China expanding its nuclear forces, not keen on talks about risks posed, says US

A senior US official said Tuesday that China is not keen on discussing steps to reduce the risk posed by nuclear weapons. Alexandra Bell, deputy assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance, told an Atlantic Council that even after US's efforts, Washington and Beijing have not begun engagement on the issue.

"As a first step, we'd really like to have a conversation with them about each other's doctrines, about crisis communication, crisis management," Bell said, adding that China had not learnt a lesson from the Cuban missile crisis.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping had signaled last month that Beijing would strengthen its strategic deterrent. The Pentagon also believes that China is expanding its nuclear forces and working to achieve 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

Bell also added that US has had similar talks with Russia for decades. However, Beijing has not shown much interest in arms control talks with Washington, arguing that the United States already has a much larger arsenal.

"We're not in that space with Beijing yet. So, there's work to be done to begin the conversation, we think bilaterally," Bell said.

Citing the Cuban missile crisis as an example when the US and Soviet Union came close to a nuclear war, Bell said, "We're now at the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. We don't need to repeat that to know that we need to be at the table having conversations with each other."

Last year, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had informed that Washington and Beijing "look to begin to carry forward discussion on strategic stability." But at the CCP congress last month, Xi made it clear that the country is looking to strengthen its strategic deterrent, a term often used to describe nuclear weapons.

On Beijing's argument about US having more nuclear warheads, Richard Johnson, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Policy, said that they can at least take up the matter of other basic things.

"If that's the argument that Beijing is giving, we're not asking to have a discussion about numbers. We're saying, let's talk about putting some guardrails into the relationship so that we don't have unnecessary crises," he said.

(With inputs from agencies)