How China and Russia are joining forces to conquer the Arctic

“The Arctic is rapidly becoming a strategic theatre of geopolitical competition, military build-up, energy transformation, and global environmental change, warn MEPs in the resolution adopted by 510 votes in favour and 75 against, with 80 abstentions.  

The Arctic is rapidly becoming a strategic theatre of geopolitical competition, military build-up, energy transformation, and global environmental change, warn MEPs in the resolution adopted by510 votes in favour and 75 against, with 80 abstentions.

Condemning the growing militarisation of the Arctic, MEPs point to Russia’s extensive military restructuring, including the establishment of its “Maritime Collegium”. This, they say, in combination with China’s clear interest in the region, has escalated regional tensions and undermined regional stability. In response, the EU needs to strengthen cooperation with its NATO allies. EU-US cooperation in the area, MEPs add, is fundamental to contain Russia and China and ensure our common security.

In the light of recent incidents in the Baltic Sea attributed to Russia’s shadow fleet and Chinese vessels, MEPs say the EU should substantially improve its protection of essential underwater infrastructure in the Arctic, particularly submarine cables and pipelines, including those in the proximity of Greenland, and tighten the regulatory framework for sanctions and countermeasures.

 

MEPs also stress that the legal framework for Arctic governance must remain anchored in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Pointing to increased geopolitical competition along Arctic maritime routes, particularly the Northern Sea Route, MEPs reject unilateral territorial or navigational claims and support diplomatic dialogue. They also defend the application of international law to counter attempts to legitimise contested shipping corridors or project geopolitical influence under pretexts of scientific or economic cooperation.

“Faster sea passages, untapped resources and shifting alliances are transforming the region into the next major strategic battleground”, writes the British newspaper The Telegraph.  

It has been a busy week at the top of the world.

Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of Nato’s military committee, said last week that Russia and China are together trying to “reshape the rules of access and influence [in the Arctic] to their advantage, challenging openness, fairness, and the rule of law”.

Then Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s most senior military officer, briefed Vladimir Putin on the successful test of a nuclear powered – yes, nuclear powered – cruise missile over Novaya Zemlya, the Arctic island where the Soviets used to test hydrogen bombs.

In the middle of all this, the 294-metre Istanbul Bridge, a Chinese-owned container ship, became the first large container ship to complete the northern sea route from China to Europe via the Russian Arctic.

In what some Chinese media reported as a breakthrough for global trade, it made the voyage from Ningbo to Felixstowe in 21 days, compared to around 40 days for the usual route via the Suez Canal, or 50 via the Cape of Good Hope.

The competition between the Russo-Chinese alliance and the West that it seeks to displace is a global story. But nowhere is that competition moving more quickly than the High Arctic.

 

That is partly because of environmental change: with the ice caps melting faster than many predicted, the rush for trade routes and resources has accelerated with whiplash speed.

 

And that has come exactly as Russia is forced into a closer partnership with China because of its isolation over the Ukraine war.

 

“We used to talk about the Arctic opening up in the next two decades. It wasn’t meant to happen as quickly [as this],” says Dr Elizabeth Buchanan of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

 

“What is surprising is the sheer pace. The Russia-China relationship is clearly galloping in the Arctic. I had thought that it would be much more of a partnership of convenience, knowing the political fears on either side in that relationship. Clearly that’s been set aside”.

A note on context. Russia – for all its misbehaviour elsewhere – happens to have the largest legitimate territorial stake in the Arctic.

 

Simple geography means that any Russian government – even one not guided by Vladimir Putin’s violent imperialism – would have serious economic and military interests in the High North.  

So for the other seven states which have territories within the Arctic – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the United States – Russian presence is just a fact of life, if an uncomfortable one.

 

The threat from over-the-pole nuclear strikes, a second-strike arsenal on the Kola peninsula, and jousting with the Russian Arctic Fleet’s “Bastion” strategy of denying Nato access to the Barents Sea while ensuring that Russian submarines can get into the Atlantic, is Nato’s familiar strategic bread and butter.

 

But the voyage of the Istanbul Bridge threatens to overturn all of that, says Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, professor of war studies at Loughborough University and an expert on Arctic strategy.

“It challenges the notion of the Arctic as belonging predominantly to the Arctic Eight, including Russia. And it seems to open routes and access to oil resources [and] rare earth minerals across the Arctic to a range of non-Arctic states, including China.

 

“We have seen a more permissive environment created for navigation by the Chinese and we have long suspected them of buying up assets, whether it be in Greenland, Iceland or the European Arctic. So this is symbolic of growing Chinese assertiveness.”

 

At the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, earlier this month, a large Chinese delegation was quite clear about its government’s belief that the Arctic should be a “global commons” open to all to exploit and explore – and that it intends to pursue that idea with vigour.

It has already declared itself a “near-Arctic state” – an apparently made-up term – and started building icebreakers and research vessels at a phenomenal rate. But China is not alone in seeking to break into the Arctic Circle.

“Over the last two weeks, down in Australia, we’ve noticed that there are quite a few Asian states that have started looking north to use the Arctic… to follow China [in] using this polar passageway between the Asian and European markets,” says Buchanan.  

India and South Korea in particular are looking to northern trade routes. In March, Turkey sought its first Arctic foothold by joining the Svalbard Treaty, which governs the frozen, Norwegian-administered archipelago.

 

But what do they want?

 

Perhaps the first thing is a bit of prestige. Like space travel, there has always been something glamorous about polar exploration.

 

Britain has Scott and Shackleton, the Norwegians Amundsen, the Americans Robert Peary. Before the space race, the Soviets made a particular point of mining the Arctic for tales of derring-do and national heroism.

