Something like that being performed by China would be unprecedented and considered unnecessarily aggressive and interpreted as some sort of threat for war because it is so unprecedented. Soviets and Russia has had a history of sabre rattling with the US (not pointing fingers at belligerent side which is neither and both) so it is sort of expected and just a cyclical reminder of Russian nuclear strength in case NATO start forming silly ideas.
China firstly has no such nuclear muscle and stupidly (if actually the case) refuses to stockpile and announce it. Maybe the CCP is playing some meta strategy but this sort of act isn't for China for a variety of reasons. Russia and China while sharing adversaries, are both in different positions. A coordination of efforts if there is such cooperation, definitely would mean China is not going to posture in this exact way.
When it comes to message sending, actually China does plenty. They are just much less impressive sounding.
Anyone who complains about China’s ‘small’ nuclear arsenal really need to check the actual science of just how many low yield nuclear detonations the earth can actually handle.
100 Hiroshima yield nuclear detonations over population centres would be enough to trigger a devastating nuclear winter.
The thing to remember is that China never wasted its time with tactical nukes, so almost its entire arsenal is made up of multi-megaton city busters. That might have started to change with modern MIRV technology requiring lower yields to fit in the smaller warheads, but the core of the Chinese arsenal is still mostly heavy hitters.
There are no publicly available comprehensive lists for obvious reasons, but I would say that the nuclear balance wouldn’t look anywhere as skewed as it does from counting warheads if we also factored in total combined yields of warheads between the US and China. Especially when we are talking about operationally deployed warheads rather than also counting strategic reserves.
If Chinese scientists concluded that just its own arsenal of 300 nukes would be enough to bring about a civilisation ending nuclear winter for all of humanity, what is the need for more nukes?
Being able to glass every square inch of an ‘enemy’s’ homeland might sound impressive to chest thumpers, but it is entirely unwarranted.
If you truly want to end nations, a surprising small number of nukes would be more than enough, and you don’t even need to kill all their major cities.
On top of the 100 biggest cities in said country, a few dozen nukes targeting lakes, rivers and other major water sources would see far more die from radiation poisoning and thirst than probably what your 100 city busters can achieve. And that’s less than half of the minimum expected arsenal of China.
Beyond being a massive money drain, what use are another thousand nukes?
