US poses worst nuclear threat to world — China’s MFA

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning
©AP Photo/Liu Zheng

The US is the world's largest source of nuclear threat and it must rethink its security policy, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a news briefing on Friday.

"The United States is the world's largest source of nuclear threat. It should carefully rethink its nuclear policy, diligently fulfill its special and primary duty to disarm, thus reducing the role of nuclear weapons in the national security policy, and take meaningful practical steps to ease nuclear risks," the diplomat said.

Mao also stressed that speculations about the nuclear threat allegedly posed by China were a pretext for the United States to expand its own nuclear arsenal.

As The Wall Street Journal said in early February, citing the US Strategic Command, China had more launchers for land-based ICBMs than the United States. The authors of the publication noted that some US lawmakers were calling for an increase in the country's nuclear potential to confront China and Russia.

A Chinese military spokesperson on Thursday refuted remarks by some U.S. military officials to hype up the so-called Chinese "nuclear threat" and "bullying behaviors," saying the United States is the biggest nuclear threat to the international community and the one that undermines the rules-based international order.

Wu Qian, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, said the U.S. officials ignore the facts and engage in groundless speculation for the purpose of justifying the development of the United States' own nuclear forces, as well as maintaining and strengthening its global hegemony.

"It is known to all that the U.S. has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world," Wu said.

To ensure its absolute security and military superiority, the United States has pulled itself out of several international treaties on arms control and non-proliferation, consistently pushed the deployment of anti-missile systems worldwide, sought to deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and formed the Cold War-like "cliques" through multiple ways, he said.

Such moves have increased the risk of nuclear confrontation or even a nuclear war, posing a serious threat to international security, he said.

It is both unfair and unsustainable to try to build one's security on the insecurity of others, said Wu.

He reiterated China's self-defense nuclear strategy and its commitment to a nuclear policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally.

Wu also said that the words chosen by the United States such as "bullying" or "undermining international rules and order" are just a reflection of itself, and show its strong Cold War mentality, hegemonic mentality and anxieties over China's peaceful rise.

He said the United States is a globally recognized rule-breaker when it comes to the rules-based international order, and it is the least qualified to blame other countries in terms of international law and rules.

The United States should accept China's peaceful development in an objective and rational manner, and stop the wrong practices of packaging its own laws and regulations as international rules to promote the U.S.-style hegemonic order, Wu said.