Does China have the nuclear capability to destroy the United States?

Yes the Nuclear weapons are only there as a deterrent and will never be used or the user have a death wish. Never know as chances are there that some mad man may come and deployed these weapons and launch them to destroy the world.

Does China have the nuclear capability to destroy the United States?

No. The only countries on this planet who have the absolute capacity to wipe out a whole country, or even the earth itself, are the US and Russia.

There are enough fanatics in both the US and Russia who view each other has the hunter and the big bad wolf, out to destroy each other. All the rest of the nuclear countries are like the little piggie who's building his wooden house. The little piggie just want to build his house and go out foraging. He keeps a cudgel around because he lives in a jungle and he may need to wave it sometimes, in case somebody tries to have him for dinner. Otherwise it's mostly a piece of furniture.

Nuclear forces reduced while modernizations continue, says SIPRI

16 June 2014

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) today launches its annual nuclear forces data, which assesses the current trends and developments in world nuclear arsenals. The data shows that while the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline, none of the nuclear weapon-possessing states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future.

At the start of 2014 nine states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—possessed approximately 4000 operational nuclear weapons. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together possessed a total of approximately 16 300 nuclear weapons (see table 1) compared to 17 270 in early 2013.

Reductions slow and modernizations continue

Over the past five years there has been a steady decline in the overall number of nuclear warheads in the world (see table 2). The decrease is due mainly to Russia and the USA—which together still account for more than 93 per cent of all nuclear weapons—further reducing their inventories of strategic nuclear weapons under the terms of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START).

At the same time, all five legally recognized nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA—are either deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programmes to do so. India and Pakistan continue to develop new systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons and are expanding their capacities to produce fissile material for military purposes.

There is an emerging consensus in the expert community that North Korea has produced a small number of nuclear weapons, as distinct from rudimentary nuclear explosive devices.