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China says it will continue to develop nuclear arsenal and US and Russia must make first cuts

  • Beijing was one of the five major nuclear powers to pledge to only use the weapons in self-defence, but says it still needs to modernise its stockpiles
  • Senior arms control official Fu Cong denies Pentagon claims it is vastly increasing its firepower and says the country still lags behind Washington

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Chinese  intercontinental strategic nuclear missiles on parade in Beijing. Photo: Xinhu
China’s senior arms control official has said the country will continue to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and urged the United States and Russia to take the first steps to reduce their larger stockpiles in the wake of a pledge by five leading nuclear powers to only use the weapons for defensive purposes.
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“China will continue to modernise its nuclear arsenal for reliability and safety issues,” Fu Cong, director general of the department of arms control at the Chinese foreign ministry, said on Tuesday.

He added that the US and Russia had the largest number of warheads and should therefore be the first to make cuts.

On Monday the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France – published a joint statement reaffirming that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”.

The statement also restated the goals of preventing the further spread of such weapons and the ultimate goal of “a world without nuclear weapons”, as stated in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

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China’s nuclear development was highlighted in the Pentagon’s annual report about China’s military in November, which forecast that it would have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027 and at least 1,000 by 2030.
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