Fu Cong, director of the foreign ministry’s Arms Control Department, speaks during a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affair building in Beijing, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019. AFP PHOTOChina said on Tuesday that it “will not stand idly by” and will take countermeasures if the US deploys intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region, which Washington has said it plans to do within months.
He also advised other nations, particularly South Korea, Japan and Australia, to “exercise prudence” and not allow the US to deploy such weapons on their territory, saying that would “not serve the national security interests of these countries.” China has already shown “maximum restraint” in developing its arsenal and stuck to its policy that it would not be the first to use a nuclear weapon in a conflict, Fu said.
Fu dismissed US arguments for leaving the treaty as “pure pretext,” saying Washington was merely looking for an excuse to develop new weapons. If Washington truly believes Russia is cheating on the treaty, as it says, than the way forward is to negotiate rather than withdraw, Fu said. Beijing may also be saying a US intermediate-range missile attack on mainland China could trigger a Chinese retaliatory strike on the continental US, Roggeveen said.
Such weapons are undercutting regional deterrence at the same time as China is boosting its ability to strike the continental U.S. with intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic glide weapons, said Collin Koh, a regional security expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
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