China said on Friday that the United States is expected to take the lead in reducing nuclear weapons and military spending after President Trump proposed to work with China and Russia on these issues.
Mr. Trump had told journalists on Thursday in the oval office that he would like to talk to the senior Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about “slowing down, arresting and reducing nuclear weapons” .
“There is no reason for us to build new nuclear weapons,” he said. “We already have so much that you can destroy the world 50 times more, 100 times more.” He also declared that he would urge countries to commit to halving their respective military budgets.
In response, Guo Jiakun, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, described China as a much smaller player among the nuclear powers compared to the United States.
“As a country with the largest nuclear arsenals, the United States and Russia should sincerely fulfill their responsibilities of special priority for nuclear disarmament,” Guo said in a regular press briefing.
Mr. Guo noted that the United States had the largest military budget in the world and, therefore, “should give an example in reducing military spending”.
The American Department of Defense estimates that China has more than 600 nuclear warheads in stock and is able to have more than 1,000 by 2030. In comparison, the United States and Russia each have more than 5,000 nuclear warheads.
Since China exploded its first atomic bomb in 1964, Beijing said that it would never introduce a nuclear strike unless it was first under nuclear attack – what it calls its policy of ” non-use ”to deploy nuclear weapons.
But the expanding and increasingly varied nuclear arsenal of China has fed skepticism among American decision -makers of the question of whether Beijing has embarked on its declared policy. China’s nuclear accumulation also gives its leaders more means to dissuade and threaten the rivals of China.
Beijing has resisted nuclear arms talks with Washington because he does not want to accept controls before having expanded and modernized his arsenal to the point where he estimated that he can dissuade the United States with confidence, according to studies at the times in China And overseas.
However, Mr. Guo said Beijing was “ready to work with all parties” to support the control of multilateral weapons by the United Nations.
Mr. Guo did not directly add up Trump’s appeal to halve military spending, saying that only China’s military budget was “relatively low” compared to the United States.
Some Chinese analysts have said that instead of focusing on arms control, Trump should also adopt a nuclear policy “without first use”.
“Given the situation in Ukraine and the concern of people with regard to the potential use of nuclear weapons, priority at the moment in nuclear disarmament is not to reduce nuclear warheads, but Preventing countries first use nuclear weapons, “said Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel at the China People’s Liberation Army who is now a senior member of the Center for International Security and Strategy at the Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Chris Buckley And Berry Wang Contributed reports.
