The U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Thomas DiNanno, accused China of conducting secret nuclear tests in violation of international agreements.
Speaking at a conference in Geneva, as reported by Reuters, DiNanno said, “I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons.” He explained that the Chinese military “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments. China has used ‘decoupling’, a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, to hide their activities from the world.”
In a statement on X, DiNanno explained that the development, coupled with Russian violations, gives the United States a “clear imperative to call for a new architecture that addresses the threats of today, not those of a bygone era.”
“As throughout our history, the United States has maintained a willingness to seek strategic stability and arms control arrangements that are verifiable, enforceable, and contribute to the security of the United States and her allies,” he continued. “What we are proposing is not talks for the sake of talks—with this effort, the United States is looking for meaningful progress based in concrete actions.”
The comments follow the expiration of the New START treaty, which served as a guardrail for U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons.
China’s Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs, Shen Jian, criticized DiNanno’s statement and declared that China “notes that the U.S. continues in its statement to hype up the so-called China nuclear threat. China firmly opposes such false narratives. [The U.S.] is the culprit for the aggravation of the arms race.”
The nuclear discussion comes as the Pentagon recently released its National Defense Strategy, which warned that “direct military threats” to the nation have “grown in recent years.”
“It is only prudent for the United States and its allies to be prepared for the possibility that one or more potential opponents might act together in a coordinated or opportunistic fashion across multiple theaters,” the report notes. “Such a scenario would be less of a concern if our allies and partners had spent recent decades investing adequately in their defenses. But they did not.”
