A Chinese military honor guard during the visit of then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Beijing in 2005. (Donna Miles/Department of Defense)
China has made strides to politically support non-proliferation, but it has failed to rein in unofficial exports of its nuclear and missile technology, according to a congressional report.
Despite U.S. requests for China to investigate and “put a stop to such activities, most of these cases remain unresolved,” the May report from the Congressional Research Service said.
More than 30 Chinese entities and individuals have been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the past decade for involvement in the transfer of information and materials despite Beijing’s official policy of aiding non-proliferation.
As recently as November 2025, an official Chinese government policy paper called for “an urgent need to reinvigorate multilateral arms control.”
“U.S. government reports indicate that the Chinese government has ceased direct involvement in nuclear-related proliferation,” said the report by CRS, which writes regularly updated issue background reports to aid Congress in decision-making.
The U.S. has repeatedly expressed concerns with regard to weaknesses in China’s export control system, the report said.
Some of the nuclear and ballistic missile technology transfers in recent years had gone from China to Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, the report said. In addition, Chinese companies have provided “illicit finance and money laundering” to cover up the trade.
Lyle Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University who specializes in China policy, said the gap between the official policy and the amount of information still leaving China has raised concerns among Beijing’s leadership.
“On the whole, Beijing has seemed quite nervous about such cooperation. Therefore, it is quite possible that these activities are either illicit or occurring without the blessing of the Chinese government.”
Goldstein said it is difficult to quantify the amount of information that Iran and Pakistan in particular have been able to glean from business relationships with Chinese entities.
“It’s regrettable that Chinese companies supply components for missile and/or WMD fabrication to both Pakistan and also Iran,” Goldstein said. “It’s rather difficult to judge the overall significance of these U.S. government claims given the paucity of detail in the (CRS) report.”
China first exploded an atomic device in October 1964, followed by its first nuclear-capable ballistic missile in October 1966 and first hydrogen bomb in June 1967. It conducted over 40 nuclear tests through 1996 before signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. China has not ratified the treaty.
In recent years, Chinese businesses, individuals and entities have been the focus of unofficial efforts to export restricted technology, the report said.
The report quoted a 2017 Politico interview with Vann Van Diepen, former acting assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, who said that even if the technology transfers are not directly state-sponsored, they are implicitly state-sanctioned.
“China hasn’t devoted the priority, effort or resources to thwart such activity,“ Van Diepen said. “When that continues to be the case over 20 years … over time it becomes a choice.”
In 2023, Treasury sanctioned two North Korean nationals involved in procuring equipment for their country’s ballistic missile program from China.
The report says North Korea continues to utilize a network of representatives in China and other countries to obtain restricted components necessary to conduct research and development for “weapons of mass destruction” programs.
U.S. military analysts reported China has been aiding Saudi Arabian efforts to enrich uranium. China’s construction of five civil nuclear reactors in Pakistan’s Chashma Nuclear Power Generating Station without full oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is “another source of congressional concern,” the report says.
Goldstein, the Brown University expert on China, said the U.S. has to walk a fine line of pushing Beijing to clamp down on “informal” exports of technology to Iran and Pakistan while not ratcheting up the already tense relationship with China.
“If the US-China rivalry intensifies, it is possible that these informal and small-scale assistance programs could be accelerated to the detriment of U.S. national security,” Goldstein said. “Overall, both Iran and particularly Pakistan are considered by China to be important countries.”
