Biden Launches Arms-Control Talks with China, Warns Xi on Taiwan

China and the United States will begin a series of talks on nuclear arms control, U.S. President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. In a Monday video call, Biden also warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping against using military action against Taiwan, Sullivan said. 

“The two leaders agreed that we would look to begin to carry forward discussions on strategic stability,” Sullivan said Tuesday at a Brookings Institution event, one day after a historic virtual summit between Biden and Xi. “Now, that is not the same as what we have in the Russian context with the formal strategic stability dialogue that is far more mature [and] has a much deeper history to it. There's less maturity to that in the U.S.-China relationship but the two leaders did discuss these issues. And it is now incumbent on us to think about the most productive way to carry it forward.”

Earlier this month, the Pentagon estimated that China intends to increase its nuclear stockpile by 2030 to at least 1,000 warheads. That’s four times more than last year’s estimate, if still just one-third of the current U.S. stockpile.  But China has also been racing to develop new highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles that would be nearly impossible for the United States to intercept with today’s technology. In October, China conducted a test of one such missile that successfully circled the globe, which Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley described as a type of “Sputnik moment.” 

During the video call, Biden warned Xi that “any effort to shape Taiwan's future by other than peaceful means is of grave concern to the United States,” according to Sullivan, who cited Biden’s support for the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.

In March, military officials warned that China could be setting the stage to invade Taiwan sometime within the next six years.