Chinese Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs Li Song addresses a meeting. Photo: file

The US in its newly released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) made irresponsible comments and groundless speculation on China's normal modernization of nuclear forces, and brazenly "tailored" a nuclear deterrence strategy against China, which China is seriously concerned about and firmly opposes, Chinese Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs Li Song said on Friday.

In his remarks at a plenary meeting of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, Li said China urges the US not to assess China through the prism of its hegemony in which it imagines other countries to be rivals or adversaries.

Li stressed that China is not the US, will not become another US, and will not pursue the nuclear strategy of the US. China has the capability and confidence in safeguarding its national security interests and that China will not be intimidated by nuclear blackmail orchestrated by the US, Li said.

He said China has always maintained its nuclear force at the minimum level required by its national security, and will not engage in a nuclear arms race with any other country.

The NPR released on Thursday hyped up major power competition and bloc confrontation, and was full of Cold War mentality and zero-sum mentality, which reflected the logic of hegemonism seeking absolute military superiority, Li said. This is clearly against the world's desire of preventing nuclear war and avoiding nuclear arms race, he said.

The US has further enhanced the role of nuclear weapons in its national security policy and lowered the threshold for their use, which has increasingly become the source of the risk for a future nuclear conflict, Li said.

The latest US nuclear strategy and related policies will definitely have a complex, far-reaching negative impact on global strategic security and stability, the strategic security relationship among major powers, as well as on the international and multilateral nuclear arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation processes, he warned.

Li urged the US to abandon its Cold War mentality and the logic of hegemonism, pursue a rational and responsible nuclear policy, fulfill its special and primary responsibility in nuclear disarmament, and play its due role in maintaining global strategic stability and world peace and security.

During Friday's routine press conference, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that the US has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and continues to upgrade its "nuclear triad" and selectively advances the international nuclear arms control process only when doing so serves to suppress the countries it sees as rivals. What's behind the US policy is its hegemonic logic of seeking absolute military superiority, which has the potential to stoke a nuclear arms race.

Global Times