The United States accused China of secretly carrying out at least one nuclear explosive test, escalating tensions as Washington presses for a new arms control framework that would bring Beijing into negotiations alongside the United States and Russia.

Speaking Friday at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Thomas DiNanno, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said Washington believes Beijing has conducted prohibited nuclear activity.

“I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” DiNanno told delegates at the conference.

DiNanno later elaborated on social media, alleging that Beijing had deliberately masked its actions. “China has used decoupling — a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring — to hide its activities from the world,” he wrote on X, adding that one such test took place on June 22, 2020, during the height of global COVID-19 lockdowns.

China rejected the accusations. Shen Jian, Beijing’s ambassador on disarmament, did not directly respond to the specific claim but criticized Washington’s broader narrative, saying “the US continues in its statement to hype up the so-called China nuclear threat. China firmly opposes such false narratives … [The US] is the culprit for the aggravation of the arms race.”

The allegations surfaced just one day after the expiration of the 2010 New START treaty between the United States and Russia, ending the last remaining agreement that limited the two countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals and leaving them without binding constraints for the first time since the SALT agreements of the early 1970s.

DiNanno argued that the changing global landscape requires a new approach to arms control. “Today, the United States faces threats from multiple nuclear powers. In short, a bilateral treaty with only one nuclear power is simply inappropriate in 2026 and going forward,” he said, warning that China is expected to possess more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

Beijing, however, ruled out joining trilateral talks for now. Shen said China would not participate in such negotiations at this stage, adding: “In this new era we hope the US will abandon Cold War thinking … and embrace common and cooperative security.”

At the same time, Russian and American officials discussed the issue on the sidelines of broader diplomatic talks in the United Arab Emirates, where Russian, Ukrainian, and U.S. delegations held two days of meetings focused on a potential peace settlement in Ukraine.

“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday. “and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible.”

{Matzav.com}