Beijing: On Friday,  China said that it has never recognized India and Pakistan as nuclear powers and ruled out extending such a status to North Korea following the unsuccessful second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a media briefing here ''China has never recognised India and Pakistan as nuclear countries. Our position on this has never changed,". He was replying to a question whether China would recognise North Korea as a nuclear state like India and Pakistan as talks between Trump and Kim at the second summit in Hanoi broke down over Pyongyang's refusal to give up two nuclear processing plants.

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However, China has been blocking India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on the ground that New Delhi has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). After India applied for NSG membership, Pakistan too applied for the same following that China has called for a two-step approach which states that NSG members first need to arrive at a set of principles for the admission of non-NPT states into the NSG and then move forward discussions of specific cases.