Chinese Communist officials claimed credit for a new multinational statement on the “avoidance of war between nuclear-weapon states,” even as they pledged to continue building their nuclear weapons arsenal.
“China has been advocating the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Tuesday. “It effectively steered the five states toward joint actions.”
Those comments appropriated the maxim adopted by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev during the Cold War, which the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council proclaimed again on Monday. President Joe Biden and Russian Vladimir Putin reiterated that statement at their Geneva summit earlier this year, meaning that the new statement added China, the United Kingdom, and France’s endorsement of the principle.
“We underline our desire to work with all states to create a security environment more conducive to progress on disarmament with the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons with undiminished security for all,” the five governments said Monday. “We intend to continue seeking bilateral and multilateral diplomatic approaches to avoid military confrontations, strengthen stability and predictability, increase mutual understanding and confidence, and prevent an arms race that would benefit none and endanger all.”
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Chinese officials underscored their position that this ambition is a burden for officials in Washington and Moscow, not Beijing.
“The U.S. and Russia still possess 90% of the nuclear warheads on Earth,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s director-general for arms control, Fu Cong, told reporters Tuesday. “They must reduce their nuclear arsenal in an irreversible and legally binding manner.”
Chinese officials refused last year to join arms control negotiations with the United States and Russia, despite pressure from U.S. officials, and their celebration of the latest statement puzzled some observers.
“From China’s perspective, they would say that they do have a ‘no first use’ approach, and they would certainly want the U.S. to adopt something similar,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Zack Cooper said, using the shorthand phrase for the pledge not to instigate a nuclear war by being the first military to use the weapons in a prospective conflict. “But the language [of the new joint statement] was not ‘no first use’ language.”
An array of emerging technologies and tensions between Washington and the other two powers have fueled international anxiety around nuclear arsenals. Some NATO members suspect that Russia has developed plans for Nazi-style “blitzkrieg” intensified by so-called “low-yield” nuclear bombs designed to damage an eastern European target without sparking a full-scale nuclear exchange with the U.S. That dynamic has complicated U.S.-Russia arms control talks, while China’s growing nuclear arsenal has prompted public statements of alarm from the Pentagon.
“China will continue to modernize its nuclear arsenal for reliability and safety issues,” the foreign ministry’s arms control czar said.
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Yet in the meantime, the foreign ministry spokesman said, “China will continue to provide our wisdom and solution to promote global nuclear governance and stands ready to cooperate with all peace-loving countries.”
