Report: China Orders Largest Military Build-Up Since 1930s Germany

According to a report by a national security expert, the People’s Republic of China has ordered the largest military build-up of any nation in the world since Germany in the 1930s, raising concerns about the military threat presented by China.

As Fox News reports, the claims were made in an article in The Federalist written by Chuck DeVore, the chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. DeVore points out that while the American military has spent over $5.4 trillion on wasted wars such as the “War on Terror” and subsequent attempts at “nation-building,” China has been strengthening its military.

“China is engaging in an unprecedented military build-up that the world frankly hasn’t seen since Adolf Hitler in the 1930s,” said DeVore in an interview following the publication of his article.

“They’re massively building up their nuclear arsenal. We expect it to expand to at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, only five years from now. Probably going to be bigger than that,” DeVore explained. “The Chinese Navy, not by tonnage, but by numbers is now larger than the U.S. Navy. China has something like 250 times the ship building capacity that America does.”

Among other expansions, China has increased the arsenal of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) by 50 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), bringing the new total to around 400. The Department of Defense (DOD) also reports that 300 more medium-range ballistic missiles and 100 long-range cruise missiles have also been added. China currently has over 600 operational nuclear warheads, and is expected to increase that total to over 1,000 by the year 2030.

Whereas the outgoing Biden Administration has taken a much softer stance on China, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to crack down on China, both in terms of trade and military ambition. The country’s most recent build-up efforts may be in anticipation of the expected challenges of a Trump presidency that will not let China get away with as much as it did under Biden.