Beijing concerned about NATO’s ‘China nuclear threat theory’

China has expressed concern about NATO’s assertions about an alleged nuclear threat from Beijing, stressing that the country is not involved in any arms race and its nuclear activities are for national security purposes.

“China is gravely concerned about and firmly opposes the ‘China nuclear threat theory’ NATO has been hyping up lately. China follows a self-defensive nuclear strategy, with nuclear forces always kept at the minimum level required to safeguard national security,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing in the capital, Beijing, on Tuesday.

“We are committed to no first use of nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances and pledge unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones. China has never taken part in any form of the nuclear arms race, nor has it deployed nuclear weapons overseas,” Wang added.

The remarks came after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged China at a NATO conference a day earlier to join international efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and said Beijing’s nuclear capability allegedly lacked transparency.

Stoltenberg also claimed that China was rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, including through large-scale building of new nuclear missile silos.

Wang said China posed no threat to any country unless it was targeted or threatened, saying, “No country will be threatened or should feel threatened by China’s national defense capability as long as it does not intend to threaten or harm China’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity.”

Wang hit out at NATO for its lack of nuclear transparency, saying the alliance should abandon the policy for the sake of arms control and avoiding nuclear conflicts.

“What the international community should be really concerned about is NATO’s nuclear sharing policy. NATO has the largest nuclear arsenal… and some NATO members are ramping up efforts to modernize nuclear power,” the Chinese spokesman said.

“Many countries share the view that NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements violate the stipulations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT and that its nuclear capability lacks transparency, which exacerbates risks of nuclear proliferation and conflicts,” he added.

Wang said, “It is a typical double standard when NATO chooses to be evasive about its own issue while trying to mislead the public and hyping up the so-called ‘China nuclear threat.’ If NATO truly cares about nuclear arms control, it should abandon the Cold War mentality, abolish nuclear sharing arrangements, and pull out the large number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe.”

The Chinese official also called on NATO to ask the US to earnestly fulfill its responsibilities in nuclear disarmament and substantively reduce its nuclear stockpile so as to create conditions for the realization of comprehensive and complete nuclear disarmament.

China insists that its nuclear arsenal is overshadowed by those of the US and Russia, and says it is prepared for dialog on the issue on the condition that Washington reduces its nuclear weapons stockpile to Beijing’s level.

The US Defense Department estimated in a 2020 report to Congress that China’s operational nuclear warhead stockpile was in “the low 200s.” This is while the United States, as stated in a fact sheet prepared by the State Department, maintained 1,357 deployed nuclear warheads as of March 1 of this year.

The US and Russia remain the world’s largest holders and developers of nuclear weapons, followed by Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the Israeli regime.

US-China relations have grown increasingly tense in recent years, with the world’s two largest economies clashing over everything from trade and human rights to Chinese Taipei and military activities in the South China Sea.