China said Friday that the United States should take the lead in the reduction of nuclear weapons and military spending, after President Trump proposed working with China and Russia on these issues.
Mr. Trump had told reporters on Thursday in the Oval Office that he would like to hold talks with both China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about “slowing down, stopping and reducing nuclear weapons.”
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons,” he said. “We already have so many you can destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.” He also said he would urge the countries to commit to slashing their respective military budgets by half.
In response, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, depicted China as a much smaller player among nuclear powers, compared to the United States.
“As countries with the largest nuclear arsenals, the United States and Russia should earnestly fulfill their special priority responsibilities for nuclear disarmament,” Mr. Guo said at a regular news briefing.
Mr. Guo noted that the United States had the largest military budget in the world, and, therefore, “should set an example in reducing military expenditure.”
The U.S. Department of Defense estimates China has more than 600 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and is on pace to have over 1,000 by 2030. By comparison, the United States and Russia each has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads.
Ever since China detonated its first atomic bomb in 1964, Beijing has said that it would never initiate a nuclear strike unless it came under nuclear attack first — what it calls its “no first use” policy for deploying nuclear weapons.
But China’s expanding and increasingly varied nuclear arsenal has fed skepticism among U.S. policymakers about whether Beijing is committed to its stated policy. China’s nuclear buildup also gives its leaders more ways to deter and threaten China’s rivals.
Beijing has resisted nuclear arms talks with Washington because it does not want to agree to any controls before it has expanded and modernized its arsenal to the point where it feels it can confidently deter the United States, according to studies both in China and overseas.
Still, Mr. Guo said Beijing was “willing to work with all parties” to support multilateral arms control through the United Nations.
Mr. Guo did not directly address Mr. Trump’s call to cut military spending by half, saying only that China’s military budget was “relatively low” compared to the United States.
Some Chinese analysts said that instead of focusing on arms control, Mr. Trump should also adopt a “no first use” nuclear policy.
“Given the situation in Ukraine and people’s worry about potential use of nuclear weapons, the priority right now in nuclear disarmament is not to reduce nuclear warheads, but to prevent countries from using nuclear weapons first,” said Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army of China who is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Chris Buckley and Berry Wang contributed reporting.
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