US accuses China of secret nuclear testing

The United States accused Beijing on Friday of conducting a secret nuclear test in 2020 ‌as it called for a new, broader arms control treaty that would bring in China as well as Russia.

The accusations at a global disarmament conference highlighted serious tension between Washington and Beijing at a pivotal moment in nuclear ‍arms control, a day after the treaty limiting US and Russian missile and warhead deployments expired.

“I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tonnes,” US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNanno told a Disarmament Conference in Geneva.

The Chinese military “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognised these tests violate test ban commitments. China has used ‘decoupling’, a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, to hide their activities from the world,” he said.

DiNanno said China had conducted ⁠one such “yield-producing test” on June 22, 2020.

US President Donald Trump in October ordered the US military to immediately resume its process for testing nuclear weapons, saying other countries were doing so but without offering any details or identifying them.