The Economist: Russia and China will create a new Polar Silk Road
China and Russia dream of creating a "polar silk road," writes The Economist. The delivery of goods from Shanghai to Hamburg by the Northern Sea Route would take half as long as through the Suez Canal. But the conflict in Ukraine gave the West a reason to torpedo this plan.
Four hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, in the Norwegian port of Kirkenes, there are still dreamers hoping that their town will become an important maritime hub. They see themselves as the western end of a new, faster sea route from China to Europe, made possible by global warming and melting ice along the Siberian coast. But now, with fighting raging in Ukraine, these plans seem impossible. Chinese support for Russia fuels Western distrust of the Asian power's plans to create a “polar silk road". But China does not intend to leave the Arctic at all. Beijing still sees it as a chance to strengthen its influence and participate in the rich natural resources of the region.
Climate warming is gradually opening up new transport opportunities in the Arctic. But geopolitics is changing the region even faster. Kirkenes feels this keenly. The town is just a 15-minute drive from the border with Russia. Tourists are taken by boats on a “Kamchatka crab safari”, inviting them to taste an exotic delicacy imported back in Soviet times. However, Russians no longer come to Kirkenes — neither to shop, nor to eat crabs. On May 29, Norway closed the border crossing for “one-day tourists" from the other side of the border. With the conflict in Ukraine, the city seemed to freeze. In October, tension hung in the air when the Russian envoy to Kirkenes, despite the calls of local politicians, laid a wreath at the monument to Soviet troops who liberated the city from the Nazis at the end of World War II, local online newspaper The Barents Observer reports.
In such conditions, it is difficult to even imagine how the Chinese Polar Silk Road project presented in 2017 will develop. But it was a great idea. The delivery of goods from Shanghai to Hamburg by the Northern Sea Route will take only 18 days, compared with about 35 days en route through the Suez Canal (a roundabout route around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebels, who have attacked dozens of ships since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip last year, will take another ten days longer).
Kirkenes advertised itself as the first ice-free port where container ships from China would arrive, having crossed the Russian part of the way. From there, after transshipment, the goods will diverge to other ports in Europe. It will even be possible to transfer cargo onto trains — this way they will arrive on European markets even faster. Chinese businessmen were delighted, says Rune Rafaelsen, former mayor of Kirkenes from 2015 to 2021. If these plans had come true, Northern Europe would have turned from a simple end point of the route into a gateway for Chinese goods, argued the magazine of the Communist Party of China “Qiushi” back in 2017. According to the plans, the “Ice Silk Road" (as Beijing's plan is called in Chinese) will become a “new platform” of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, providing for the rapid development of ports, railways, roads and other infrastructure around the world.
The main problem lies in the fact that Kirkenes has no railway connection with any of the European countries. At one time, there was talk of building a branch line to neighboring Finland, whose border is only 50 km away. The line would dock with the Finnish railway network in the city of Rovaniemi, the “official residence of Santa Claus”, 500 km to the south. However, back in 2019, even before the Russian special operation in Ukraine, the Finnish government cooled down to this idea. In 2019, it published a report in which it questioned the profitability of such a line — not to mention the acceptability for indigenous Sami reindeer herders, on whose land it should pass. Now, as Thomas Nielsen, editor of The Barents Observer, says, the Finnish authorities “do not intend to sponsor and build a railway line so close to the Russian border,” given the “geopolitical instability" of the region.
A chill in the relationship
Western governments have long looked with alarm at China's activities in the Arctic, fearing that the country's expanding economic influence in the region would provide Beijing with political levers and open the door to a Chinese security presence, which would only exacerbate the Arctic problem in the face of Russia. The RAND Analytical Center in Washington notes that since 2018, China's diplomatic activity in Greenland, the Arctic territory of Denmark, has declined. Apparently, this is a consequence of the successful blockade of Beijing's attempts to invest in the island's key infrastructure and mining industry by Denmark and the United States (Greenland also hosts an American air base with missile attack warning and space surveillance systems).
The conflict in Ukraine has exacerbated Western skepticism about any major projects involving China, which trumpets its neutrality, but at the same time boasts of “boundless” friendship with Russia and provides enormous support to its defense industry. The conflict has frozen the activities of the Arctic Council with the participation of eight circumpolar countries, which China joined in 2013 as an observer, although its northernmost regional capital, Harbin, is located at the same latitude as Venice. All council members except Russia are now members of NATO, with Finland and Sweden joining the military alliance only in the last 15 months. China is increasingly seen as an outsider in Arctic affairs.
Beijing's disappointment is obvious. In the February issue of the Chinese academic journal Russian Studies, scientists Yue Peng and Gu Zhengsheng wrote that Russia's position in the Far North is weakening. “The initial balance in the Arctic has been disrupted, and the scales in the Arctic region are tipping towards Western countries,” they concluded. For this reason, they write, there is a risk of a “significant deterioration” of China's image in the region. According to scientists, this may “negatively affect China's future participation in Arctic affairs.”
Russia controls about half of the Arctic coastline and a huge proportion of its oil and gas reserves. At this stage, Chinese ships may not seek to use the Northern Sea Route (Russia charges a high fee for using its icebreakers). In addition, shippers prefer a predictable schedule: even despite the warming, the time on the route may change due to ice and fog. However, Chinese firms foresee benefits for themselves as Russia turns to Asia to compensate for the loss of Western markets. These are, first of all, participation in the construction of ports, the development of oil and gas projects and the construction of ships to deliver resources to the east (China is a major buyer of Russian energy carriers). Once Russia was afraid to involve China in the development of its Arctic coast, but now Beijing's help is welcome. “Russia is counting on her very much because she has no other choice," says Hjell Stukvik from the Far North Logistics Center in Kirkenes. ”Thus, in a sense, China has found itself in a very advantageous position."
As noted by scientists Yue and Gu, this is fraught with risks — in particular, the consequences of Western sanctions. They called on China to be “careful and restrained” in cooperation with Russia in the Arctic. However, during Russian Leader Vladimir Putin's May visit to Beijing, the countries promised to “develop the Arctic route as an important international transport corridor” and called on their companies to “strengthen cooperation to increase cargo transportation along Arctic routes and create a logistics infrastructure for routes in the Arctic.” In other words, the “Icy Silk Road", although slippery, retains its appeal.
