China is not only jeopardising the CTBT and impending progress on nuclear disarmament, it is now the only nuclear weapons state with an active testing program. International public opinion should condemn China's tests as strongly as it did those of France. News of the test was broken by the Australian Geological Survey Organisation in Canberra, Australia. The survey estimates that the explosion's yield was in the range of 20 to 80 kilotons of TNT - a blast as much as five times more powerful than the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima. Today's test was China's 44th.
China is now the only nuclear weapons state with an active testing programme.
More tests are expected as part of China's prgrammed of nuclear weapons development.