Bloomberg – The United States will hold rare talks with China over nuclear arms control as concerns grow over Beijing’s accelerating push to expand its nuclear arsenal, an administration official said.
The aim of the low-level talks starting next week is not to reduce the size of China’s arsenal. Instead, the aim is to give the Biden administration a better understanding of China’s plans, weeks after the Pentagon released a report saying the country was building nuclear weapons faster than expected.
The talks come as President Joe Biden prepares to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco in less than two weeks. The sessions will also highlight how the U.S. and China are gradually resuming a series of talks that have fallen amid tensions over Taiwan, trade and other issues since Biden and Xi met at a Group of Nations summit a year ago had been interrupted in Bali.
The State Department and the National Security Council declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on the talks. The newspaper said the US would be represented by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Mallory Stewart and China would send Sun Xiaobo. who heads the arms control department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news conference in Beijing on Thursday that “the two sides will continue exchanges on a range of issues.”
In October, the Pentagon released a report that said China had about 500 nuclear warheads this year and plans to have 1,000 by 2030. a quicker build than expected. The United States has approximately 3,700 nuclear warheads.
The United States is also eager to avoid a tripartite nuclear arms race with Russia and China, especially as talks on expanding the New Start Treaty, which expires in 2026, have been stalled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said this in June The Biden administration was willing to work with Russia on nuclear weapons control, but the growth of China’s arsenal complicated those efforts. and it had to be taken into account as the US modernized its armed forces.
Sullivan said China’s plan to have up to 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035 is “one of the largest peacetime nuclear buildups in history.”
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