Silk Road in the Arctic

Credit: Bahnfrend

"La Chine en Arctique: les coulisses d’une ambition" is a 2021 French documentary about China´s expansion in the Arctic. I recently saw a version narrated in Swedish. Most people interviewed speak English (or Chinese). 

China´s interest in the Arctic began in 1989, when a government-sponsored institute for scientific research in the polar regions was founded in Shanghai. Interestingly, it sorts under the department responsible for natural resource extraction. In 1993, China got its first icebreaker, Xue Long or the Snow Dragon, really a used cargo ship bought from the Ukraine (sic). At first, "science diplomacy" was used to metaphorically break the ice with Russia and the Western powers, but lately, it´s become obvious that China has much wider ambitions. The goal is to create a kind of "Polar Silk Road" that binds together China, Russia and Europe through the so-called Northeast passage (the sea route along Russia´s Arctic coast). 

China has invested heavily in natural gas extraction at the Russian Yamal peninsula, and Chinese billionaires (presumably with the blessing of their government) have tried to buy land in Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Iceland was first European nation to sign a free trade agreement with China! The Chinese government is interested in acquiring mines and ports at Greenland, a Danish dependency. Under Trump, China actually made a deal with the United States to invest heavily in Alaska, but pulled out after Trump´s administration had become more hostile to Chinese global ambitions. 

In 2013, China got observer status in the Arctic Council, and it often refers to itself as a "near-Arctic state". There has also been pushback against the Chinese ambitions in the Arctic. Trump´s foreign secretary Mike Pompeo said in an aggressive speech during a visit to Finland that there is no such thing as an near-Arctic state, only Arctic and non-Arctic states, accusing China of wanting to militarize the Arctic Sea with submarines bearing nuclear weapons. For some reason, the documentary doesn´t mention Trump´s plans to buy Greenland from Denmark, but this idea is clearly part of the same context (and hence not so crazy as you might think). When interviewed, prominent Swedish diplomat Carl Bildt says that Russia must be worried about Chinese investment in Siberia ("the Russian economy is weaker than that of a single Chinese province"), and clearly hopes that the two great powers will come to blows. At the moment, at least, this seems highly unlikely...

Climate change is almost absent from this production, but it stands to reason that the geopolitical competition in the High Arctic will become even more pronounced if the Arctic Sea will be free of ice for most of the year. Today, the Northwest passage (north of Alaska and Canada) is apparently less secure than the Northeast ditto, but with the ice gone, this too will become very interesting indeed to the world´s next superpower. 

Until everyone is washed away in the next deluge, of course. But that´s apparently another show!