Focus – The U.S. and China discuss reciprocal visits to nuclear facilities

WASHINGTON-BEIJING, October 6 /ATSH-AA/ – The U.S. has considered the possibility of launching mutual inspections of nuclear facilities with China.

Officials held informal, preliminary talks on the initiative, while Washington is preparing to seek reciprocal access during upcoming face-to-face meetings in the coming months.

Chinese representatives initially proposed this idea during diplomatic exchanges with U.S. officials earlier this year, signalling possible interest in taking confidence-building steps toward a broader strategic agreement.

The consultations included possible visits to the national laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy, alongside the relevant Chinese research centres. According to CNN, Washington also expressed readiness to discuss reciprocal access to nuclear test sites.

Neither U.S. nor Chinese government institutions reacted immediately in public to the reporting.

Earlier this year, the U.S. accused China of an “unprecedented, deliberate, rapid and non-transparent” expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal. China, for its part, said that the U.S. has “one of the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenals in the world” and that it “is obsessed with pursuing absolute superiority in security”.

After the September 24 summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the White House said that Trump “supported trilateral arms control negotiations between the U.S., Russia and China”, although the proposal was not mentioned in the Chinese reporting on the meeting.