China says it successfully fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, a rare public test that comes amid growing tensions with the United States and its regional allies. <\/p>\n
An ICBM carrying a dummy warhead was launched at 8:44 a.m. Beijing time and fell into a designated area in the high seas of the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement. It did not specify the missile\u2019s flight path or landing location. <\/p>\n
The ministry said the launch, by the People\u2019s Liberation Army Rocket Force, was part of its routine annual training and was not directed at any country or target. It comes as China and Russia conduct joint naval exercises in nearby seas close to Japan. <\/p>\n
China \u201cnotified relevant countries in advance,\u201d state news agency Xinhua said in a separate report, without specifying who it notified. <\/p>\n
The launch \u201ceffectively tested the performance of weapons and equipment as well as the training level of the troops, and achieved the expected objectives,\u201d Xinhua reported. <\/p>\n
This is the first time China has publicly announced a successful ICBM test in the Pacific Ocean in more than four decades. <\/p>\n
In 1980, China celebrated the successful test of its first ICBM, fired into the South Pacific from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country\u2019s northwestern desert. <\/p>\n
Under leader Xi Jinping, China has bolstered its nuclear capabilities and revamped the PLA\u2019s Rocket Force, an elite branch overseeing the country\u2019s fast-expanding arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles. <\/p>\n
In the past few years, satellite photos have shown the construction of what appears to be hundreds of silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in China\u2019s deserts, and the US Defense Department is predicting exponential growth in the number of nuclear warheads in Beijing\u2019s arsenal in the next decade. <\/p>\n
China held more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of 2023 and will probably have over 1,000 warheads by 2030, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Beijing\u2019s military last year. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China says it successfully fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, a rare public test that comes amid growing tensions with the United States and its regional allies. An ICBM carrying a dummy warhead was launched at 8:44 a.m. Beijing time and fell into a designated area in the high seas of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}