China rules out participating in denuclearization conversations with the United States and Russia, as Trump suggested

Beijing – China said Wednesday that it would not participate in denuclearization conversations with the United States and Russia, after President Trump said he hoped to include Beijing in the negotiations.

Trump said Monday that the United States was trying to pursue denuclearization with both countries.

“I think denuclearization is a great goal. But Russia is willing to do so and I think China will also be willing to do so,” Trump told White House journalists.

“We cannot let nuclear weapons proliferate. We have to stop nuclear weapons,” he added.

Russia and the United States, former rivals of the Cold War, have almost 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons among them, but Moscow withdrew from the last remaining arms control agreement With Washington in 2023.

When asked about Mr. Trump’s comments, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Beijing, Guo Jiakun, said Wednesday that he was not “reasonable or realistic” to expect China to participate in trilateral negotiations of nuclear disarmament with the United States and Russia.

“China and the United States are not at the same level in terms of nuclear capacities,” Guo told reporters.

“Countries with the largest nuclear arsenal should fervently fulfill their special and main responsibility for nuclear disarmament,” he said.

Beijing says it favors disarmament in principle, but has regularly rejected Washington’s invitations to join the conversations between the United States and Russia to reduce its nuclear arsenals.

According to 2024 estimates by the International Peace Research Institute of Stockholm, the United States has 3,708 nuclear and Russia 4.380, excluding withdrawal eyes. China had 500, 90 more than in 2023. Behind them were France, with 290, and Great Britain with 225.

Beijing said Wednesday that he maintains his nuclear forces “at the minimum level required for national security and does not participate in an arms race with any country.”

Russia in progress War in Ukraine He has eclipsed most of the other problems in American-Russian bilateral relations for several years, and there has been no significant public conversation of ongoing negotiations about the respective nuclear weapons reserves of the countries.

When Putin formally rescinded Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Test, or CTBT, in 2023, he said that the action “would reflect” the position taken by the United States, which he signed but never ratified the treaty.

The CTBT, adopted in 1996, prohibits all nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, but was never completely implemented. In addition to the United States, it has never been formally ratified by China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, Iran or Egypt.

• Xi Jinping
• Nuclear weapons
• Donald Trump
• Russia
• Porcelain
• Vladimir Putin