China has said it will not participate in nuclear disarmament talks “at this stage,” following the expiry of the New START treaty between the United States and Russia — a development that has reignited fears of a renewed global arms race.
The New START agreement officially expired on Thursday, ending decades of restrictions on the number of nuclear warheads the world’s two largest nuclear powers are allowed to deploy.
Disarmament campaigners have warned that the collapse of the treaty could encourage countries such as China to rapidly expand their nuclear arsenals.
However, Beijing dismissed calls to join fresh negotiations, despite repeated insistence from Washington that any future arms control agreement must include China.
“China has always maintained that the advancement of arms control and disarmament must adhere to the principles of maintaining global strategic stability,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a press conference.
He stressed that China’s nuclear capabilities are not comparable to those of the United States and Russia.
“China’s nuclear arsenal is of a totally different scale from those of the United States and Russia, and China will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage,” Lin said.
The New START treaty lapsed on February 5, after US President Donald Trump declined to follow up on a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin to extend the agreement’s warhead limits by one year.
Russia and the United States together possess more than 80 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads, but existing arms control frameworks have steadily eroded in recent years.
While China’s nuclear arsenal is expanding, analysts estimate it currently has about 550 strategic nuclear launchers — significantly fewer than the 800 launchers each that the United States and Russia were capped at under New START.
First signed in 2010, the treaty limited each side to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, representing a reduction of nearly 30 per cent from limits set in a previous 2002 agreement.
The pact also allowed for on-site inspections of nuclear arsenals, a key confidence-building measure. However, these inspections were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not resumed.
With New START now expired and no replacement in sight, experts warn that the absence of legally binding limits could usher in a new era of nuclear competition with global security implications.
