How China wants to create a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through the Arctic

Capable of breaking through floes up to 2.5 metres thick, China’s latest Arctic icebreaker is a powerful symbol of Beijing’s ambitions in the far north, where tensions have soared over US President Donald Trump’s attempts to claim control of Greenland.

The proposed bull-nosed, nuclear-powered vessel, unveiled as a conceptual design in December, is intended to provide a prototype for Beijing’s emerging polar fleet. 

China’s state-run 708 Research Institute, which designed the vessel, says it will be a “multirole” cargo and polar tourism ship.

While China describes its interests in the region in terms of trade and research, few analysts doubt the dual civilian-military intent of Beijing’s Arctic programme, from establishing research bases to oil and gas co-operation and joint military patrols with Russia near Alaska.

China’s icebreaker construction programme has added to western alarm about Chinese and Russian advances in the Arctic, which Trump has used to justify an American takeover of Greenland. 

“China views the Arctic as a new frontier that is critical to its geopolitical and geostrategic competition with the US and with the west more broadly,” said Helena Legarda, head of programme for the foreign relations team at Merics. “Beijing wants to expand its influence, footprint and access to the Arctic.”

Those ambitions have deepened concerns among experts and policymakers in the US and other western capitals, who foresee a scramble to secure faster and cheaper shipping lanes and rich natural resources as polar ice caps melt.

The Arctic offers myriad possibilities for military operations, ranging from space and satellite warfare to strategic positioning of nuclear-armed submarines, raising the risk that tensions spill over into confrontation in the race to control the emerging territory.

The shipyard used to build the first indigenous icebreaker also delivered the Fujian, China’s third aircraft carrier, which entered service late last year with some of the country’s most advanced military technologies. The yard is run by state-owned behemoth China State Shipbuilding Corp.

China has harboured ambitions in the Arctic for decades. But its activity has rapidly gained pace in recent years, in line with its growing economic and geopolitical clout.

Beijing bought its first icebreaker, the Xue Long — Snow Dragon — from Ukraine in 1993, before it began developing its own indigenous fleet. In 2004, it opened its first permanent Arctic research station in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, followed by another in Iceland in 2018. 

The same year, Beijing unveiled its Arctic policy, which envisages “a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through developing the Arctic shipping routes”. The policy touted China’s research and “hydrographic surveys” in the region, which it said aimed to improve “security and logistical capacities in the Arctic”.

Icebreakers are crucial for projecting power in polar regions, enabling countries to enter often frozen territory and maintain a presence. The Trump administration has earmarked $9bn for icebreakers and infrastructure in the Arctic and Antarctic to “secure US access, security and leadership in the polar regions”, the defence department said in December.

China described itself as a “near-Arctic state” in its 2018 policy paper, drawing a sharp rebuke from then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo. “There are only Arctic states and non-Arctic states,” Pompeo said. “No third category exists, and claiming otherwise entitles China to exactly nothing.”

Until a few years ago, Merics’ Legarda said, Europe was China’s preferred partner in the Arctic. But after Europe began “de-risking” from China and Russia following the Covid-19 pandemic and Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing grew closer to its northern neighbour. 

The main shipping routes from Europe to China pass through Nato-controlled territories, including Canada and Greenland. 

China has in recent years become particularly interested in a Northern Sea Route which passes through Russian waters.

Arctic routes “can cut voyage distances by 30 to 40 per cent compared with the traditional Suez Canal route”, Yu Yun, a 708 Research Institute researcher, told the state-owned China Daily.

China reported that in September, a container ship called the Istanbul Bridge sailed from Ningbo, in eastern Zhejiang province, via the Arctic Northern Sea Route to Britain’s Felixstowe port. It said the voyage marked “the official opening of the world’s first Arctic container express shipping route between China and Europe”, a route it dubbed the “China-Europe Arctic Express”.

Beijing has also invested in mining, energy and infrastructure projects in Russia’s north, from coal near Murmansk to a deepwater port at Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, which China’s main shipping company, Cosco, reportedly plans to use as its main Arctic base. 

But experts believe that while Russia wants to explore economic opportunities with China, there is a limit to its willingness to co-operate.

“Russia are co-operating closely with China, but there is kind of ambiguity about letting them into the Arctic as [Russia] wants to be the hegemon,” said Tore Sandvik, Norway’s defence minister.

A senior Nordic official said that the eight Arctic states, including Russia, did not want China to take on any formal role in the polar region. “China calls itself a near-Arctic state, and I think that is near enough for all of us. We don’t want a form of governance that gives China a say.”

But James Char, a China expert at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Beijing’s strategy was to engage in long-term “presence-building” in the region, rather than “unabashed power projection”.

Most Chinese military activity, including joint naval and air force patrols with Russia, was near Alaska — about 4,000km away from Greenland — according to Jo Inge Bekkevold, a senior fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. “To date there has not been one single known Chinese military vessel sailing in the Arctic Ocean,” Bekkevold said.

The military usefulness of the North Sea Route was also often overstated, Bekkevold said.

Its narrow sea lanes and short seasons can leave vessels vulnerable in a conflict, he said, adding it would be difficult for China to sneak nuclear submarines into the Arctic through the Bering Strait undetected. 

While the journey from northern China to Europe might be shorter through the Arctic, for exporters in the country’s southern manufacturing heartland, it was still faster to ship through the Suez Canal to Greece, Bekkevold said. 

For its part, China has sought to portray its interests in the Arctic in civilian rather than strategic terms.

The 708 Maritime Institute’s new icebreaker will be capable of transporting hundreds of passengers and cargo containers, and will create a “luxurious, immersive and safe” polar travel experience for passengers, Cui Meng, a polar vessel engineer at the institute, told China Daily.

Char said that China portrayed its activities as “for research or trade and tourism, but I think they’re also staking a claim in some of these Arctic regions for themselves”.

Cartography by Steven Bernard