CND Press Roundup - 6 January

Nuclear weapons

• China calls for no-first use
• A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson yesterday called on the US to commit to a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, and ‘to cut its nuclear weapons drastically on the basis of extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.’ Spokesperson Hua Chunying said: “Among the five nuclear powers, China is the only country pursuing the policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, and this policy will not be changed. We hope the U.S. can make the same commitment as China does as soon as possible”.
• Response to Pompeo 
• China was responding to a Newsweek op-ed by Mike Pompeo earlier this week, which argued that “China’s nuclear build-up should worry the West”, charging Beijing with being the “least transparent” of the P5 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council). MFA Spokesperson Chunying said: “The United States arbitrarily withdrew [from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] and spends trillions of dollars on its nuclear arsenal, harming the strategic security and safety of the world”.

Iran nuclear deal

• EU intervention 
• The EU has said it will redouble its efforts to save the Iran nuclear deal, The Independent reports. Brussels’ spokesman said that Iran’s breaches of the JCPOA “will have serious implications when it comes to nuclear non-proliferation”, but argued that rescuing the deal is in everyone’s interest. 
• A century of domination 
• Azadeh Shahshahani (legal and advocacy director with Project South) and Khury Petersen-Smith (a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies) argue in The Nation that Biden must not only rejoin the nuclear deal, but decisively ‘break from the previous century of US policy toward Iran, which has been based on domination.’ They write: “Removing these Trump-era measures to brutalize Iranians is urgent. But the entire history of US policy toward Iran in the 20th and 21st centuries has been cruel and based on domination. We need a decisive break with it, and a total transformation of the US-Iran relationship.”

Nuclear power

• NGOs lobby EU 
• World Nuclear News reports that a Brussels-based alliance of pro-nuclear NGOs has written to the European Commission, Parliament, and Council, urging a “more favourable evaluation at EU level” of nuclear energy—pushing for a larger nuclear share in a future low-carbon energy mix. Among the lobby groups’ demands of the EU is to ‘getting away from the short sighted “green sustainability” concept, towards “societal sustainability” as a balance between environment, economy and reliability’.

China

• Hong Kong 
• The Guardian and other outlets report that ‘more than 50 people, including pro-democracy politicians and campaigners, have been arrested in early-morning raids across Hong Kong in an unprecedented crackdown by authorities that was condemned as a “despicable” assault on freedom.’
• A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that the “police action was necessary”, and that the “SAR government cannot tolerate the crimes of subverting the state power”, the FT reports. 
• Trump ramps up tensions
• Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to ramp up tensions with China in the closing days of his presidency, the FT reports. With a new executive order, Trump banned transactions with Chinese payment applications including Alipay, WeChat Pay and Tencent’s QQ Wallet. In his message to Congress explaining the order, the outgoing president said that the “pace and pervasiveness” of the spread of Chinese apps “continue to threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy” of the US. 

To read: 

• ‘We need a real policy for China’: Germany ponders post-Merkel shift (FT)