A senior Chinese official for the polar regions called on China and Russia to work more closely together in the Arctic, including in science, while on a visit to a territory that is owned by NATO ally Norway.
The comments by Tiejun Ling, a deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration, were made as a record three Chinese icebreakers traversed the freezing seas near the North Pole in a further sign of China’s deepening interest in the increasingly contested region.
“We have joint interests and ways to develop cooperation further. We should design a system where Russian and Chinese researchers can visit scientific stations of our countries,” High North News quoted Ling as saying on a visit to Norway’s Arctic Svalbard archipelago last week.
The visit on August 21—apparently still unreported a week later by Chinese state media—highlights growing tensions surrounding the activities of both China and Russia in the High North, where NATO states are watching increasingly warily for signs of deepening cooperation following Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which Beijing has not condemned.
Relations between Russia and NATO have deteriorated sharply since the invasion. The Chinese Embassy in Oslo did not immediately reply to Newsweek‘s request for comment.
In Svalbard, Ling discussed with Russian science officials that China may join a research station that Russia operates in the traditional Russian coal-mining settlement of Barentsburg, according to the online newspaper run by Nord University’s High North Center in Norway, which quoted the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI).
Chinese polar officials were hosted in Barentsburg by Aleksandr Makarov, the director of AARI, High North News said. Ling is a senior Communist Party member at the top body that manages China‘s polar affairs.
According to the report, Turkish scientists also visited Svalbard in July and discussed with Russia’s Trust Arktikugol company there plans to open a new scientific research base for BRICS members in another Russian settlement, the nearly abandoned town of Pyramiden.
That too could be viewed as a potential challenge to sovereign Norway, which says it has overall control of scientific research in the archipelago where “warlike purposes” are forbidden by treaty. The 1920 treaty offers economic rights to signatories including Russia and China.
Aerial view of China’s icebreaker Ji Di berthing at the pier of Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center on July 3 in Qingdao, Shandong Province of China.
Sun Qimeng/VCG via AP
China has long chafed at what it sees as research restrictions placed by Norway on activities in the archipelago, and is seeking greater access to the Arctic, part of its growing strategic and economic interests.
In July, Newsweek revealed extensive, potential dual-use—military as well as civilian—research by Chinese scientists in Svalbard, with a key Chinese institute operating there saying it serves the military and collaborating with multiple units of the People’s Liberation Army.
“Chinese researchers were invited to participate in the work of the Russian Arctic scientific expedition on Spitsbergen,” High North News said, referring to the main island in Svalbard where Barentsburg is located. They were to conduct studies aboard Russia’s drifting ice station, North Pole. Also reportedly present at the meeting were officials from the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC).
Chinese and Russian officials agreed to start preparations for joint research projects in the region, with follow-up meetings in the fall, High North News said.
And in a reciprocal move, the Chinese polar officials at the meeting invited the Russians to participate in an expedition on PRIC’s icebreaker research vessel, the Xue Long 2.
Newsweek can reveal that the icebreaker visited Murmansk in the far northwestern part of Russia this week, according to open-source ship-tracking data of its automatic identification system.
China has called itself a “near-Arctic state” and says it is an important stakeholder in Arctic affairs—even though the East Asian country’s territory is 900 miles away from the Arctic Circle.
In an updated Arctic strategy last month, the U.S. Department of Defense called for increased military presence, intelligence capabilities and cooperation between Washington and its Western allies in the region.
The visit to Barentsburg comes less than a month after Chinese scientists celebrated their scientific achievements in the Arctic by marking the 20th anniversary of operations at China’s Yellow River, or Huanghe, research facility at Norway’s Ny-Ålesund research station on Spitsbergen.
“At 9:00 a.m. local time on July 28, all the inspection team members of the Huanghe Station lined up, sang the national anthem, and saluted the national flag,” read a report on the PRIC website that said Chinese scientists had visited 600 times and undertaken 250 projects in that time.
Newsweek contacted PRIC and Trust Arktikugol for comment.
