China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is reportedly building a new command center in the capital, Beijing, that, upon completion, will be at least 10 times larger than the US Pentagon.
Financial Times said that the construction of the mega-sized facility, which has been widely reported in mainstream media, has raised alarm among Western intelligence agencies, which think Beijing is preparing for a large-scale or even nuclear war.
The FT report said newly-analyzed satellite images showed that the project under construction is on a 1,500-acre site 30 kilometers southwest of Beijing. The images showed at least 100 cranes operating over a five-square-kilometer area.
The report said military experts believe that the facility will include heavily fortified bunkers to protect Chinese Communist Party (CCP) top leaders if a large-scale war breaks out. It said the construction of the facility began in mid-2024.
Intelligence analysts have reportedly nicknamed the project “Beijing Military City” as it will become the world’s largest military command center once completed.
FT said its reporters had tried to get close to the construction site but were blocked by security guards. A local shopkeeper told the outlet that the site is a military area.
The report coincided with US President Donald Trump’s call for building an expansive, next-generation “Iron Dome” missile defense shield for the mainland US. The shield, which will have a much larger coverage than Israel’s, will be designed to shoot down hypersonic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
China’s Foreign Ministry has not yet responded to the FT report and Trump’s Iron Dome program as the country celebrates the Chinese New Year from January 28 to February 4.
It is no secret, however, that China already has nuclear bunkers and underground military command centers. In 2017, China Central TV reported that the PLA’s command headquarters in Xishan in southwest Beijing is 100 meters underground. It said PLA officers have started giving commands for military exercises from there since 2013.
“Our country adopts an active defense strategy,” Qian Qihu, a Chinese military engineer, told CCTV in an interview in August 2022. “As we don’t fire the first shot, we need to protect ourselves from our enemy’s first attack, then we can fight back.”
“Our strategic weapons must be fully protected. We must be able to keep ourselves safe from any of the enemy’s attacks, including nuclear strikes,” Qian said. “As the enemy’s means of attacks continue to evolve, our defense methods also need to evolve. And we should not rely on a single defense method.”
After graduating from Harbin Engineering University in 1961, Qian was sent to the Soviet Union’s Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy, which is now known as the Combined Arms Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, to study military engineering and geology.
In Kuybyshev (known as Samara before 1935 and after 1991), Qian learned how the Soviet Union built a bunker for its supreme leader Joseph Stalin in 1942.
The facility, 37 meters below the ground, was aimed to be Stalin’s alternative military command headquarters. But Stalin never used it and was even a tourist site in the 1990s.
After China successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb in June 1967 with the help of the Soviet Union, Qian led China’s development of nuclear-resistant buildings.
In the 1980s, Qian led a team of researchers to design underground bunkers as the West developed massive ordnance penetrators (MOP) that could destroy targets tens of meters below the ground.
Today, the United States’ GBU-57A/B MOP can penetrate 60-meter-thick cement and as far as 200 meters underground.
Hsu Yen-chi, a researcher of the Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies, a Taipei-based think tank, told the media that the ongoing construction project in Beijing is bigger than a military school and is more like an administrative organization or a large training base than a nuclear bunker.
In fact, the PLA has already identified a nearby site to build its nuclear bunker.
In January 2018, Qin Dajun, a deputy researcher at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the South China Morning Post that Chinese researchers found a solutional cave suitable for building a nuclear-resistant bunker.
He said the spacious limestone cave, located at the Xishan Forest Park, 20 kilometers southwest of Beijing, has a natural water source. He said the cave is 2,000 meters underground, compared with the depth of 2,200 meters of Krubera Cave in Georgia.
Qin’s comments came after North Korea defied Beijing’s warnings to test its nuclear bombs in 2017.
Some commentators said even if the CCP has the capability and a deep cave to build a nuclear bunker, it would not be wise to hide all party leaders in a single place during wartime.
Canada-based Chinese commentator Wen Zhao says on his YouTube channel that when a war breaks out, CCP leaders should hide in different places to maximize their survival chances. He says a mega-military command center will attract more military attacks from the enemy than usual.
In fact, some other observers said it’s likely that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping will move to Xian in Shaanxi during wartime as the city is well protected by high mountains and missile systems.
In 1900, when the troops of the Eight-Nation Alliance, led by the US, France and Germany, marched into Beijing, Qing Empress Cixi fled to Xian, where she claimed to enjoy hunting, and stayed there for a year.
Yong Jian is a contributor to the Asia Times. He is a Chinese journalist who specializes in Chinese technology, economy and politics.
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