Beijing said the US’s weapons sales to Taiwan has ‘compromised the political atmosphere’ for continued talks on nuclear non-proliferation.
China has suspended negotiations on nuclear non-proliferation and arms control with the United States in protest against Washington’s arms sales to the self-ruled island of Taiwan.
The US called Beijing’s decision on Wednesday “unfortunate”, while analysts said the move deals a potentially serious setback to global arms-control efforts.
China and the US began nuclear weapons discussions in November as part of a bid to ease mistrust ahead of a summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden.
Further dialogue had not been publicly announced since, with a White House official in January urging Beijing to respond “to some of our more substantive ideas on risk reduction”.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday said the US’s arms sales to Taiwan, a territory that it claims, had “seriously compromised the political atmosphere for continuing the arms-control consultations”.
“Consequently, the Chinese side has decided to hold off discussion with the US on a new round of consultations on arms control and non-proliferation,” Lin Jian, the spokesperson, told a regular news briefing in Beijing.
“The responsibility fully lies with the US,” he said.
Lin added that China was willing to maintain communication on international arms control, but said the US “must respect China’s core interests and create necessary conditions for dialogue and exchange”.
The US switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but has remained Taiwan’s most important partner and biggest arms supplier, sparking repeated condemnations from China.
Taiwan has protested for the past four years about stepped-up Chinese military activity near the island, including almost daily missions by Chinese warplanes and warships.
Washington in June approved two military sales to Taiwan worth approximately $300m in total, mostly of spare and repair parts for the island’s F-16 fighter jets.
Arms-race risks
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller slammed China’s move, saying Beijing has chosen to follow Russia’s lead by asserting that arms-control engagement cannot proceed while there are other challenges in the bilateral relationship.
“We think this approach undermines strategic stability. It increases the risk of arms-race dynamics,” Miller told reporters.
“Unfortunately, by suspending these consultations, China has chosen not to pursue efforts that would manage strategic risks and prevent costly arms races, but we, the United States, will remain open to developing and implementing concrete risk-reduction measures with China,” he said.
The Biden administration advocates a policy of “compartmentalization”, in which nuclear arms control talks are segregated from other contentious Sino-US issues.
The Chinese decision comes just over a month after the Biden administration said the US may have to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons to deter growing threats from Chinese and Russian arsenals.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association advocacy group, told the Reuters news agency that the US, Russia and China are legally bound as signatories of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty – the cornerstone of global arms control – to “engage in talks to prevent the arms race”.
“The only way they can accomplish that is through serious dialogue and Russia’s refusal to do so and China’s decision to do so are very serious setbacks,” he said.
The US has a stockpile of about 3,700 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,419 strategic nuclear warheads were deployed. Russia has about 1,550 nuclear weapons deployed and according to the Federation of American Scientists, a stockpile of 4,489 nuclear warheads.
Washington meanwhile estimates that China has 500 operational nuclear warheads and will probably have more than 1,000 by 2030.
US officials have expressed frustration that Beijing has shown little interest in discussing steps to reduce nuclear weapons risks. But Beijing has long argued that the US already has a much larger arsenal.