China said Wednesday that it had successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean, in a rare public test that may raise international concerns as the country builds up its nuclear arsenal at a time of tensions with the United States.
The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force launched the ICBM carrying a simulated warhead at 8:44 a.m. local time (8:44 p.m. Tuesday ET), the Chinese defense ministry said in a statement, adding that it accurately landed in a predetermined area of the high seas. The path of the missile and the exact place it fell were unclear.
The ministry said the test was a routine part of the Rocket Force’s annual military training. “It is in line with international law and international practice and is not directed against any country or target,” it said.
But analysts said this was the first time China had launched an ICBM into international waters since 1980.
“Unless I’m missing something, I think this is essentially the first time this has happened (and been announced as such) in a long time,” Ankit Panda, a nuclear weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a post on X.
China’s description of the test as routine and annual “seems odd,” Panda said, “given that they don’t do this sort thing either routinely or annually.”
Relevant countries were notified in advance, according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.
The launch, which came during the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York, “tested weaponry performance and military training effectiveness and achieved desired goals,” Xinhua reported, citing the defense ministry.
The U.S. received advance notification of the test, “and we believe that that was a good thing,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Wednesday.
“That was a step in the right direction, and it does lead to preventing any misperception or miscalculation,” she said.
The Japanese government’s top spokesperson, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said Wednesday that officials were still confirming the details of the launch but that the missile did not appear to have passed over Japan and there were no reports of damage. He said Japan had not been informed in advance.
Hayashi said China was rapidly expanding its nuclear and missile arsenal and increasing its defense expenditures without sufficient transparency. He said there was also greater and more frequent Chinese military activity around Japan, a U.S. treaty ally that has also been expanding its defense budget, citing what Japan said was an unprecedented incursion into its airspace last month by a Chinese warplane.
“These developments in China’s military activities, combined with their lack of transparency, have become a matter of serious concern for Japan and for the international community,” he said.
ICBMs typically have a range of more than 3,400 miles and are designed to carry nuclear warheads. Analysts say China usually tests long-range missiles over its own land.
The PLA Rocket Force oversees both conventional and nuclear missiles for China, which the U.S. considers its main threat in the Asia-Pacific region and its greatest security challenge in the long term.
Last year, the Rocket Force’s chief and his deputy were replaced in a major shake-up of the elite force’s leadership, after not being seen in public for months. The two officers who replaced them had not previously served in the force, in a dramatic break with practice that experts said suggested there were concerns in Beijing about how the force was being run.
China’s nuclear forces and its military as a whole have been undergoing rapid modernization in accordance with President Xi Jinping’s goal of having a “world class” military by 2049.
The number of warheads in China’s nuclear arsenal grew from 410 in January 2023 to 500 in January 2024, according to an annual assessment released in June by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
That compares with 3,708 active nuclear warheads in the U.S. and 4,380 in Russia, which has the world’s largest arsenal.
China adheres to a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons, while the U.S. does not. But a Pentagon report last year said China was building up its nuclear arsenal faster than U.S. officials had predicted, and that it was on track to almost quadruple the number of warheads it has to 1,500 by 2035.
China suspended nuclear arms talks with the U.S. in July to protest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.
With its ICBM test, China appears to be signaling to Washington that direct intervention in any potential conflict with Taiwan could leave the U.S. vulnerable to attack by missiles that are capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
At the same time, he said, it demonstrates to U.S. allies in the region that China is capable of fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously. The test could also be an effort to show the Chinese public “that recent corruption scandals have not diminished the military’s readiness or reach.”
“The ICBM test underscores the importance of maintaining U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral security cooperation through upcoming domestic political transitions,” he said in an email, referring to the U.S. presidential election in November as well as a leadership race in Japan on Friday whose winner will become the country’s new prime minister.
China’s test on Wednesday comes amid heightened military activity in the Asia-Pacific region, where nuclear-armed North Korea has accelerated its weapons testing since 2022. Last week, North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea for the second time this month.
North Korea says its weapons tests are in response to intensifying joint military exercises among the U.S., South Korea and others that it sees as a rehearsal for invasion.
Taiwan is under increasing military pressure from China, which sends warships and warplanes toward the island in near-daily sorties, including 23 PLA planes that Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected Wednesday.
In the South China Sea, a strategically important shipping route that Beijing claims virtually in its entirety, there have been a series of confrontations between China and other countries with which it has territorial disputes, particularly U.S. treaty ally the Philippines.
The U.S. also deployed an advanced missile system in the Philippines earlier this year that China sees as a threat.
