China is rising as a nuclear power. Its ambitions warrant global attention.

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The Pentagon’s latest report to Congress on China’s military strength carries a significant and worrisome conclusion. Last year, it estimated China’s nuclear warhead stockpile was in the “low-200s” — where it had been for years — and might double by the end of the decade. The new report asserts China may possess up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027 and “likely intends” to have at least 1,000 by 2030. What is going on?

After many years of relatively modest ambitions, China apparently intends to join the United States and Russia as a strategic nuclear power. It is building new intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields and missiles, has a nascent land-sea-air triad of nuclear forces, is investing in hypersonic glide vehicles and is pushing toward higher alert status. Tangible evidence of the expansion is the three missile silo fields that have come to light in recent months. If China eventually deploys missiles in all 300 new silos, plus a force of 100 road-mobile missiles, it would potentially be in the same ballpark as the United States (400 land-based missiles) and Russia (about 320), although the U.S. and Russian warhead stockpiles are larger. As in the past, it is important to watch closely China’s actual performance in strategic weapons; estimates can be wrong, and plans change.

For years, China hewed to a “minimum deterrent,” eschewing the launch-ready alert posture of Russia and the United States. But the Pentagon report says China is moving toward launch on warning — China calls it “early warning counterstrike” — during which the early warning of an incoming missile strike could trigger a retaliatory strike even before the incoming missile has detonated. Such a hair-trigger posture, broadly similar to Cold War practices of the United States and Russia, could multiply the risks of miscalculation. The Pentagon report confirms that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley and others reached out to China late last year to dispel a possible war scare in Beijing — highlighting the legitimate concern about the potential for “misunderstanding and miscalculation” that will only grow as China puts more forces on day-to-day alert. China’s 250 ballistic missile test launches in 2020 exceeded its launches in 2018 and 2019.

China’s quest for a stronger nuclear force could be intended to deter the United States from coercion if a conventional or nonnuclear conflict breaks out in the South China Sea — say, over Taiwan. China’s leaders also no doubt are taking note of the intensifying cooperation among the United States, Japan, Australia and India. President Xi Jinping seems determined to demonstrate China’s great power status, and that includes a great-power-sized nuclear arsenal.

During their antagonism during the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union managed to negotiate limits and even elimination of fast-flying missiles and the nuclear warheads they carried. As China scales up its ambitions, it should be willing to join a renewed arms control process, with Russia also re-engaged. Great powers also have great responsibilities — first and foremost to avert the catastrophe of nuclear war.