Washington accused Beijing of accelerating the construction of its nuclear arsenal and conducting secret experiments, amid American efforts to impose an alternative treaty to the "New START" treaty.

Published on: 02/24/2026 - 00:52

The United States on Monday accused China of increasing its arsenal of nuclear weapons and conducting secret tests, while affirming its commitment to having Beijing be a party to any future treaty to limit the spread of these weapons. Washington believes that the expiration of the New START treaty with Moscow opens the door to a “better agreement” that includes China, despite China’s repeated rejection of this.

In his speech at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Christopher Yao, US Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, explained that the previous treaty “did not take into account China’s unprecedented, deliberate, rapid and mysterious nuclear arsenal build-up.” He added that Beijing, "contrary to what it claims, has deliberately and unrestrainedly expanded its nuclear arsenal massively, in the absence of any transparency or any indication of its intentions or the ultimate goal it seeks."

On the Chinese side, Ambassador Chen Jian responded by affirming that his country "strongly opposes the continued distortion and abuse of its nuclear policy by some countries," reiterating that Beijing will not "engage in any nuclear arms race with any country." He pointed out that China's nuclear arsenal does not live up to the level of the countries that possess the largest stockpiles, considering that "it is not fair, reasonable, or realistic to expect China to participate in the so-called tripartite talks."

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According to Yao's estimates, China is likely to be able to "possess the fissile material needed for more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030." The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reports that the United States and Russia possess more than five thousand nuclear warheads each, while the New START Treaty restricted their arsenals to 1,550 deployed warheads, before its effects ended and this raised fears about a new arms race.

Regarding nuclear tests, Yao repeated Beijing's accusation of conducting a low-power test on June 22, 2020, based on seismic data recorded in Kazakhstan that indicated an explosion with a magnitude of 2.75, which he considered "indicative of a single explosion that does not agree with the typical patterns of mining explosions." On the other hand, China describes these allegations as “lies” and an American excuse to resume experiments after decades of cessation.

In an independent assessment, a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies stated that it did not find conclusive evidence of a nuclear explosion on that date, explaining that satellite images did not show unusual activity at the Lop Nor site in the Xinjiang region, where China had previously conducted nuclear tests in the past.

France 24/AFP

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