USA accused China this Friday of carrying out “a massive and deliberate accumulation” of nuclear weapons, with the aim of achieving a capacity comparable to that of Washington or Moscow.
“This increase is opaque and is not subject to any arms control limitations, reflecting the radical change in the global nuclear strategic environment over the past 15 years,” said Thomas DiNanno, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, during the reopening of the UN Disarmament Conference in Geneva.
The session coincides with a scenario unprecedented since the early 1990s: the world now lacks a treaty in force between the two main nuclear powers, after the expiration of the START III agreement.
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DiNanno noted that, after signing the treaty in 2010, the US and Russia reduced their strategic arsenals to historically low levels, while China, then with a limited arsenal, took advantage of the absence of legal restrictions to begin a progressive expansion of its nuclear capacity. Already in Donald Trump’s first term, Washington expressed concern about this.
“China continues to move toward possessing more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030,” DiNanno warned, also accusing Beijing of hiding evidence and building weapons with Russian backing, while demanding transparency from other countries.
In response, China’s deputy ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Jian Shen, called the statements a “false narrative” and blamed the US for intensifying the global arms race by investing billions in new nuclear systems.
Shen stressed that China does not compete with other nations in terms of investment or the number of nuclear weapons, and that it has no intention of starting an arms race.
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