Washington has accused China of significantly increasing its nuclear arsenal and reiterated allegations of clandestine nuclear tests by Beijing. The U.S. emphasized the importance of involving China in any future arms control treaty following the expiration of the New START agreement earlier this month, which was the last treaty between the U.S. and Russia.
China has publicly declined invitations to engage in discussions for a new trilateral treaty. Christopher Yeaw, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control and nonproliferation, asserted at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that the New START treaty was flawed as it failed to address China’s rapid and opaque nuclear weapons expansion.
Yeaw accused China of significantly bolstering its nuclear arsenal without transparency or clarity on its intentions. He suggested that China could potentially achieve nuclear parity with the U.S. in the next four to five years. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), both Russia and the U.S. possess over 5,000 nuclear weapons each.
The New START treaty, which expired on February 5, limited the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads each. The U.S. has raised concerns that China is approaching this number rapidly.
