Under President Xi Jinping, more and more money has been poured into the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military. A larger portion has gone to bolstering the so-called Rocket Force, the branch that handles the country's ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
As Xi has put it, these forces constitute the foundation of China's security and deterrence – and a guarantee of its status as a global great power.
In recent years, the facilities where China develops, tests and manufactures advanced robots have increased in number and grown across the country, reports the American CNN .
Visible from the air
In the past five years, completely new such facilities have appeared, according to CNN's review of primarily satellite images and available data from China's state defense giants and subsidiaries.
In one example, from a valley of terraced fields outside the city of Xian, what was previously just an abandoned industrial facility has been transformed into a complex spanning the equivalent of 18 football fields, above and below ground, for testing various types of rockets.
CNN has identified and tracked 136 facilities in China linked to the country's military robot production. More than 60 percent of them, at least 80, have expanded in recent years.
In the satellite images, they have noted newly built towers, bunkers and other things that are considered to be used for weapons testing. In some cases, they say they have been able to see robot parts.
“Started sprinting”
"We are in the early stages of a new arms race," William Alberque, an arms analyst at the Pacific Forum research institute and former NATO employee, told CNN.
China has already started sprinting and they are preparing for a marathon.
When US President Donald Trump met with Xi Jinping in South Korea in late October, the American also accused both China and Russia of conducting nuclear weapons-related tests that are not in the public eye. He raised this as a reason why the US should also resume its tests.
China has not tested a nuclear warhead since 1996, but it has been developing increasingly advanced missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The Chinese nuclear arsenal is growing rapidly, with several hundred warheads a year, but is still considerably smaller than the arsenals of the United States and Russia.
The People's Liberation Army is China's military power, as the armed branch of the country's authoritarian Communist Party.
Consists of four branches of defense – army, navy, air force and rocket forces – as well as special departments for, among other things, space and cyber defense.
Born from Mao Zedong's Red Army of five million peasant soldiers that brought the communists to power in 1949. Its last war was a brief one against Vietnam in 1979.
In terms of personnel, it can be considered the largest military in the world, with around 2.2 million in active service.
It is governed at the top by the party-controlled Central Military Commission. The chairman of the commission, President Xi Jinping, has been titled Commander-in-Chief since 2016.
Has received much greater funding in recent decades. In 2012, China was estimated to spend about one-sixth of what the United States spends on the military in pure terms. Last year, it was estimated to be just under a third.
