China on Wednesday scuttled hopes from President Donald Trump that Washington could engage Beijing and Russia in denuclearization talks. 

Russia, the U.S., and China are the world’s largest nuclear powers, in that order. Trump on Monday renewed calls for the countries to discuss nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, calling the request “very important” amid fears from the White House that the Russia-Ukraine war could escalate into World War III. 

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Days later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun poured cold water on Trump’s comments during a press briefing in which he said, “It is unreasonable and unrealistic to ask China to join the trilateral nuclear disarmament talks between China, the United States, and Russia.”

“The nuclear forces of China and the United States are not at the same level at all in terms of nuclear capabilities,”  the spokesman added on Wednesday. “The countries with the largest nuclear arsenal should earnestly fulfil their special and primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament.”

China’s statement comes after Trump earlier this week said he believed both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Moscow would be amenable to denuclearization talks, telling reporters he had raised the issue of denuclearization with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he recently met in Alaska for a summit about ending the Ukraine war. 

“I think the denuclearization is a very — it’s a big aim, but Russia is willing to do it, and I think China is going to be willing to do it too,” Trump said Monday. “We can’t let nuclear weapons proliferate. We have to stop nuclear weapons. The power is too great.”

“We’re talking about limiting nuclear weapons. We’ll get China into that,” the president said. “China is way behind, but they’ll catch us in five years. We would like to denuclearize. It’s too much power, and we talked about that also.” 

Trump initially pushed for denuclearization talks in February, saying the matter was a goal of his second term, and telling reporters he hoped for conversations with Putin and Xi before potentially arranging to a trilateral meeting between the three countries. 

“There’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1 trillion on military. There’s no reason for you to be spending $400 billion – China is going to be at $400 billion,” he said. “We already have so many, you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.”

China is growing its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Beijing, which has an estimated 600 nuclear warheads, ranks third in the number of such weapons. The U.S. ranks second, and Russia comes in first, with both Washington and Moscow possessing over 5,000 warheads.

Trump’s press for nuclear talks comes amid fears that the Ukraine war could lead to World War III, a scenario that could push Russia, North Korea, China, and Iran into a global conflict against the U.S. and other NATO powers. 

China was briefly engaged in nuclear arms control and nonproliferation talks with the U.S. last year, but pulled out of discussions last July, shortly before then-President Joe Biden left office. 

Months later, Russia lowered its threshold for using nuclear weapons, announcing last November it now considers aggression from any non-nuclear state with the backing of a nuclear power as a joint attack against Russia. In the case of the Ukraine war, that could make the U.S. a valid target for nuclear strikes by Moscow due to Ukraine’s reliance on weapons and additional military support from Washington.

A Russian attack on the U.S., a NATO power, would pull all other NATO allies into the fight, based on the alliance’s Article 5 security clause that regards any attack launched on one of its 32 members as an attack on all. 

Even before it revised its nuclear weapons policy, Russia in 2023 announced it was “suspending participation” in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is the last major nuclear arms control pact between the U.S. and Russia. The New START treaty, first signed in 2010, technically remains in effect until Feb. 5, 2026. 

Gen. Mike Guetlein, whom Trump recently tapped to oversee the new Golden Dome project designed to protect the U.S. from nuclear annihilation, said in July that both Russia and China are “building out their nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the Earth numerous times over.” 

An assessment by the Biden-era federal intelligence community released last October similarly concluded China is building up its nuclear forces in “the most rapid expansion and ambitious modernization … in history.”

Trump has maintained open lines of communication with both Xi and Putin as he eyes reducing nuclear tensions. 

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The president is in the midst of negotiating a trade deal with China, calling it “a great country” this week as he revealed the White House would be willing to allow 600,000 Chinese nationals to study in U.S. schools as part of the economic agreement. 

While U.S. weapons are pounding Russia as Ukraine seeks to defend its borders, Trump has also sought to keep his relationship with Putin alive, meeting with the Russian president earlier this month as Washington pursues a peace settlement ending the war. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff suggested Tuesday that a resolution might not be far off, crediting progress to Trump’s “force of personality and his motivation to end the conflict and the death” that the U.S. is “at this place where we think the end is in sight.”