China shuns calls to enter nuclear talks after US-Russia treaty lapses

BEIJING (TIP)- China rejected calls to enter talks on a new nuclear treaty after a United States-Russian agreement expired on Thursday (Feb 5), ending decades of restrictions on how many warheads the two powers can deploy.
Campaigners have warned that the expiry of the New START treaty could trigger a global arms race, urging nuclear powers to enter negotiations.
The US has said any new nuclear agreement would have to include China, whose nuclear arsenal is rapidly expanding, but international efforts to draw Beijing to the negotiating table have so far failed.
China’s foreign ministry joined a growing international chorus expressing regret on Thursday over the expiry of the treaty, saying it was “of utmost importance to safeguard global strategic stability”.
Nevertheless, “China’s nuclear capabilities are of a totally different scale as those of the US and Russia“, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a news conference.
Beijing “will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage”, he said. Russia and the US together control more than 80 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads.
China’s nuclear arsenal, meanwhile, is growing faster than any country’s, by about 100 new warheads a year since 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
China is estimated to have at least 600 nuclear warheads, SIPRI says – well below the 800 each at which Russia and the US were capped under New START.
FEARS OF NUCLEAR WAR
US President Donald Trump did not follow up on Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s proposal to extend New START’s limits for one year.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the expiry a “grave moment”.
“For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals” of Russia and the US, Guterres said in a statement.
“This dissolution of decades of achievement could not come at a worse time – the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is the highest in decades,” he said, after Russian suggestions of using tactical nuclear weapons early in the Ukraine war.
Pope Leo XIV said each side needed to do “everything possible” to avert a new arms race.
A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called for “restraint and responsibility” and said that the US-led military alliance “will continue to take steps necessary” to ensure its defence.
A group of Japanese survivors of US atomic bombs during World War II said they feared the world was marching towards nuclear war.