Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to the US Department of Defense report entitled, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, published 1 September 2020, what steps the UK is taking to support nuclear arms controls on China.

While US and Russian strategic arms are limited by the New START Treaty, China's growing nuclear arsenal is not. We recognise the contribution New START has made to international security by increasing transparency and mutual confidence among the two largest Nuclear Weapons States. We support its continued implementation and have encouraged the US to extend New START while negotiating a successor agreement. However, New START does not place any limits on China's growing nuclear arsenal. We therefore urge China to engage seriously with the US calls for a new trilateral arms control agreement.