Following concerns about a worldwide weapons race sparked by the US-Russian New START treaty’s expiration, China announced on Thursday that it will not participate in nuclear negotiations “at this stage.”
The New START pact, which lifted decades of limitations on the number of warheads the two nations could use, expired on Thursday, and activists have cautioned that this could push China to increase its own arsenal.
Although the United States has stated that China must be included in any future nuclear agreement, international attempts to persuade Beijing to participate in new negotiations have not been successful thus far.
Lin Jian, a spokeswoman for Beijing’s foreign ministry, stated during a press conference that “China has always maintained that the advancement of arms control and disarmament must adhere to the principles of maintaining global strategic stability.”
He declared, “China will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this time because its nuclear capabilities are completely different from those of the United States and Russia.”
Due to US President Donald Trump’s failure to follow up on Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s request to extend the agreement’s warhead limits for an additional year, the New START treaty came to an end on February 5.
Although the United States and Russia together possess over 80% of the world’s nuclear weapons, arms deals have been eroding.
With an estimated 550 strategic nuclear launchers—still much fewer than the 800 each that Russia and the US were limited to under New START—China’s nuclear arsenal is rapidly expanding.
The 2010 signing of New START reduced each side’s nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, an almost 30% decrease from the 2002 limit.
Additionally, it let both parties to perform on-site assessments of the other’s nuclear arsenal, however they have not been carried out since the Covid-19 outbreak.
