China Urges US & Russia To Reduce Their Nuclear Arsenals

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday called on the US and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals during the UN-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

While Washington is constantly hyping up China’s nuclear arsenal, it is only a fraction of what the US and Russia possess. Estimates on the higher-end put China’s nuclear stockpile at 350 warheads. Russia has about 6,350 warheads, while the US has 5,800.

Despite the numbers, the US complains that Beijing does not want to enter arms control talks. But China has no motivation to do so unless the US and Russia make an effort to reduce their arsenals. Regardless, the US continues to blame the issue on China.

“To date, China has rebuffed US efforts to initiate bilateral talks on risk reduction and strategic stability,” Robert Wood, the US ambassador for disarmament, said at the conference.

Besides having way more nuclear weapons than Beijing, the US is also encircling China with military hardware. The US has plans to deploy medium-range missiles near China that were previously banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019.

Wang took a shot at the US for its plans to further militarize Asia which he characterized as undermining regional stability.

“China opposes the development and deployment of regional and global missile defense systems by a certain country that undermine strategic stability, and China opposes the deployment of land-based intermediate-range ballistic missiles by the same country in the neighborhood of other countries,” he said.