PERSPECTIVES | The PRC, arms control, non-proliferation and nuclear order

This article appeared in UTS:ACRI's Perspectives on December 9 2025. Perspectives is the commentary series of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:ACRI), offering research-informed viewpoints on developments and debates in the Australia-China relationship.

On November 27 2025, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) State Council Information Office released a new white paper, ‘China's Arms Control, Disarmament, and Non-Proliferation in the New Era’. The purpose of the paper is to ‘comprehensively’ present Beijing’s ‘policies and practices on arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation’ and to ‘restate’ its ‘commitment to safeguarding world peace and security’.

Many of the positions on arms control and non-proliferation detailed in the paper are unsurprising and hew closely to well-established policy positions. 

What is more notable however is what the tenor of the document suggests about the trajectory of Beijing’s approach to the question of nuclear order. This is an especially important question for the rest of the world to contemplate as the PRC continues to modernise and expand its nuclear arsenal. 

Nuclear order, as University of St Andrews Emeritus Professor William Walker defined it, ‘entails evolving patterns of thought and activity that serve primary goals of world survival, war avoidance and economic development and the quest for a tolerable accommodation of pronounced differences in the capabilities, practices rights and obligations of states’. The twin pillars of nuclear order that emerged during the Cold War were the establishment of a ‘managed system of military engagement’ with nuclear technology defined by deterrence relationships and arms control that curbed ‘enmities’ and fostered stability, and a ‘managed system of abstinence and civil engagement’ defined by development of civilian applications of nuclear technology regulated by the NPT and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 

The white paper’s statements on elements of each pillar of nuclear order suggests Beijing is primarily focused on equalising the deterrence relationship between itself and the US rather than on arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament. 

At the root of this, as Chinese scholar Wu Riqiang has detailed, is a tradition of arms control and non-proliferation diplomacy defined by the PRC’s position as the weaker party in ‘asymmetric nuclear relationships’ since its acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1964 . Indeed, the new white paper asserts that the PRC was in fact ‘compelled to make the strategic choice to develop nuclear weapon’ to ‘deal with nuclear threats and blackmail’ during the Cold War. This tradition Wu notes thus ‘prioritises safeguarding China’s national defence modernisation, developing military capabilities, and maintaining a high level of secrecy’ rather than reassurance and risk reduction measures.

The imprint of this tradition on the new white paper is readily apparent. 

It unsubtly argues that ‘a certain country’ (i.e., the US) is primarily responsible for inducing new bouts of nuclear arms racing and for undermining arms control and the non-proliferation regime. Washington, the document suggests, has exacerbated the former by seeking ‘absolute strategic superiority by constantly expanding its armaments’, pursuing ballistic missile defence, and strengthening ‘military alliances in the Asia Pacific region’ through the exercise of ‘extended deterrence’ and ‘forward-deployed ground-based intermediate-range missiles’. 

The US, in turn, has weakened arms control by ‘withdrawing from relevant international agreements’ such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) and the non-proliferation regime by the attempted imposition of ‘discriminatory and exclusive rules, standards, and codes of conduct’ on others and the application of ‘double standards on nuclear non-proliferation and the practice of favouring geopolitical interests over the international nuclear non-proliferation regime’.

Under these conditions the PRC must ‘firmly’ uphold ‘a nuclear strategy of self-defence’ and pursue the ‘modernisation of its nuclear forces’ to ‘safeguard China’s own strategic security and overall global strategic stability’. 

While asserting that the PRC ‘has and never will engage in any nuclear arms race with any other country in terms of level of expenditure, quantity, or scale of nuclear weapons’, the document maintains that Beijing will continue to build a ‘lean and effective nuclear force system’ to ‘ensure the safety, security, reliability and effectiveness of its nuclear weapons and deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China’. 

Beijing’s approach of ‘keeping China’s nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security’ thus not only ensures its own security but contributes to ‘overall global strategic stability’.

The white paper also firmly restates the PRC’s commitment to its nuclear doctrine of ‘no-first-use’ (NFU) which it has maintained since it acquired nuclear weapons in 1964. NFU, according to former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Pan Zhenqiang, has permitted the PRC to develop a ‘moderate’ and ‘self-defence’-oriented nuclear capability and demonstrate ‘a viable path toward international nuclear disarmament’. 

More immediately, however, as Carnegie Senior Fellow Tong Zhao notes, the PRC’s promotion of NFU and its desire to see other nuclear weapons states adopt NFU postures is driven by the objective to have nuclear peers (notably the US) acknowledge and commit to mutual vulnerability ‘which China believes is the foundation for maintaining strategic stability’.

The upshot of this for arms control is that Beijing sees itself – consistent with Wu’s characterisation of the PRC’s arms control tradition – to be set apart by both its history and practice from the other nuclear weapons states. Thus, the white paper asserts that due to ‘the vast differences between nuclear-weapon states in their nuclear forces and policies, and in their security environment, there are no measures to reduce nuclear risks that can be universally applied’. 

This suggests that Beijing remains indisposed to acceding to the ‘managed system of military engagement’ defined by deterrence relationships and arms control envisaged by Walker as a major pillar of nuclear order. 

The question that remains is whether Beijing rejects the prospect of acceding to this means of generating the ‘tolerable accommodation of pronounced differences in the capabilities, practices rights and obligations of states’ out of hand or whether there are in fact conditions under which it would do so? 

One possibility suggested by the PRC’s arms control tradition, the new white paper and the trajectory of the nation’s nuclear arsenal modernisation and expansion of recent years is that it may only consider engagement in US-PRC arms control once it has attained at least parity with the US. 

While there are competing estimates as to when US and PRC arsenals may reach this point in both quantitative and qualitative terms, this dynamic would suggest that we will see continued Chinese efforts to build both an ‘effective nuclear force system’ for the foreseeable future and ongoing PRC critiques of the pillars of nuclear order.