China may be secretly carrying out nuclear tests with low explosive power despite Beijing’s claims that it is adhering to an international accord banning all nuclear tests.
The accusation was made in a new arms-control report to be made public by the State Department, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The report does not contain proof that China is in violation of the agreement, but it says China’s activities have raised “concerns” that the country might not be adhering to the “zero-yield” nuclear weapons testing ban.
The concerns have been fueled by activity at China’s Lop Nur test site, including excavations and the apparent use of special chambers to contain explosives. There’s also been an interruption in data transmissions from monitoring stations that are supposed to detect radioactive emissions and seismic tremors.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty allows some activity to assure the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons so long as the experiments don’t produce a nuclear-explosive yield. The United States and China have both said they are abiding by the treaty’s terms, even though it isn’t legally enforced because not enough nations have ratified it, including the U.S. and China.
A spokeswoman for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which oversees the agreement, denied there has been any interruption in China’s data transmissions since September 2019.
The spokeswoman said there were interruptions when the monitoring stations in China were being put into operation.
“Data transmission from all certified stations was interrupted in 2018 after the testing and evaluation and certification process was completed,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “In August 2019, ongoing negotiations on post-certification activity contracts with Chinese station operators were concluded and data transmission resumed for all five certified stations.”
However, the Trump administration’s report claims China has been “blocking the flow of data from the monitoring stations.”
China is estimated to have about 300 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Last year, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr., the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he expects China will double the size of its nuclear stockpile in the next decade.
The Trump administration said late last year it formally invited China to open a “strategic security dialogue” on arms control.
