While the world has entered into the second decade of 21st century, the global strategic pattern, having experienced the post-cold war period, has witnessed the trend of globalization. The international strategic environment has undergone significant changes: cooperation and competition are interwoven among countries and a multi-polar structure has been formed. However, the global nuclear strategic posture has basically remained unchanged since the end of the Cold War, i.e., maintaining the bi-polar structure, and the United States and Russia have remained the two nuclear superpowers enjoying absolute nuclear supremacy.
The adjustment of US nuclear policy and posture by the Obama Administration has been affirmatively echoed by the Russian government. These two nuclear superpowers have achieved encouraging progress in the negotiation on nuclear disarmament, which aims at maintaining strategic stability. The new START came into effect as a result of the joint efforts of the two sides and this is of positive impact on global strategic security and stability.
At the same time, China and the United States share the responsibility of jointly maintaining world peace. With the expansion of cooperation between China and the United States and the growing aspiration of the people of the world for a world free of nuclear weapons, the new challenges to the global non-proliferation initiative need to be dealt with by the joint efforts of all countries, including China and the United States. At present, both opportunities and challenges co-exist for China and the United States to establish such a new type of strategic stability.