"The US should withdraw all its nuclear weapons from Europe and refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in any other region," Fu Cong said during the 10th Review Conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations.
He went on to say China is ready to cooperate with all countries to strengthen the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
"This April President Xi Jinping proposed a global security initiative … Guided by the initiative, China is ready to join hands with all countries to continuously strengthen the universality, authority and effectiveness of the NPT to inject stability and certainty into this era of turbulence and transformation and make a new contribution to world peace, stability and prosperity," Fu said.
Notably, Fu further stressed that Beijing does not compete with other states in the quantity of nuclear weapons and is committed to the principle of no first use.
"China will under no circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons," he said.
The envoy added that China keeps its nuclear stockpile at a minimum level to ensure the protection of national security and does not compete with other countries in numbers and capabilities in this area.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a greeting to the conference that Moscow always abides by the wording and spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, noting that there could never be winners in a nuclear war and that it should never be started.
For his part, US President Joe Biden emphasized that Washington is now prepared to collaborate with Russia on talks to forge a new nuclear arms limitation agreement that would take the place of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (also dubbed "New START"), which is scheduled to end in 2026.
However, the proposal was met with skepticism by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council. The former president wondered in a Telegram post whether Russia "even need it," since the world "has changed."
Then, he claimed that although things are far worse now than they were during the Cold War, Russia is not to blame.