October 17, 1964

Project 596

China conducts its first nuclear test at Lop Nur

China fired a 3,410-pound device from the top of a 102-metre steel tower — and the same day pledged never to use nuclear weapons first.

3:00 p.m. at Lop Nur

At 3:00 p.m. local time on 16 October 1964 — not 17 October, the date attached to this listing — China detonated its first atomic device from a tower at the Lop Nur test site in Xinjiang.

The uranium-235 implosion device weighed 3,410 pounds, roughly 1,550 kilograms, stood on a 102-metre steel tower, and produced an estimated yield of 22 kilotons. The main control station was 23 kilometres away.

The test made the People's Republic of China the fifth state to test a nuclear weapon, after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France.

Announced while leaders received the cast

That evening Zhou Enlai announced the success in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where China's leaders were receiving the cast of the musical The East Is Red. A public radio announcement followed later that night.

The same day, the Chinese government declared that China would never be the first to use nuclear weapons, and proposed a world conference on prohibiting and destroying them.

Washington was not surprised

President Johnson publicly confirmed that U.S. detection systems had registered a low-yield explosion in western China, and said the test had not surprised his government.

He also drew a distinction the test itself could not settle: one detonation did not give China a stockpile or an effective delivery system. The code "596" referred to June 1959, when Soviet refusal of further bomb-model and design assistance pushed the project toward self-reliance.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes, 1 issue open Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1964-10-16.

What the sources leave uncertain

The listed date, October 17, is wrong. Chinese government records, U.S. records, and scholarly test data independently place the explosion on October 16, 1964.
“Sinkiang” is an older romanization of Xinjiang, not a different location.
“Project 596” is commonly used for the device or test; the Chinese official account says the number referred to June 1959, when Soviet refusal of further bomb-model and design assistance prompted an independent effort.