China denies Trump

China’s Foreign Ministry responded to the president on Monday Trump’s statement that Beijing has carried out clandestine nuclear weapons tests with a flat denial.

“China is testing them too,” Trump told News themezone correspondent Norah O’Donnell in a 60 minute interview. “You just don’t know.”

“The evidence from Russia and the evidence from China, but they don’t talk about it. You know, we are an open society. We are different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you are going to report it; you don’t have reporters to write about it. We do.”

Trump made the claim in the interview with O’Donnell that aired just days after the president’s own nominee to lead STRATCOM (the U.S. military command in charge of nuclear weapons) told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that neither China nor Russia were testing nuclear explosives.

North Korea is the only nation known to have conducted a nuclear detonation since the 1990s. China’s last known nuclear explosive test was in 1996.

“They don’t come and tell you,” Trump continued. “You know, as powerful as they are, this is a big world. You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing. They test deep underground, where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the testing.

“There is a little vibration. They test and we don’t test. We have to test. And Russia made a little threat the other day when they said they were going to do certain forms of testing of a different level. But Russia tests, China… and China does test, and we will test too.”

Asked about Trump’s claims on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters during a press briefing that as a “responsible nuclear weapons state, China has always…upheld a nuclear self-defense strategy and fulfilled its commitment to suspend nuclear testing.”

He said China hoped the United States would “take concrete actions to safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime and maintain global strategic balance and stability.”

What does Trump mean by the United States resuming nuclear testing?

President Trump has not been clear about whether his statements plans to have the US military test its nuclear arsenal include conducting actual atomic explosions or simply expanded testing of the weapons systems used to deliver nuclear warheads.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a Trump appointee, on Sunday downplayed the idea that the United States was about to start setting off nuclear explosions.

“I think the tests we’re talking about now are systems tests. They’re not nuclear explosions,” Wright told News. “These are what we call ‘non-critical explosions,’ so all the other parts of a nuclear weapon are tested to make sure they have the proper geometry and set up the nuclear explosion.”

The United States is among nearly 180 countries that have signed the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions.

However, along with China and several other nuclear powers, the United States never ratified the treaty, a situation that President Vladimir Putin highlighted two years ago when he decided revoke Moscow ratification.

While Russia has stepped up its own testing of nuclear-capable weapons and even nuclear powered weapons systemshas not said it will resume nuclear detonations.