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The People's Republic of China has developed and possessed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and nuclear weapons. The first of China's nuclear weapons tests took place in 1964, and its first hydrogen bomb test occurred in 1967. Tests continued until 1996, when China signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). China has acceded to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1984 and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1997. The number of nuclear warheads in China's arsenal is a state secret and is therefore unknown. There are varying estimates of the size of China's arsenal. A 2011 Georgetown University study estimated that China has as many as 3,000 warheads hidden in underground tunnels, whereas China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have an arsenal of about 180 active nuclear weapon warheads and 240 total warheads as of 2009, which would make it the second smallest nuclear arsenal amongst the five nuclear weapon states acknowledged by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; in terms of warheads, they are ranked 3rd in megatonnage. According to some estimates, the country could "more than double" the "number of warheads on missiles that could threaten the United States by the mid-2020s".〔 Early in 2011, China published a defense white paper, which repeated its nuclear policies of maintaining a minimum deterrent with a no-first-use pledge. Yet China has yet to define what it means by a "minimum deterrent posture". This, together with the fact that "it is deploying four new nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, invites concern as to the scale and intention of China’s nuclear upgrade". ==Chemical weapons== China signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) on January 13, 1993. The CWC was ratified on April 25, 1997.〔(States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention )〕 In the official declaration submitted to the OPCW, the Chinese government declared that it had possessed a small arsenal of chemical weapons in the past but that it had destroyed it before ratifying the Convention. It has declared only three former chemical production facilities that may have produced mustard gas, phosgene and Lewisite.〔(NTI Research Library: country profile: China )〕 China was found to have supplied Albania with a small stockpile of chemical weapons in the 1970s during the Cold War.〔("Albania's Chemical Cache Raises Fears About Others" ), ''Washington Post'', 10 January 2005, page A01.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「China and weapons of mass destruction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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