Northern expedition: China’s Arctic activities and ambitions
Rush
Doshi, Alexis
Dale-Huang, and Gaoqi ZhangApril 2021
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Former Brookings
Expert
Research Assistant, Security and Foreign Affairs - U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission
Former Intern - Foreign Policy, Center
for East Asia Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution
Fellow, Public Sector - Information
Technology Industry Council
Former Intern - Foreign Policy, Center for East Asia
Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution
This report explores China’s internal
discourse on the Arctic as well as its activities and ambitions across the
region. It finds that China sometimes speaks with two voices on the Arctic: an
external one aimed at foreign audiences and a more cynical internal one
emphasizing competition and Beijing’s Arctic ambitions. In examining China’s
political, military, scientific, and economic activity — as well as its
coercion of Arctic states — the
report also demonstrates the seriousness of China’s aspirations to become a
“polar great power.”[1] China has sent high-level figures to the
region 33 times in the past two decades, engaged or joined most major Arctic
institutions, sought a half dozen scientific facilities in Arctic states,
pursued a range of plausibly dual-use economic projects,expanded its icebreaker
fleet, and even sent its naval vessels into the region. The eight Arctic sovereign
states — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the
United States — exercise great influence over the Arctic and its strategically
valuable geography. China aspires to be among them.
The report advances several primary findings:
1
China seeks to become
a “polar great power” but downplays this goal publicly.
Speeches by President Xi Jinping and
senior Chinese officials with responsibility for Arctic policy are clear that
building China into a “polar great power” by 2030 is China’s top polar goal.
Despite the prominence of this goal in these texts, China’s externally facing
documents — including its white papers — rarely if ever mention it, suggesting
a desire to calibrate external perceptions about its Arctic ambitions,
particularly as its Arctic activities become the focus of greater international
attention.
2
China describes the
Arctic as one of the world’s “new strategic frontiers,” ripe for rivalry and
extraction.[2]
China sees the Arctic — along with the
Antarctic, the seabed, and space — as ungoverned or undergoverned spaces. While
some of its external discourse emphasizes the need to constrain competition in
these domains, several others take a more cynical view, emphasizing the need to
prepare for competition within them and over their resources. A head of the
Polar Research Institute for China, for example, called these kinds of public
spaces the “most competitive resource treasures,” China’s National Security Law
creates the legal capability to protect China’s rights across them, and top
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials have suggested China’s share of these
resources should be equal to its share of the global population.[3]
3
Chinese military texts
treat the Arctic as a zone of future military competition.
Although several externally facing
Chinese texts downplay the risk of military competition in the Arctic, which
would likely be harmful to Chinese goals, military texts take the opposite
perspective. They note that, “the game of great powers” will “increasingly
focus on the struggle over and control of global public spaces” like the Arctic
and Antarctic and argue that China “cannot rule out the possibility of using
force” in this coming “scramble for new strategic spaces.”[4] Chinese diplomats describe the region as
the “new commanding heights” for global military competition too while scholars
suggest controlling it allows one to obtain the “three continents and two
oceans’ geographical advantage” over the Northern Hemisphere.[5]
4
Chinese texts make
clear that its investments in Arctic science are intended to buttress its
Arctic influence and strategic position.
Although externally facing messaging
indicates China’s desire to pursue scientific research for its own benefit and
for global welfare, China’s top scientific figures and high-level CCP members
are clear that science is also motivated by a drive for “the right to speak,”
for cultivating China’s “identity” as an Arctic state, and for securing
resources and strategic access.[6] China’s polar expeditions and various
research stations assist Beijing with its resource extraction, with Arctic
access, and with acquiring experience operating in the Arctic climate.
5
China supports
existing Arctic governance mechanisms publicly but complains about them
privately.
Several Chinese texts indicate
frustration with Arctic mechanisms and concern that the country will be
excluded from the region’s resources. Official texts suggest gently that the
region’s importance now transcends “its original inter-Arctic States,” while
scholars once feared Arctic states would launch an admittedly unlikely
“eight-state polar region alliance” or institutionalize the Arctic Council in
ways that “strengthen their dominant position” at China’s expense.[7] These texts stress China’s pursuit of
“identity diplomacy,” namely, terming China a “near-Arctic State” because it is
affected by climate change.[8] They also indicate an interest in
pushing alternative Chinese governance concepts — in some cases to supplement
and other cases to run outside the Arctic Council — including a “Polar Silk
Road” and China’s “community with a shared future for mankind,” though
specifics are often lacking.[9]
6
Accommodating China’s
Arctic ambitions rarely produces enduring goodwill.
