as unprecedented since the late Cold War in an October 2023 report.
It states that China is rapidly increasing both strategic and theater nuclear forces, developing a full nuclear triad, launch-on-warning capabilities, and low-yield nuclear options.
It projects China could field more than 1,500 deployed warheads by 2035 and concludes that, if current trends continue, China will achieve rough quantitative parity with the US in deployed nuclear warheads by the mid-2030s, with capacity for further growth thereafter.
Such efforts, Gill notes, aim to preserve a credible second-strike capability and maintain deterrence despite perceived growing threats to China’s land-based nuclear forces.
From a US perspective, John Harvey argues in a May 2025 report for the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) that counterforce capabilities remain important as China transitions from a small, vulnerable deterrent to a large, silo-based ICBM force.
He contends that the ability to hold at risk at least part of China’s nuclear arsenal strengthens deterrence, supports escalation control and reassures allies that US extended deterrence remains credible.
However, Dahlia Anne Goldfeld and other writers note in a November 2024 RAND report that China’s nuclear modernization increasingly constrains US counterforce options against China.
Goldfield and others argue that while some analysts once believed that the US might have been capable of an “exquisite counterforce campaign” against China’s relatively small and vulnerable nuclear force, China’s rapid buildup has significantly reduced that possibility.
They note China’s deployment of road-mobile DF-41 ICBMs, near-continuous nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) patrols, and other survivability measures have strengthened its second-strike capability, forcing US planners to assume China can absorb an initial attack and still retaliate.
Goldfield and others state that the US can no longer rely on the prospect of a disarming counterforce strike and must instead operate under conditions of mutual nuclear vulnerability and heightened escalation risk.
Facilities such as Hami suggest China is actively engineering that outcome by making its land-based nuclear forces harder to find, harder to target and harder to neutralize.
As China’s growing survivability increasingly undermines the feasibility of damage-limitation strategies, Tyler Bown argues in a May 2026 War on the Rocks article that China’s nuclear expansion should not be met with a large US warhead buildup aimed at preserving damage-limitation or counterforce strategies.
Bown contends that China’s construction of hundreds of new missile silos and growth toward roughly 1,000 warheads complicate any US effort to target and destroy China’s nuclear forces, while mobile missiles and survivability measures further reduce the feasibility of damage limitation.
Instead of expanding the deployed arsenal, Bowen recommends deemphasizing damage limitation, accepting mutual vulnerability, pursuing trilateral arms control with China and Russia, and strengthening the US nuclear industrial base as a hedge should China continue expanding after 2030.
More than a missile-field expansion, Hami signals China’s determination to ensure that any future Taiwan crisis unfolds under the protection of a nuclear deterrent that can survive attack, retaliate decisively and constrain US intervention.