China is transforming parts of its east coast into a platform for potential missile strikes against Taiwan and the nearby seas. The buildup is a vital part of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ambitions to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control and counter U.S. power in Asia through the threat of overwhelming force.
The Pentagon estimates that China’s Rocket Force, which controls nuclear and conventional missiles, has increased its stockpile by almost 50 percent in four years, to about 3,500 missiles. While it is unclear how many are on the east coast and targeting Taiwan, satellite images show that missile brigades have built new and bigger bases and added more launchpads in recent years.
And the bases are deploying increasingly advanced missiles like the Dongfeng-17, a hypersonic missile that is maneuverable and harder to intercept, and the Dongfeng-26, nicknamed the “Guam Express” by some Chinese for what researchers say is its ability to strike U.S. military bases in the region.
Along China’s eastern seaboard, soldiers have been practicing launching missiles from farm fields and secluded valleys, near expressways and from coastal outcrops facing Taiwan, which lies across a 100-mile strait.
Missiles are “really the starting point for any type of military coercion campaign that China would use against Taiwan,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, a research group in Washington. “For the Chinese, I think, having an overwhelming number of missiles is also intended as a political signal — to Taiwan that there’s no point in fighting back, to the United States that you can’t intervene.”
In a war, China’s missiles would be critical for knocking out Taiwan’s defenses as well as threatening U.S. bases in Guam and Japan and targeting U.S. Navy ships sent to Taiwan’s aid. In peacetime, China uses missile tests, exercises and displays to project strength and to attempt to intimidate Taiwan and its partners.
The latest show of force was a military parade in Beijing in early September, when China revealed an array of new missiles. The parade featured new anti-ship missiles that appear to have hypersonic capabilities, as well as intercontinental nuclear missiles.
“The Rocket Force is the crown jewel of the Chinese military,” said Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. naval officer now at the Center for a New American Security. “It increases, by a huge degree, the range at which China can reach out suddenly with very little warning.”
Corruption scandals and leadership upheavals have recently blighted the Rocket Force. But Mr. Xi signaled his commitment to the force last year, when he visited Brigade 611 in Anhui Province in eastern China, the region where the People’s Liberation Army concentrates its forces on Taiwan and the western Pacific. Chinese state television showed him watching as troops simulated preparing mobile missiles for launch. He urged them to “deepen your sense of peril and crisis, and your combat mind-set.”
A Growing Hub for Missile Training and Launches
Satellite images show that the base for Brigade 611 has doubled in area in recent years. The new area includes what some experts said might be, at least in part, a training complex with launchpads and dummy tunnels for simulating operations.
“It’s a huge facility, a pretty cohesive training facility for practicing basically a full range of operations,” said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at CNA, a research organization, who has closely studied China’s missile forces and who examined the images of Brigade 611 at the request of The New York Times.
The base expansion features what appear to be three dozen missile launchpads, an unusually dense cluster since launchpads are normally dispersed away from bases to avoid detection, said David C. Logan, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University who studies China’s nuclear and missile forces.
Another unit, Brigade 616, in Jiangxi Province south of Brigade 611, has also grown rapidly. Satellite images from 2020 show that even at the height of the pandemic, China was clearing and leveling farmland, and after only 18 months, the construction of a new site was nearly complete.
New Generation of Missiles
Brigade 616 is now being prepared for the Dongfeng-17, according to Mr. Eveleth and other experts. Such missiles are capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to evade defenses. Mr. Eveleth noted details in the satellite images — such as the height of a storage bay — that suggested it would be used to hold the new missile.
The unit that Mr. Xi visited, Brigade 611 in Anhui, is now deploying the Dongfeng-26, which can be armed with a conventional or nuclear warhead and, as implied by the “Guam Express” nickname, is able to reach American military installations in parts of the Asia-Pacific. The missile can be transported by road, making it harder for enemies to track and destroy. (Hans M. Kristensen and other researchers from the Federation of American Scientists had first reported the expansion of the brigade in March.)
The Pentagon estimates that the Rocket Force has about 500 Dongfeng-26 missiles.
In a war, should Chinese leaders decide to send nuclear warheads to some Dongfeng-26 units, U.S. satellites might be able to detect them being moved from a depot in central China, Mr. Eveleth said. But such tracking may not be foolproof, leaving uncertainty about which units had nuclear warheads close at hand, he and other experts said.
That uncertainty could heighten the dangers of escalation and perhaps miscalculation.
“If there is a Taiwan conflict, particularly if there’s some level of U.S. involvement or the threat of U.S. involvement, then from the start it has a nuclear dimension,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow with the Stimson Center who coauthored a recent study warning that U.S. bases in the Asia-Pacific could be decimated by China’s missiles. “A system like the Dongfeng-26 makes this potentially even more dangerous.”
In a war over Taiwan, Chinese commanders would scatter mobile missile units to caves and protected sites to try to evade detection, Chinese military textbooks and videos of exercises indicate. The launch sites along the coast would allow units to fire rockets at targets in Taiwan or at ships at sea, and then shift to another site.
One of these launch sites is near China’s closest point to Taiwan. During military exercises in 2022 — which Beijing said were in retaliation for a visit to Taipei by the then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — that area was used to test fire army rockets able to hit Taiwan, according to Joseph Wen, an independent Taiwanese researcher who tracks the People’s Liberation Army forces. Mr. Wen studied footage from Chinese state television about the exercises to determine the site that was used.
China’s military has also built targets in the shape of U.S. warships in the country’s western deserts, apparently for missile practice, including dummy warships mounted on rails to simulate movement at sea. In a war, U.S. and other forces may try to destroy Chinese missile and long-range artillery units, though striking at targets on the Chinese mainland could be a risky escalation.
Chinese planners appear to be wagering that their missile numbers and mobility can prevail in a game of hide-and-seek, evading strikes and exhausting the enemy’s missile defenses. Recent studies say U.S. air bases in Asia could be highly vulnerable to Chinese missiles, partly because the bases lack enough hardened shelters for planes.
“We’re working on defenses,” said Mr. Shugart, a co-author of one of the studies, “but I have a hard time imagining them not getting overwhelmed with the kind of numbers that we see,” he said, referring to China’s missile forces.
Still, China’s rapid buildup of its missile systems has not been without problems. A Pentagon assessment suggested that graft in the Rocket Force may have compromised China’s new nuclear missile silos.
And while China’s radars and satellites have improved missile accuracy, some experts question how its missiles will perform in real conditions. Striking at ships across the sea in the chaos of war, for instance, would be much harder than hitting fixed targets, Professor Logan of Tufts University said.