For years, the High North was often imagined as a region where science, environmental protection and practical cooperation could remain insulated from great-power rivalry. Arctic exceptionalism is over — if it ever fully existed. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine broke this assumption. Arctic Council cooperation is weakened; Finland and Sweden have joined NATO; Western-Russian research ties have largely collapsed; and areas such as Greenland, the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap, and the Barents region are again discussed as strategic spaces. Rather than a protected zone of cooperation, the Arctic now reveals how climate change, military geography, and geopolitical rivalry reinforce one another. This matters especially for China, whose 2018 Arctic policy was written for a much more cooperative Arctic.
China’s 2018 Arctic policy was remarkable for coming as a surprise. At a time when the Belt and Road Initiative was already intensely debated in Europe, Beijing extended its connectivity thinking into the High North through the idea of a Polar Silk Road. China had already built a long polar research presence through expeditions, the Yellow River Station in Svalbard, and the Snow Dragon icebreakers. Yet the 2018 policy translated this presence into strategic language. By calling itself a “near-Arctic state”, Beijing signaled that the Arctic was no longer a distant region, but part of China’s thinking about science, resources, shipping, energy security, and alternative sea routes. For a trading power exposed to chokepoints from Malacca to Suez and the Gulf, even an uncertain Arctic route has strategic value as an option. The document softened this claim with the vocabulary of respect, cooperation, win-win outcomes, sustainability, and rules-based governance. That reassurance worked best in a cooperative Arctic. In a fractured Arctic, the same language now sounds incomplete.
China’s relationship with Russia is central to this shift. China’s 2018 policy itself treated peace and stability as the precondition for Arctic activity. In a fractured Arctic, Beijing’s closeness to Moscow is therefore harder to reconcile with its own reassurance language. Since Russia’s war against Ukraine, both countries have moved closer in Arctic diplomacy, shipping and coast guard cooperation, including activity near the Bering Sea, while energy and infrastructure projects remain selective and uneven. The “no limits” partnership has limits in the High North. China would benefit most from a Northern Sea Route that gradually functions like other global sea lanes. Russia wants the route open enough to attract Chinese cargo, but controlled enough to generate revenue, enforce regulation and preserve strategic leverage.
Recent container transits may look spectacular, but they should not be confused with an Arctic Suez Canal. Even COSCO Shipping has remained cautious rather than turning the Northern Sea Route into a regular corridor. Ice, insurance, sanctions, Russian regulation and limited infrastructure still matter. Even if Arctic shipping becomes more feasible, its political attractiveness for Europe remains uncertain: a Polar Silk Road would bring Chinese commercial presence closer to Northern Europe through a Russian-controlled route. For Nordic, Baltic and EU actors, this is not merely logistics, but strategic exposure. Recent Russian efforts to train Chinese seafarers for polar navigation show that practical cooperation is advancing, while the route remains commercially uncertain and politically controlled.
Russian military thinking increasingly treats the Baltic Sea and the Arctic as connected theatres following Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership. The end of Northern Dimension cooperation with Russia removed an earlier bridge between the EU, Norway, Iceland, Russia, the Baltic Sea, Northwest Russia and the Arctic. The Baltic states should therefore not treat Arctic policy as a Nordic speciality. They are not Arctic states, but they are exposed to a more militarised and China-Russia-connected High North.
If Europe sees the Arctic mainly as a social and environmental space while others treat it as strategic geography, it risks marginalising itself. With research ties to Russia largely broken, Europe has reason to keep Arctic climate science open, including with China, where cooperation is transparent and low-risk. Selective engagement means openness where climate science, environmental monitoring and maritime safety benefit; screening where infrastructure, data and dual-use activities create risk; and stronger Nordic-Baltic-EU coordination. For Europe, the challenge is that China increasingly treats the Arctic like space, cyberspace and the deep sea: a new frontier where civilian research and infrastructure can also serve strategic functions.
Reinhard Biedermann
Professor
Department of Global Politics and Economics, Tamkang University
Taiwan
