Jin Canrong became the second one after Hu Xijin calling for "four digit" nuclear size for China. The assumption being that since China's nuclear arsenal size is much smaller compared to those of US and Russia, Washington has an inherent "psychological" bias to not treat China as an equal, unlike dealing with the Russians. Also, Jin argues that as the Russian economy continue to shrink, the Russian arsenal will shrink in the future due to Moscow's inability to afford rising maintenance costs, so China is/will inevitably become Washington's main target for nuclear coercion. However, if China were to vastly expand its nuclear arsenal using its "superior" manufacturing sector, Washington would at least give the same respect to Beijing as it has always given to Moscow.
In China, famous scholars usually cannot voice such explicit opinions on sensitive topics without approval from their universities/research institutes' party secretaries. Since Jin has come out with such honest (if not outright hawkish) statement, maybe folks from high-up the Party nomenklatura have already given a green light not just for Jin, but also the gradual abandonment of the minimum deterrence policy (with the four-digit arsenal size being a possibility should US-China Relations continue to deteriorate).
