India, Oct. 30 -- After President Donald Trump's order to the Department of War to begin testing the US's nuclear weapons, China on Thursday said that it "hopes" Washington will abide by the nuclear testing ban.

Earlier in the day, just a short while before meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, Trump announced on Truth Social that he has ordered the Pentagon to begin conducting nuclear weapons testing because other countries are testing their programmes.

He noted how Russia has the second largest nuclear weapons arsenal, and China is a distant third, but that Beijing would get even within five years.

China's remark on the 'ban' comes in reference to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bars "any n...