Norway was the first country to allow
China to build an Arctic science station and Sweden was the first worldwide to
allow China to build its own completely China-owned satellite facility. Both
these efforts, which were richly praised by China at the time, did not protect
either country from later economic coercion and harsh condemnation by China. In
both cases, China punished these countries not only for the actions of their
governments but also for the independent actions of their civil societies,
which were to award Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize and to
investigate China’s kidnapping of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai. Efforts by both
Norway and Sweden to reverse the slide — with Sweden keeping relatively quiet
about the rendition of its citizen and Norway vigorously backing China’s
pursuit of Arctic Council observer status — were only met with restrictions on
Norwegian fish exports and colorful threats of coercion against Sweden.
7
Arctic dependence on
trade with China is often overstated, and trade flows are smaller than with
other powers.
Chinese economic statecraft is feared by
some in the Arctic and around the world, but the region’s dependence on China
is remarkably small. For the five smallest Arctic economies — Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, Finland, and Iceland — China accounts for an average of only 4.0% of
their exports, less than the United States
(6.2%) and far less than the NATO and EU
economies excluding the United States (70.3%).[10]
8
China has invested
significantly in Arctic diplomacy to boost its regional influence.
China has sent high-level figures — at
the levels of president, premier, vice president, foreign minister, and defense
minister — to visit Arctic countries other than the United States and Russia 33
times over the last 20 years. Beijing lobbied heavily to become an Arctic
Council observer, became a strong presence at many other regional Track II
fora, and launched its own diplomatic and Track II regional efforts, including
a China-Russia Arctic Forum and the China-Nordic Arctic Research Center, to
deepen relations with governments and sub-national actors.
9
China’s military
profile in the Arctic has increased, and its scientific efforts provide
strategic advantages too.
China has dispatched naval vessels to
the Arctic on two occasions, including to Alaska and later to Denmark, Sweden,
and Finland for goodwill visits. It has built its first indigenously produced
icebreaker, has plans for more conventional heavy icebreakers, and is
considering investments in nuclear-powered icebreakers too.
10
China’s scientific
activities in the Arctic give it greater operational experience and access.
China has sent 10 scientific expeditions
into the region on its Xuelong icebreaker,
generally with more than 100 crew members, that officials acknowledge give it
useful operational and navigational experience. China has also established
science and satellite facilities in Norway, Iceland, and Sweden while pursuing
additional facilities in Canada and Greenland — with its facility in Norway
able to berth more than two dozen individuals and provide resupply. Finally,
China has used the Arctic as a testing ground for new capabilities whether
related to satellites coverage, fixed-wing aircraft, autonomous underwater
gliders, buoys, and even an “unmanned ice station” configured for research.
11
China’s infrastructure
investments in the Arctic sometimes appear dual-use.
Several Chinese infrastructure projects
that have little economic gain have raised concerns about strategic motivations
and dual-use capabilities. These include efforts by a former Chinese propaganda
official to purchase 250 square kilometers of Iceland to build a golf course
and airfield in an area where golf cannot be played and later to buy 200 square
kilometers of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Chinese companies have also sought
to purchase an old naval base in Greenland; to build three airports in
Greenland; to build Scandinavia’s largest port in Sweden; to acquire
(successfully) a Swedish submarine base; to link Finland and the wider Arctic
to China through rail; and to do the same with a major port and railway in
Arkhangelsk in Russia.
12
China’s commodity
investments in the Arctic have a mixed track record.
Despite some important successes, a
large number of Chinese investments have failed. For example, a major Chinese
firm abandoned a Canadian zinc mine, refused to pay creditors, and left local
governments to pay to clean up an environmental disaster. Another firm
disappointed in its investment later sued, saying it had overpaid. In
Greenland, a Chinese conglomerate abandoned its iron mine after running into
legal trouble in China. In Iceland, a Chinese company withdrew from an Arctic
exploration partnership due to poor initial resource estimates.
This report was
completed before Rush Doshi’s and Alexis Dale-Huang’s government service,
involves only open sources, and does not necessarily reflect the official
policy or position of any agency of the U.S. government.
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