China won't join arms control talks with Russia, US

China said Wednesday it will not join trilateral arms control talks with Russia and the United States, calling them a "hoax" while pointing to American missile deployments "on China's doorstep."

"For us, this trilateral negotiation is nothing but a hoax, to use the word of the U.S. president. It's nothing more than a hoax and a game that China refuses to play," said Fu Cong, director general of China's arms control department at a press briefing in Beijing.

Fu said that American missiles in the western Pacific and Washington's withdrawal in August 2019 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between Russia and the U.S., signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, "pose a strategic threat to the Chinese security."

China has nuclear weapons, ballistic missile capabilities and the know-how to make chemical and biological weapons — and it is updating its nuclear arsenal. Beijing also has signed various international weapons agreements, but none limiting nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and Russia have agreed to start arms control talks as the only remaining treaty between the two largest nuclear powers is poised to expire in less than a year.

Russia has offered to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in February, but Trump wants to see a three-way nuclear arms treaty that includes China.

Beijing, which is expanding its nuclear arsenal but is not nearly as big as the ones held by the U.S. and Russia, has expressed little to no interest in negotiating or signing a pact.