China’s Foreign Ministry slams Trump’s nuclear treaty ‘blackmail’

China said on Tuesday it would “never accept any form of blackmail” after US President Donald Trump said his decision to withdraw from a nuclear pact with Russia was also linked to Beijing’s arsenal. China is not a signatory to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which the US signed with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but Trump said Monday that Beijing should be included in the accord. “Now that the United States want to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty, they start to inappropriately speak about other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters. “This approach of shifting the blame on others is utterly unjustifiable and unreasonable,” Hua said, adding that China had always pursued a defensive national defense policy. “We will never accept any form of blackmail,” AFP quoted her as saying.