Question: Recently, some British media reported that China's development of nuclear force has caused concern in the US and the west. The US Defense Department released its latest report on "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China", which claims that China is expanding its nuclear force much faster than expected, and emphasizes that the number of usable Chinese nuclear warheads may top 1,000 by 2030. What’s the Chinese Embassy’s comment?

Embassy spokesperson: China stays firmly committed to a self-defensive nuclear strategy, actively advocates the ultimate complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, and keeps its nuclear force at the minimum level required for national security. China abides by the policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances and undertakes unequivocally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally. No country will be threatened by China's nuclear weapons so long as it does not use nuclear weapons against China.

The recently issued US Defense Department report, just like similar reports in the past, disregards facts and is filled with bias. The US is using this report to hype up the "China nuclear threat" theory. But this trick of manipulating rhetoric to confuse public opinion is seen through by the international community.

As a matter of fact, the top source of nuclear threat in the world is no other but the US itself. According to statistics of relevant international think tanks, by the beginning of 2021, the US actually owned 5,550 nuclear warheads. Despite possessing the world's largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal, the US is still investing trillions of dollars to upgrade its "nuclear triad", developing low-yield nuclear weapons and lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. In addition, the US has withdrawn from legal instruments in arms control such as the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, kept advancing the deployment of anti-missile systems around the world, resumed research and development and tests of intermediate-range land-based missiles and sought to deploy them in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and formed a small clique with strong Cold War undertones through the AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation. These US moves gravely undermine global strategic stability and international peace and security. China urges the US to earnestly assume its special and primary responsibilities toward nuclear disarmament, and drastically and substantively reduce its nuclear stockpile in a verifiable, irreversible and legally-binding manner to uphold global strategic equilibrium and stability.