 

China is certainly keen on claiming its own slice of icy glory. And glamour is easily combined with science, and “science is, of course, how any state becomes and remains an Arctic player”, points out Kennedy-Pipe.

 

Thus on Monday, the Tan Suo San Hao, China’s brand-new icebreaking research ship, made its triumphant return from a summer of manned deep-dives surveying the Arctic sea bed. Beijing now has set up five research stations in Antarctica and another, the Yellow River station, on Svalbard. By the end of the year, it is expected to complete and launch its first nuclear-powered icebreaker.  

But then there is money: the savings potentially to be made on a cheaper, faster, alternative to the southern Asia-Europe trade artery; the “El Dorado” of untouched mineral deposits that the icemelt could expose; and massive fish stocks.

So it is not surprising that others are taking an interest.

 

Russia and China are, for the time being and foreseeable future, strategic allies in a crusade against American global hegemony. But the question of Russia’s own hegemony in the frozen North – which Putin has jealously guarded – is quite another thing.

 

“I do know from various interviews and some of the research I’ve undertaken in the last month or so, there are fractures there between the Russians and the Chinese over just exactly how they are working together – or not working together – in the Arctic,” says Buchanan.

Russian power there is clear. You cannot use the Northeast Passage without Russian permission, a Russian icebreaker escort and paying Russia for navigation rights. Should anything go wrong, you would rely on Russian search and rescue teams to save you.

 

The Yellow River research station on Svalbard, in the European Arctic, is apparently causing particular tensions between Moscow and Beijing. And Nato, too, has expressed unease about the station.

Last year, Norwegian officials expressed disquiet when a Chinese cruise ship disgorged a group of tourists there including one elderly woman in People’s Liberation Army uniform. Could it be a ploy, some wondered, to test the boundaries of the ban on military activity there?

 

There’s no conclusive proof that it was. But, says Buchanan, pushing accepted norms in the Arctic would only mirror “China’s behaviour on Antarctica”. And that is cause for concern.

“I can tell you, watching the behaviour of the Chinese state throughout the Antarctic, I would be very worried if I was an Arctic stakeholder,” Buchanan notes.

Take the example of China’s five research stations on the southern continent. The seven nations with claims to Antarctica have two particular gripes about them: the first is around fears about jeopardising the treaty forbidding militarisation of the continent – although it is not just China that uses defence assets to get scientists in and out of that very remote environment.

 

The other is about the possible dual-use of “scientific” ground stations with clear intelligence-gathering capabilities.

The reality, Buchanan and Kennedy-Pipe both say, is that China is focused on dominance at both poles.

Achieving that will be difficult, if only because of the phenomenally harsh environment.

 

In the 2010s, for example, Russia launched a programme to revitalise its Arctic military infrastructure. Troops were sent north to clean up and reopen abandoned Soviet bases on the polar archipelagoes of Franz Josef Land, Severnya, the Ainu islands and Wrangel.

 

A new Arctic Brigade was formed for very cold warfare. In one exercise, paratroopers dropped on to and “captured” a one-runway-and-a-prefab-hut aerodrome on Sredny Island, a barren patch of tundra in the ice north of Siberia.

 

But the project was expensive, the bases always tiny, and the whole thing was put on hold by the invasion of Ukraine. The Arctic Brigade is believed to have taken 80 per cent casualties fighting in Kherson.

 

Certainly Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard, has grown rapidly in recent years, says Kennedy-Pipe, who regularly visits the archipelago. Cruise ships have become regular visitors (and an added environmental threat). More countries are sending scientists.

 

But it is still about as remote and fragile as human settlement can get. Births and deaths are forbidden on Svalbard, because medical infrastructure is so sparse. There’s only one water supply. A couple of years ago, the Norwegian government had to consider evacuation because of a food crisis.

 

All that makes it vulnerable to attack or sabotage, but perhaps it is also a blessing. Who would want to start a war in such conditions? As one old quip has it, the first thing an army trying to invade across the Arctic would have to do is get itself rescued.

 

Such are the strategically transformative prizes potentially on offer, however, that the race to control the frozen poles is only going to keep heating up.  

“The Arctic is under threat. Canada’s new defence spending might be too little, too late.  

he Carney government’s first budget promises $81.8 billion in new defence funding over the next five years, with much of it earmarked for Canada’s Arctic. This will be one of the most consequential defence efforts from the Canadian government in decades, and the timing couldn’t be more urgent. A new geopolitical reality is emerging. Canada faces threats from Russia and China, who are armed with new weapons that challenge the ability of the West to defend itself. Making matters worse, we can no longer rely on the U.S. to protect us. But Carney’s spending boost might be too little, too late”,  writes the Canadian publication Maclean's.    

 

 

There is growing concern throughout the Western world about Russian-Chinese cooperation in the Arctic, which obviously has not only economic but also broader geopolitical significance. The latest information about nuclear tests conducted by Russia in the Arctic, but also China's military presence, is leading to increased tensions. The issue of the Arctic has recently been increasingly addressed by governments of the Arctic belt countries, but also by the entire world.

Experts indicate that concerns about Russian-Chinese cooperation in the Arctic are completely justified, and in particular point to the growing interest of China (which is de facto not a country of the Arctic belt, but a "country near the Arctic", as they define themselves), which is already using the Arctic region for trade routes. Experts believe that numerous Chinese scientific expeditions in the Arctic region have an underlying security aspect, and warnings about the Russian-Chinese conquest of the Arctic are taken very seriously, both by governments and parliaments, as well as by security agencies and alliances such as NATO.