China signals no change in stand on India's entry to NSG

Ahead of the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s annual plenary in Switzerland next month, China made it clear that it remained opposed to India’s proposed entry into the 48-nation cartel.

Notwithstanding negotiations between the two neighbours over the past several months, China’s envoy to India, Lou Zhouhui, reiterated what the Communist country had been saying ever since it blocked New Delhi’s bid to get a seat in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) at its last plenary in Seoul in June 2016.

“On Nuclear Suppliers Group issue, we do not oppose any country’s membership, believing that a standard for admission should be agreed upon first,” Lou said while delivering a lecture at the United Service Institution of India in New Delhi recently.

The Embassy of China in New Delhi made the text of his speech public on Monday. His comment has come just a month before the NSG is set to hold its 27th plenary in Switzerland.

Lou’s comment clearly indicated that China had not yet budged from its stand that the NSG should adopt a “two-step approach” to address the issue of admitting new members.

Beijing has been maintaining that the NSG should first “explore” through “an open and transparent” process and reach agreement on a non-discriminatory formula” to deal with the issue of granting membership to the countries, which had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Once the non-discriminatory formula would be adopted by the NSG, the cartel should move to the second stage to take up the “country-specific membership issues”. Neither India nor Pakistan has signed the NPT.