The Trump administration has held discussions with Chinese officials on conducting reciprocal visits to nuclear facilities, according to a U.S. official.
The topic of nuclear visit exchanges was among the topics raised by China in a meeting with U.S. officials earlier this year, including possible visits to Department of Energy laboratories and similar Chinese facilities.
The talks were described as very preliminary and held in the context of what the administration has said were Chinese underground nuclear tests in violation of an international moratorium on such testing.
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China conducted a secret underground nuclear blast in 2020 that was detected by a seismic station in Kazakhstan and was aimed at improving Beijing’s nuclear warfighting, according to Christopher Yeaw, assistant secretary of state for arms control and nonproliferation during remarks at the Hudson Institute.
Mr. Yeaw said the test’s time and place were confirmed by a seismic monitoring station in Makanchi, in southern Kazakhstan.
Additional steps toward the reciprocal U.S. and Chinese visits could be reached in the near future.
The discussions were first reported by CNN.
Disclosure of the possible nuclear exchange comes as President Trump has called for conducting U.S.-Russian-Chinese nuclear talks.
It could not be learned if the matter was discussed during the summit between Mr. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month in Washington.
During the first Trump administration, China refused to join three-way arms talks and officially has said that it would not do so until U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals are commensurate with China’s small warhead stockpiles.
The U.S. and Russia have deployed warheads in the range of the 1,550 warhead limit under the now-expired New START arms treaty.
China’s warhead stockpile is estimated by the Pentagon to be around 600 warheads but is rapidly expanding to 1,000 in the coming years, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on the Chinese military.
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