US Accuses China of Secret Nuclear Tests

The accusation came one day after the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the US and Russia expired. The Trump administration wants to include China in a new agreement.

On Friday, the United States leveled accusations against China for having carried out several secret nuclear tests.

– Today I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear test explosions, including preparations for tests with specified explosive force levels of several hundred tons, said Thomas DiNanno according to a statement.

He is Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security in the United States, and spoke on Friday at a global disarmament conference in Vienna. Diplomats at the conference called the US accusations “new and disturbing”, according to the Reuters news agency.

The accusation came one day after the last remaining bilateral nuclear weapons agreement between the US and Russia, New START, expired.

Claims the tests are hidden

DiNanno said the Chinese military has “tried to hide the tests.”

They are said to have done so by using methods that reduce the “effectiveness of seismic monitoring”, the US claims. DiNanno claims they used “decoupling”, which is done by digging large cavities to dampen the effects of an explosion.

One of these test explosions must have occurred on June 22, 2020, DiNanno claims, without giving further details.

He also does not state how many such test explosions there will be.

No corresponding activity registered

The organization for the trial suspension agreementthe trial suspension agreementAn international treaty from 1963 banning “tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater”. In 1996, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) came into effect, which also prohibits underground test explosions. Source: SNL. (CTBTO) works, among other things, to monitor such activity.

One of the CTBTO’s leaders, Robert Floyd, tells CNN that their monitoring system did not register any event “matching the hallmarks” of such an explosion at the time of the alleged Chinese test. Further investigations have not changed this assessment either, according to Floyd.

– If this was a test explosion with very, very low explosive power, it is possible that it could have been hidden from CTBTO’s monitoring stations, Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association explained to CNN.

China’s ambassador for disarmament, Shen Jian, said the following about the accusation:

– China notes that the US in its statement continues to inflate the so-called Chinese nuclear threat. China strongly rejects such false narratives, Jian said, according to Reuters.

Trump wants to include China in a new agreement

On Thursday, the New START disarmament agreement expired. Currently, no new agreement is in place.

New START was the last arms control agreement between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, Russia and the United States.

The nuclear weapons agreements have ensured that the arms race is controlled and the number of strategic nuclear weapons in the world is reduced.

the president of the USA Donald Trump has spoken to get a “new, better and modernized” agreement in place, and calls New START “badly negotiated”.

The Trump administration wants to include China in a new agreement. In recent years, China has carried out a major expansion of its nuclear arsenal, increasing production faster than any of the other nuclear powers.

It is believed that China has at least 600 nuclear weapons. According to the US Department of Defense, it is likely that China could have 1,000 by 2030.

– The president has previously been clear that in order to achieve real arms control in the 21st century, it is impossible to do anything that does not include China, said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the press in Washington on Wednesday.

A bilateral agreement with just one of the nuclear powers is “simply not appropriate in 2026 and beyond,” State Secretary DiNanno said at the conference.