Letter: China’s Sputnik Moment is a race it can’t win

It is always worth checking Beijing’s math (“China’s hypersonic weapons test just before the ‘Sputnik moment’, says the top US general,” report, October 28).

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that the country has 350 nuclear warheads, compared to 5,500 in the US. How China supplies these warheads is of course as important as owning them.

According to experts, more than 200 ICBM silos are under construction in western China, and according to the Federation of American Scientists, a total of around 250 are under construction (“China’s Worrying Silo Construction,” FT View, Aug. 13).

Their existing delivery capabilities already include 20 silos and 100 road launch vehicles. However, all of these can only operate the “old” ICBMs; not the hypersonic missiles that are currently ringing so many alarm bells in Washington.

Beijing is either bluffing the nuclear intent of its new hypersonic missiles or looking to increase its inventory of nuclear warheads.

I suspect that, as the USSR learned with Sputnik, the Chinese started a race they won’t win.

Spencer Davis
Austin, TX, USA

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