China Power | Diplomacy | East Asia

Why Is China Proposing Reciprocal Nuclear Laboratory Visits?

While China and the U.S. still disagree on the size of nuclear forces and the path of arms control, can they exchange meaningful information on certain technical issues?

Crews at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the U.S., repackage waste to be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Dec. 20, 2011.

On October 6, CNN reported that the United States and China are engaged in informal, preliminary discussion on reciprocal visits to nuclear facilities. According to the report, the idea was first raised by the Chinese side in meetings with U.S. officials this year, during which the two sides discussed U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and their Chinese counterparts. The same source also indicated that the U.S. side is willing to discuss visits to nuclear test sites. 

At the China-U.S. leaders’ summit held in September, the two sides agreed to build “a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness, and reciprocity.” According to CNN, however, they didn’t discuss reciprocal nuclear facility visits at the summit.

Reciprocal laboratory visits could serve to test the feasibility of limited nuclear transparency and give the broad political goal of “strategical stability” something concrete to work on. The question is whether the two sides can learn about each other’s nuclear institutions, their roles, and some of their activities, without harming their own national security. 

In the mid-1990s, the United States and China set up the “U.S.-China Lab-to-Lab Technical Exchange Program” (CLL). Nuclear weapons laboratories under the U.S. Department of Energy and Chinese institutions including the China Academy of Engineering Physics participated in the project. The exchanges were conducted by scientists from both countries responsible for the technical management of nuclear forces, under the supervision of both governments, and were initially limited to nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. The program listed a shared goal: the exchange of information about the operation and management of nuclear facilities, while safeguarding the national security interests of both countries. 

China hosted American scientists at its nuclear weapon laboratory and the Lop Nur test site, and showed them a variety of facilities. According to a U.S. participant, the United States authorized only small scale, restricted exchange on nuclear material protection and nuclear arms control verification technologies. Although the U.S. side had initially expressed a willingness to host Chinese scientists at the Nevada Test Site on a reciprocal basis, it withdrew that commitment later. 

The two sides also ran into other obstacles. In 1996, for example, regarding a joint analysis plan for seismic data from mining activities on both sides, the China Academy of Engineering Physics declined to participate because the work was outside its scope. The Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology also declined, out of concern that the data might be used to estimate the yields of China’s past nuclear tests. 

In the late 1990s, the program was halted as China-U.S. relations worsened. In particular, a 1999 U.S. Congressional report accused China of stealing nuclear technology, which Beijing allegedly used “to fabricate and successfully test its next generation of nuclear weapons designs.” Scientists from both sides tried to revive the program during the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, without success.

This history shows that laboratory exchanges were a form of contact China and the United States have tried before, where information sharing and confidentiality requirements coexisted. While the experience of the 1990s cannot directly explain China’s current motivation for reviving the idea of reciprocal visits to nuclear facilities, it left a precedent. Whether the concept of reciprocal visits described in the CNN report aligns with the experience of such limited exchanges needs to be considered together with China’s current position on nuclear transparency.

China’s official position stresses transparency of intentions, but it also insists on protecting national........

© The Diplomat