China finally acknowledges its massive missile silo fields

Chinese state television has aired the first semi-official acknowledgment of the country’s massive intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields in a documentary marking the 99th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army.

The program, produced by China’s national broadcaster CCTV, features an army engineer describing years of work building what he calls “houses for missiles” in the country’s western deserts.

The engineer, identified as First Master Sergeant Cui Daohu of an unspecified People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force brigade, says the project came under intense pressure from senior leadership in Beijing to finish on schedule. His account, first reported by the South China Morning Post, marks the first time a state-linked source in China has openly discussed the silo project since satellite images exposed it in 2021.

Those images, analyzed by open-source researchers, showed roughly 320 silos under construction across three fields in western China, plus a related training site at Jilantai. The discovery prompted years of speculation among Western governments and analysts about whether China was abandoning its long-standing “no first use” nuclear policy in favor of a more aggressive posture. Chinese officials have consistently avoided commenting on the silos directly, even as the government reissued a 2025 white paper insisting its arsenal remains sized at “the minimum level necessary for national security.”

Images: Planet Labs PBC; Annotations: Federation of American Scientists

The documentary’s framing suggests a different explanation for the rapid construction than a doctrinal shift. Cui describes the urgency as driven by a need to secure China’s ability to strike back after absorbing a nuclear attack, its so-called second-strike capability, rather than by any intent to use nuclear weapons more aggressively. Robert Rust, a China analyst with the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in an analysis published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the framing points to concern in Beijing over American missile defense programs, including the Trump administration’s Golden Dome initiative, as a driver of China’s nuclear expansion.

Cui says he was repeatedly pressed on the same question by colleagues at China’s National People’s Congress, where he has served as a military delegate since 2023.

“Will the project be finished on time?”

He describes developing a faster construction method to meet the deadline, including a change to how a core structural component is installed, and says the pressure came from an understanding that the silos needed to “ensure the country can play its strategic trump card,” a phrase commonly used in China to refer to its strategic nuclear missiles.

Rust noted that Cui had appeared in Chinese military media before, in a 2025 series honoring soldiers selected by the Central Military Commission, but that earlier appearance focused on his engineering inventions and made no mention of the silos or their role in national deterrence. The new documentary’s willingness to connect his work explicitly to strategic missiles, he wrote, suggests the silo project itself may now be complete.

The acknowledgment comes as outside researchers continue to debate how large China’s nuclear arsenal could eventually grow. The U.S. Department of War and some independent researchers have projected China could field 1,000 or more warheads by 2030, partly by diverting plutonium from civilian fast-breeder reactors. But those reactors have faced delays, and a 2025 Pentagon report on Chinese military power assessed that the first such unit likely still was not operating. Separate estimates cited by Rust suggest China may already possess enough plutonium to reach 800 to 1,000 warheads without relying on the delayed reactors, raising questions about how the reactor-based growth projections align with the documentary’s portrayal of a leadership in a hurry.

China has continued to display its newer missile systems publicly, including the DF-61 and DF-31BJ intercontinental ballistic missiles shown at a Victory Day parade in Beijing last year. Rust wrote that the shift from total silence to this kind of semi-official signaling could open space for more direct dialogue between Washington and Beijing on reducing nuclear risk, though no such talks have been announced.