The Dragon on Ice: China's Quiet Conquest of the Arctic

At an Arctic Council meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland, in May 2019, Mike Pompeo asked whether the world wanted the Arctic Ocean to become another South China Sea. Many Arctic specialists regarded the comparison as overwrought. China's visible presence amounted to one working icebreaker, a second still fitting out, and a research station on Svalbard. The idea of an impending Chinese challenge seemed premature, if not faintly ridiculous.

Things started to change last summer, when the Chinese container ship Istanbul Bridge sailed from Ningbo to Felixstowe in about twenty days, setting a record for the route. This summer, Sealegend Shipping, the vessel's operator, plans something more ambitious: the first scheduled weekly container service linking China and Europe through the Arctic.

The scale should not be exaggerated. At 4,890 TEU, the Istanbul Bridge, the largest ship in the planned rotation, is minute beside the 24,000 TEU vessels serving the Suez trade. The service will also end when the Arctic ice returns in late October. Even so, there is an important difference between sending a ship north once and publishing a weekly timetable.

Container shipping depends on reliability. That requirement has made containers particularly difficult to establish on the Northern Sea Route. Bulk cargo shippers have a higher tolerance for delays. China imports much of its energy and exports through maritime chokepoints. The Strait of Malacca is the most obvious vulnerability. In a crisis, the United States Navy could threaten routes on which the Chinese economy depends. This month's headlines from the Strait of Hormuz offer an example of what exposure at a maritime bottleneck can cost.  An Arctic passage would not eliminate China's vulnerability, but it would spread the risk across another route.

Beijing made its intentions plain in the Arctic policy white paper it released in January 2018. In that document, China described itself as a "Near Arctic State." The paper has no recognized status in international law. But that was not the point. It was a political claim, designed to establish China as a legitimate participant in decisions about the region's future.

This methodology is familiar to anyone who has followed the Belt and Road Initiative. China starts with a commercial project: an interest in a port, an infrastructure contract, a rail concession, or a stake in an energy development. Political influence follows. In the Arctic, this approach is called the Polar Silk Road. Its most important investments are tied to Russian natural gas. Chinese state entities own 29.9 percent of Novatek's Yamal LNG project, CNPC holding 20 percent and the Silk Road Fund 9.9 percent, and CNPC and CNOOC each hold 10 percent of the newer Arctic LNG 2 development. Sanctions imposed since 2022 have complicated the latter project, but the strategic logic remains intact.

There are some rare instances when China's efforts have been thwarted. In 2016, a Chinese mining company attempted to purchase Grønnedal, an abandoned Danish naval station in Greenland. Copenhagen responded by finding a renewed use for the base. Two years later, Denmark itself agreed to finance airport construction in Greenland after a Chinese state-owned builder reached the shortlist, apparently following pressure from the United States.

What has been occurring and going largely underreported is a pattern of repeated attempts, each defensible as an ordinary commercial transaction, followed by Western intervention that tends to come late.  The comparison with the South China Sea is uncomfortable but relevant. Skeptics once dismissed China's artificial islands as little more than sandcastles until the military bases began to appear.

Meanwhile, Moscow controls the world's longest Arctic coastline and administers the Northern Sea Route under Russian domestic law. It charges fees and requires permissions in ways that do not sit comfortably with the interpretation of maritime law favored by most seafaring states.

Since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has become more dependent on Chinese capital, ships, and energy purchases to sustain its Arctic development. For Beijing, the arrangement provides access unavailable to any other outside power.

Russia has about forty icebreakers, including nuclear-powered vessels. China now operates four, with a fifth entering service and more under construction, and last August it sent five polar vessels at once into American waters off Alaska. Seven years ago it had one. The United States still depends on the Polar Star and the medium icebreaker Healy, and the American replacement effort is years behind schedule. 

China's polar fleet does not by itself make it an Arctic military power. Their activities nevertheless deserve attention. They conduct repeated polar expeditions, bathymetric surveys, and oceanographic profiling, all necessary for initiating wider submarine operations. To supplement its efforts, China built a satellite ground station at Kiruna in northern Sweden, years before Stockholm applied to NATO, and has operated research facilities in Ny-Alesund and Longyearbyen on Svalbard since 2004. Sweden eventually closed the Kiruna door. The Swedish Space Corporation declined in 2020 to renew the Chinese contracts, citing the risk that the antennas were feeding military collection.

Research vessels and stations serve as excellent intelligence platforms while retaining plausible civilian purposes. Given that some of the Chinese polar research, such as climate observation and search-and-rescue, is legitimate, Western objections are easily portrayed as paranoia.

China received observer status at the Arctic Council in 2013 with the approval of all eight Arctic countries. It has, for the most part, followed the established rules since then. The issue is not simply whether China has broken those rules. It is what Beijing expects its participation to produce over time. On that question, Western governments have often shown poor judgment. For two decades, they assumed that membership in the World Trade Organization would change China more than China would change the Western institutions.

No single vessel, gas investment, research station, or satellite facility is the central problem. It is the difference in the way the Chinese and the West perceive threats. China's presence is accumulating gradually: commercial activity layered on scientific work, supported by diplomacy, investment, and access agreements. Each development is small enough to avoid provoking a reaction, but combined they allow China to achieve its strategic ambitions. 

The Arctic ice will slowly retreat, and as it does, China will slowly up the ante, moving shipping lanes from theoretical possibilities toward commercial use. As of August, it has taken the first big step by publishing a weekly departure schedule for its vessels transiting Arctic waters.

The map will be redrawn whether Washington is prepared or not. What remains undecided is how much influence the United States and its allies will retain when that process is complete.

Dominique L. Plewes works at the intersection of national security, geopolitics, and strategic philanthropy, bringing nearly a decade of firsthand experience in some of the world’s most complex regions to her work. She is the founder of Galadriel Ventures and the SOF Support Foundation.

image: Xue Long and Xue Long 2, icebreaking research vessels owned by the Polar Research Institute of China. Photo: iTaiwan News