bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

sponsorType

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Amber Wang

Sylvie Zhuang

US President Donald Trump’s latest call targeting China – this time to cut back on nuclear weapons – may be ignored by Beijing, according to some analysts.
They said this was because China did not view its nuclear arsenal as being on a par with either the United States or Russia.
The call from Trump was part of his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he floated the idea of talks with Russia and China about reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles.
“We want to see if we can denuclearise, and I think that’s very possible,” Trump said via video link on Thursday.
“And I can tell you that [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin wanted to do it, he and I wanted to do it,” Trump said, referring to the time before he lost the 2020 presidential election.
“We had a good conversation with China. They would have been involved, and that would have been an unbelievable thing for the planet.”


However, some observers said China was unlikely to respond positively to his call.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said China’s response to such calls had always been that “it would join after the US and Russia reduced their nuclear warheads to the level of China”.
“This time maybe it would not heed [the call] at all,” he said.
China has far fewer nuclear warheads than the US and Russia, a fact also mentioned by Trump in his speech, though he suggested that China might catch up within years.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest yearbook, China added 90 warheads to its nuclear stockpile for a total of 500 as of last January. In comparison, the US had 5,044 warheads while Russia had 5,580, the report published last June said.
Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, also said China would not engage in nuclear negotiations.
There is a simple logic to how Beijing deals with this issue, according to Zhou. “Since China’s nuclear arsenal is not on the same scale as those of the US and Russia, it’s unrealistic for China to participate in multilateral nuclear arms reduction negotiations,” he said.
“If reductions are to happen, either the larger nuclear powers need to scale down their stockpiles, or China’s arsenal would need to grow to match theirs. Neither of these scenarios is likely.”
The call from Trump came days after he started his second term, a period in which the US-China rivalry is expected to continue across multiple fronts – including technology, trade and the military.


The latest Pentagon report on China’s military power, released last month, cited an expansion in the number of operational nuclear warheads and the improved diversity and sophistication of the Chinese arsenal.
In 2020, President Xi Jinping said China would “establish a strong system of strategic deterrence” – seen as a signal that the country would boost its nuclear arsenal and nuclear deterrence capability.
However, Zhu Feng, executive dean of Nanjing University’s school of international studies, said China might be willing to respond Trump’s proposal for disarmament talks.
Zhu said that if China was unable to “effectively engage in dialogue regarding nuclear principles with other parties, it could increase the risk of nuclear conflict”.
“The fundamental purpose of arms control is to prevent an arms race and to avoid creating a level of nuclear capability that could result in ‘overkill’ and catastrophic nuclear war,” he added.
This is not the first time that Trump has urged China to join such talks with the US and Russia, although the first Trump administration failed to convince Beijing to do so in 2020.
Fu Cong, then head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s arms control department, said in July 2020 that China had no intention of taking part in the talks as its nuclear arsenal was still comparatively small.


Trump officials say they are reviewing China’s compliance with trade deal

China claims Marco Rubio told Wang Yi US does not back Taiwan independence

New pandas from China make their debut at National Zoo in Washington

EU to resume WTO case against China over alleged economic coercion of Lithuania

US-China relations

Trump wants China to join nuclear arms talks with US and Russia. Will Beijing listen?

A strategic nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine belonging to the Chinese military. China’s nuclear arsenal is reportedly a fraction of that of the United States and Russia. Photo: QQ/张斌说

China, Russia’s growing Arctic presence underpins Trump’s Greenland musings

Illustration: La Ka-kuen

Donald Trump Jnr, the US president’s son, made a private visit to Greenland on January 7, ahead of his father’s inauguration. Photo: Reuters

Xi tells Putin he wants to take ties to new heights, soon after Trump’s return to White House

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin held a video call on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

‘We’ll be surprised’ by US-China improvements, Harvard scholar argues in Davos

Graham Allison, a professor with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, expects ties between the US and China to improve this year. Photo: World Economic Forum

Graham Allison (centre), a professor with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, expects ties between the US and China to improve this year. Photo: World Economic Forum

With China in focus, Rubio hosts Quad meetings on first day as US secretary of state

Meeting on Tuesday in Washington are (from left) Takeshi Iwaya, Japan’s foreign minister; Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar; US Secretary of State Marco Rubio; and Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign minister. Photo: US State Department

From left, Takeshi Iwaya, Japan’s foreign minister; US Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign minister; and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Washington on Tuesday. Photo: S Jaishankar via X

News

China

Military

Denuclearisation ‘is very possible’, Donald Trump tells World Economic Forum days after returning as US president


Denuclearisation ‘is very possible’, Donald Trump tells World Economic Forum days after returning as US president.
