Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Friday that asking China to join trilateral US-China-Russia disarmament talks at this stage is unfair, unreasonable and unfeasible, and criticized Japanese debate over its non-nuclear principles.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was asked at her regular briefing on October 16 about US President Donald Trump’s remark that Washington is consulting Russia and China on denuclearization. According to China News Service and RTHK, she said China has stated its position many times and that the United States, which holds a huge nuclear arsenal, should earnestly fulfill its special and priority responsibility for nuclear disarmament. This newspaper has not independently verified what Trump said.
광고 문의 · 300×250Mao said China’s nuclear forces are not in the same order of magnitude as those of the US and Russia, and that asking China to join so-called trilateral disarmament talks at this stage is unfair, unreasonable and unfeasible. Beijing has long pointed to the size of the US and Russian arsenals. Some voices in the United States, by contrast, argue that China’s fast-growing nuclear force should be brought into arms control frameworks. The gap between the two sides remains wide.
On Japan, a reporter cited remarks by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at a Diet budget committee on October 14, in which she reportedly said a former foreign minister Katsuya Okada’s idea of allowing US nuclear weapons into Japan in exceptional cases had room for discussion and that nuclear-powered submarines would be examined realistically. Mao said this exposed Japan’s ever-expanding nuclear ambitions, and accused Tokyo of aiming to drop its three non-nuclear principles and obtain nuclear submarines. This newspaper could not verify the exact wording; the Japanese government has generally said it upholds the three principles.
Asked about Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi’s comment that Japan has no nuclear weapons or strategic bombers while China has both, Mao replied that Japan, as a defeated World War II power and a non-nuclear state under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, cannot break its exclusively defense-oriented policy or possess nuclear weapons, calling this an obligation under international law. She said Japanese politicians need to catch up on history and legal principles. Japan has consistently said its defense build-up is for defensive purposes, and the exchange shows China-Japan tensions extending into the security sphere.
On disarmament, China has long stressed a no-first-use policy and called on the US and Russia to cut deeper first, while the gap in arms control left after the US-Russia New START treaty is part of the backdrop. Views differ internationally on whether a trilateral framework is needed and when China should join. What further positions governments voice in coming briefings and bilateral contacts is the thing to watch.
