China’s defence ministry blasts Pentagon’s annual report

China’s defence ministry on Wednesday denounced the U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on China, saying it distorts the country’s security policy and military strategy.
Over the next decade, the People’s Republic of China will rapidly modernise, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces, the Pentagon said in its report to U.S. Congress, laying out China’s national ambitions, including its defence policy and military strategies.
The Pentagon said China has more than 500 nuclear warheads and will probably have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030. The report said China would use new fast-breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons, despite publicly saying the technologies are intended for peaceful purposes.
Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said in a statement, “We express our strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to this report,” adding that it “exaggerates and hypes the non-existent ‘Chinese military threat'”.
Wu said the development of China’s armed forces is aimed at containing the threat of war, safeguarding its own security and safeguarding world peace, and is not aimed at any specific country or target.