Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said that China does not intend to join possible talks between Moscow and Washington on strategic stability. The statement was made during a briefing on March 29, 2025, dedicated to the current state of international relations. According to the diplomat, Beijing is currently taking a wait-and-see position and is not ready to participate in the discussion of key aspects of global security, despite Russia's calls for China to be more actively involved in this process.

Moscow considers strategic stability to be a priority topic in its dialogue with the United States, especially given the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in February 2026. Russia has repeatedly proposed expanding the format of the talks to include China as a third party, given its growing nuclear potential. However, Beijing remains adamant, preferring to avoid direct participation in Russian-American consultations.

China's refusal to participate in the talks highlights the difficulty of building a trilateral dialogue in the context of global tensions. Without taking the China factor into account, any agreement with the United States will be incomplete, given that Beijing has significantly increased its arsenal in recent years, including intercontinental ballistic missiles. Washington, for its part, has also called on China to be more open on nuclear weapons issues, but so far to no avail.

To date, Beijing’s position remains unchanged. In early 2025, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the country saw no need to join the talks as long as its nuclear arsenal remained significantly smaller than that of the United States and Russia. Western analysts estimate that China has about 500 warheads, but plans to increase that number to 1000 by 2030. In March 2025, Beijing tested a new DF-41 missile in the South China Sea, demonstrating its ambitions and increasing pressure from Moscow and Washington.