Defense studies show it will take decades before China can challenge the U.S. militarily, assuming China were even interested in pursuing this. Presumably, China has learned from the experience of the former Soviet Union, which came to its demise from excessive military spending. With its modest defense budget, China can only seek to slowly modernize a bloated military force that is equipped primarily with 1950s and 1960s era weaponry. In the final analysis, China's military is capable of fighting a defensive war on its mainland or in coastal regions but not to mount a serious offensive far from its shores. With regards to China's nuclear forces, it possesses about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles, with 8 more ICBMs planned, and one ballistic missile submarine with 12 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
China has no long-range strategic bombers.
Overall, China possesses 149 strategic nuclear warheads, which pales in comparision to the 7,150 warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. China's nuclear force is small and primitive when compared to the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Clearly, China's small nuclear deterrent is meant for defensive purposes and not as a serious offensive threat to the United States. With the overwhelming superiority of the United States in nuclear weapons technology and conventional forces, we should be sensitive to exaggerating the security threat that the People's Republic of China poses to America. Although the U.S. should remain vigilant in monitoring China's military development, continually labelling the PRC as a threat is counterproductive and runs the danger of turning China, indeed, into our enemy.