By Guo Xiaobing

The second meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) recently kicked off in Geneva, Switzerland. At the meeting, China submitted a series of working papers on nuclear arms control, no-first-use of nuclear weapons, non-nuclear security, the nuclear submarine cooperation among the US, the UK and Australia, and other issues. China also held a side event to release a report on NATO' nuclear sharing. By offering a comprehensive solution, China was making itself heard in defending the international arms control mechanism as nuclear arms control is facing mounting challenges.

Two points in China's proposal are worth special attention.

First, China adheres to and has elaborated on its position of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, calling on the nuclear states to conclude a treaty or release a political statement on abiding by this principle. Since China’s successful test-fire of its first atomic bomb on October 16, 1964, the country has always observed the “no-first-use” policy. In 1994, China proposed the Draft Treaty on No-First Use of Nuclear Weapons to the other four nuclear-weapon States.  The latest working paper submitted by China on the no-first-use of nuclear weapons contained the following key messages: "Each State Party undertakes not to be the first to use nuclear weapons against another State Party at any time and under any circumstances. Each State Party undertakes to support the early conclusion of a treaty on not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones". Meanwhile, to protect the core interests of the contracting parties, the working paper also states that "Each State Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country."

Second, China advocates strengthening the security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states and calls for concluding relevant legal papers for that purpose. The five nuclear-weapon states once issued a joint statement committing themselves to not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States, but China is the only one of them to make that commitment unconditionally, whereas the other four have their reservations. China has been urging for turning the political statement on security assurance for non-nuclear-weapon states into an international legal instrument with binding force. In the recent meeting, China pointed out the negative impacts of nuclear sharing and extended deterrence on non-nuclear-weapon States, saying that relevant nuclear-weapon State should abandon the arrangement of nuclear sharing and extended deterrence, and withdraw all nuclear weapons deployed abroad back to its own territories.

Why is China stressing international nuclear arms control now? Because this matter has come to a crucial crossroads, which has never been seen in the 30-plus years after the end of the Cold War.

For one thing, the world is sliding from order to chaos with rising risks of nuclear warfare, nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation. Regarding the risk of nuclear war, the ghost of using or threatening to use nuclear weapons has been hovering over the world ever since the Ukraine crisis broke out; Israel threatened to use nuclear weapons too during its conflict with Palestine – something that hasn't happened after the Cuba missile crisis in 1962.

There is a greater risk of a nuclear arms race with the mounting scale of nuclear weapons. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said the global nuclear arsenal may rebound in the next decade, which will mark a vital turning point in the global nuclear disarmament process by putting an end to the consistent decrease in the number of nuclear warheads since the 1980s.

Meanwhile, nuclear proliferation among Western countries has become more conspicuous. The US and the UK, in the name of helping Australia develop nuclear submarines, are transferring a staggering amount of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium to Canberra; the US and its allies are spreading the geographical coverage of nuclear weapons through the so-called "nuclear sharing"; and Japanese politicians are clamoring for their own "nuclear sharing" in imitation of NATO.

For another, the institutions for nuclear arms control are partly collapsing with the bilateral nuclear disarmament mechanism between Washington and Moscow barely holding on and the multilateral nuclear arms control and international non-proliferation mechanisms severely challenged. American magazine Foreign Policy said international arms control may be walking into a "dark age", as the pillars of the existing arms control framework – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), the Treaty on Open Skies, and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START)– are either abolished or on the way to abolition. New START is the last remaining treaty in the US-Russia bilateral nuclear disarmament framework, but Moscow decided to suspend its performance of the treaty early last year and Washington stopped data exchange immediately afterward. The nuclear disarmament between the two countries has very dim prospects and may very well become non-existent by 2026.

At the same time, the international nuclear non-proliferation mechanism is being eroded constantly. Not only did the US-UK-Australia nuclear submarine deal bring tangible risks of proliferation, this double-standard practice also sabotaged the authority, integrity, and effectiveness of the international non-proliferation mechanism.

Nuclear warfare and nuclear proliferation are abhorred by the whole of humanity. Proposing to prevent a nuclear war, promote non-proliferation, and pursue complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, the nuclear arms control proposal offered by China is a silver lining that the international community should carefully listen to and deeply reflect on as the fundamental way to take the world out of its current dilemma.

(The author is director of the Arms Control Center, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations)

Editor's note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.