China contradicts NPT consensus by supplying reactors to Pakistan: Report

While China continues to hail the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as the cornerstone of global non-proliferation regime, Beijing itself has violated the consensus arrived at the 2010 NPT review conference on supply of nuclear technology by transferring nuclear reactors to Pakistan.

This observation on China’s supply of nuclear reactors to Pakistan, a country which is not under IAEA safeguards, comes from Arms Control Association, one of leading authorities on nuclear weapons and disarmament, in its latest report assessing progress on non-proliferation.

China has blocked India’s membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) saying that participation of a non-NPT signatory in the group will weaken the international non-proliferation regime.

The report says that the China’s 2013 deal for the Chasma-3 reactor in Pakistan contradicts the consensus document of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, which “reaffirms that new supply arrangements” for the transfer of nuclear materials and technology should require that the recipient accept “IAEA full-scope safeguards and international legally-binding commitments not to acquire nuclear weapons”. Islamabad has accepted neither.

India, which has not signed NPT, has singled out China for creating proceduralhurdles in its NSG membership bid but has also chosen to remain engaged with Beijing over the issue, hoping that it will review its position at some stage. Ahead of the NSG meetings in Vienna and Seoul in June, China wrote to NSG chair Rafael Mariano Grossi saying NPT membership constituted one of the “prerequisite factors” for consideration of NSG participation and that more discussions were needed before any “specific non-NPT” state could be allowed in.

China’s NSG membership since 2004 has not come in the way of its stated supply of as many as 6 reactors to Pakistan’s Chasma nuclear power complex. Beijing claims to “grandfather” the reactors to an agreement reached with Pakistan in 2003 – before it became a member of NSG – even though, as the report says, that exception should have been applicable only to the first two Chasma reactors whose sale was completed before China joined NSG.

It is widely held that in helping Pakistan with its nuclear energy programme, China has chosen to override NSG guidelines and shown no regard for the reservations expressed by its members who control international nuclear commerce.