US President Donald Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka. (Pic credit: AP)
As the US President Donald Trump announced that America will start testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades, China on Thursday urged the United States to “earnestly abide” by a global nuclear testing ban. “China hopes the United States will earnestly abide by the obligations of the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty and its commitment to a ban on nuclear testing, and take concrete actions to safeguard the global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation system and safeguard global strategic balance and stability,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.Minutes before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday in South Korea, he made the announcement on social media, stating that it would be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China.Trump shared no further details, including any indication that the US will start detonating warheads, but he made sure that this is a significant shift in the policy.The US has not detonated weapons since 1992 because of a test ban, but it keeps testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. Trump said that US must make changes as other countries are testing weapons. “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” he said in a post on Truth Social. “That process will begin immediately.” Trump and his administration have not provided any more details on this latest development.Later, after meeting Xi in Busan, Trump told reporters that other countries “seem to all be nuclear testing”, but when it comes to the US, “we have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don’t do testing.””I see them testing and I say, well, if they’re going to test, I guess we have to test,” Trump said. When asked where the tests would be conducted, Trump responded, “It’ll be announced. We have test sites.”
