The Untold Story of China's Nuclear Weapon Development and Testing

by Hui Zhang, Stephen Herzog (Editor), Ariel F. W. Petrovi (Editor)

352 pages, Paperback

Published November 25, 2025

Reviews

[Marko Beljac · Rating 5 out of 5]

An especially insightful, carefully crafted, scholarly work by somebody who knows his shit - as it were. It will surely become the authoritative English language text. At the centre is the yield-to-weight ratio and the argument that China has achieved comparable ratios to the United States and Russia for its own nuclear weapons and that with far fewer nuclear weapons tests. No mean feat. Zhang argues China’s nuclear weapons development has been driven by external threat perception, not a technological imperative nor a politically and economically outsized military-industrial complex. An important argument given current debates about China’s nuclear programme. China developed a gas boosted aspherical primary on the back of its own efforts, not espionage per the infamous Congressional Cox (R) Report, Zhang strongly argues. An interesting question. The United States has conducted by far the most nuclear weapons tests. Why? One reason - I suspect - is because the scientists of the US nuclear weapons complex have wanted to turn nuclear weaponerring into a theoretical science - a branch of theoretical physics. This was one of the subtexts behind the Reliable Replacement Warhead. All those nuclear weapons tests makes the US better placed than any other nuclear power to do this. Imagine they succeed. Does that mean continued Chinese adherence to the CTBT leaves Chinese nuclear weapons scientists behind? That very question is interesting because Zhang shows that this was one concern prompting development of the gas boosted aspherical primary, and so China’s last nuclear test series in the 1990s.