China says call to join nuclear disarmament talks is unfair

China said on Friday that asking it to take part in nuclear disarmament negotiations was “neither fair nor reasonable”, after US President Donald Trump said Washington was holding consultations with China and Russia on denuclearization, according to the state-run “Global Times”.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China’s nuclear forces were on a “completely different scale” from those of the United States and Russia.

China had stated its position on the issue “many times”, Mao said.

She said the United States, as the country with the largest nuclear arsenal, should “earnestly fulfill its special and primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament”, describing this as “the broad consensus of the international community”.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimated that China had 620 nuclear warheads as of January 2026, compared with 5,042 held by the United States and 5,420 by Russia.