Chinese senior diplomat vows his country not to use nuclear weapons first

China is committed to a self-defence strategy in the nuclear weapons area and will not be the first to use nuclear weapons regardless of the circumstances, says Chinese Foreign Ministry Arms Control Department Director Fu Cong said on August 2.

"China is committed to the path of peaceful development and self-defence strategy and vows to never be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances," he said during the Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference in the UN headquarters in New York, according to TASS. 

Fu Cong pointed out that China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is "at the minimum level necessary to ensure national security."

"We do not compete with any country in power, quantity and scale of our nuclear potential, and we do not engage in the arms race of any kind," he underscored.