China Decoded: Getting busy in the Arctic, again

We've been following China's Arctic ambitions for years now at Newsweek as they've grown, sometimes loudly and sometimes quietly. But all the time. 

It's a key reason why America wants so many new Arctic ships—as many as 11. To operate better in the icy polar regions after years of diminishing presence. Especially as the ice melts and sea routes open.

Because China is back.

On Saturday, the Dubai Tower, a cargo ship, is scheduled to set sail from Zhoushan port in Ningbo, the first of eight planned trips by seven ships operated by the Chinese company Sea Legend (for those counting, the Dubai Tower will travel the route twice, says Yang Chen, the managing director and editor-in-chief of Xinde Marine News).

This is the kind of thing they'll see from the ship:

A test run took place last year when Sea Legend's Istanbul Bridge journeyed the same Northern Sea Route along the long Russian Arctic coast before turning south toward Europe along the Norwegian coast, south also of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, where China is also busy, in an under-the-radar kind of way. More on that below.

But back to the Dubai Tower: if everything goes to plan, this first journey in a potentially "structured" service, as Chen described it, will arrive in Felixstowe port in Britain on September 5. 

That's about 20 days, or half the time needed to sail through the chokepoints that are the Strait of Malacca, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and through the Suez Canal. After Felixstowe, the Sea Legend ships will head to 10 ports in Europe including Tallinn in Estonia, hard by Russia. 

It's a similar route that a predecessor, the Newnew Polar Bear of the Chinese company New New Shipping, took when its anchor cut major fiber-optics and communications cables in the Baltic Sea in 2023. Quite a few officials and analysts outside of China believe that was an act of hybrid warfare, but the Chinese government blamed it on an accident and bad weather.

"From a single voyage in 2025 to a structured seasonal service in 2026, Sea Legend is now testing whether Arctic container shipping can move from a pioneering concept into a repeatable commercial product," wrote Chen, the Dalian shipping site guy.

It's a daring move, since the ships aren't fully ice proof, being Baltic Sea but not Arctic Ocean ice-worthy, according to information supplied by Chen. My colleague John has more on this interrresting company in his section below.

There are concerns about an accident in the fragile Arctic environment.

"If China is going to be cutting corners with these runs, we're looking at environmental hazard here," Marc Lanteigne, a professor of politics at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, told me.

"I think the other issue though is whether China is trying to run before it can walk. Is China going to be able to assure that these cargo runs are regular? Because even under the best conditions we know that the Arctic Ocean has its share of hazards," Lanteigne said.

Nor is that all that China is doing in the Arctic that has the U.S. determined to up its ice ships count.

Also happening, far more quietly, is a renewed push on Norway's Svalbard archipelago for a joint research facility with Russia. It's potentially extremely significant if a Russia-China research axis is growing in the Arctic. In 2024, I traveled to Svalbard to document China's dual-use, or mixed military and civilian, research there.  

The plan has been bubbling since 2023. Then last May, Russia's Murmansk Arctic University published a report with new developments and photos from the Russian settlement of Barentsburg on Svalbard.  

Looking to the sea at Barentsburg on Svalbard:

The report showed Niu Haitao, the vice-rector and a Communist Party standing committee member of Qingdao University, exchanging documents with officials from the Russian university and the flagship Arktikugol company, watched over by the town's consul general, Andrei Chemerilo, who is said by Nordic media to be a Russian spy.

Why Russia has formal settlements on Svalbard, and why the archipelago is Norwegian, is a fascinating story that I won't be able to get into here for space reasons but do look it up—a delicate situation.

Significantly, while the Russians announced the new deal, there are no Chinese-language reports though there are some (very few) that describe Niu's nearly three-week trip to "Russia and the Arctic." I sent Niu, a urologist, an email asking for comment but didn't hear back.

I also asked Arktikugol for comment and got back this non-reply: "Thank you for your request and interest in our activity! All the information on this topic will be provided in our social media which you can access easily online."

China is serious about the Arctic. It published its first Arctic policy in 2018 saying it was a "near-Arctic state" despite being 900 miles from the Arctic Circle. That created suspicion in the U.S., which really is an Arctic state, because of Alaska. 

Recently, China has recalibrated is approach, Lanteigne said. It probably realized that the claim was a bit much. Not everything worked out. Its quieter style has led to quite a lot of people saying China's interest is over. Lanteigne disputes that and I'd agree with him. 

Members and officials celebrate the departure of China's 16^th research expedition to the Arctic in July:

In fact, with the new ships, slow-moving but ongoing plans for a joint research facility, and a few other things, "China is sending a loud signal that 'we are back in the Arctic,'" Lanteigne told me. He dubs it Beijing's "Arctic 2.0" policy.

"Clearly this is China trying to put everything together and saying: 'We have reconstituted our Arctic policy, we are not going to be removed from the region, and we are quite serious about participating in the economic development of the region,'" Lanteigne said.

But China has an enduring interest in the Arctic region for political reasons too. In early February, I attended a meeting of what is essentially a Communist Party influence platform, the China-Nordic Arctic Research Center, in Norway's Tromsø inside the Arctic Circle. The center is headquartered in Shanghai.

Chinese scientists there told me that the main purpose of the event was "social science" and "governance." Governance is what the CCP says when it's interested in political influence. 

"Circumpolar navigation" was another reason to be there, one participant told me, for which it needs lots of detailed cartography, or maps, of the Arctic Ocean, including under the water.

Probably China's current, 16^th Arctic scientific expedition, made up of four icebreaker research ships, will supply some of that—with the U.S. Coast Guard doing its best to monitor them.

"The Coast Guard maintains a strong presence in the Arctic to control, secure, and defend the U.S. northern border and approaches, and uphold U.S. sovereignty against competitors’ economic and military actions in the Arctic," it told my colleague John. I'll be exploring that more next week in a separate analysis.

Put all the pieces of the puzzle together and it suddenly makes a lot more sense why the U.S., which is badly behind both Russia and China with only about two operational ice capable ships, is so keen on getting lots more.

Here's a picture of China's polar research ship Xuelong 2:

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Didi Kirsten Tatlow is Senior Correspondent, International Affairs/Investigations at Newsweek. She is based in Berlin, Germany. You can get in touch by email here.

This week, Sea Legend is one of six Chinese shipping lines charting a new course through the partly frozen Arctic by launching a regular cargo service through Russian waters.

The operators, who plan to capitalize on the short Arctic summer, are securing this first-mover status with help from Russia, which has approved the use of its Northern Sea Route, extending from the Bering Sea in the Pacific to the Kara Sea in the Arctic.

The route forms a large part of the Northeast Passage linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans but, according to Russian law, doesn’t include the Barents Sea, where sea lanes are jointly overseen by Russia and Norway.

Commercial vessels of various classes made 103 transits through the Northern Sea Route last year, the Center for High North Logistics said in December. That’s equal to about three days of traffic through the Suez Canal. 

Sea Legend’s China-Europe Arctic Express, or CAX, will be restricted to the region’s spring and summer seasons, with the Arctic ice pack shrinking to its smallest extent by mid-September each year, according to the U.S. National Ice Center, whose sea ice data appears in both our maps.

Sea Legend is a curious outfit. It was created in 2022 and received operational approval from China’s transport authority in 2023. Since then, it has specialized in sailing “high-risk, high-reward” routes, starting in the Red Sea, industry wonks at Lloyd’s List noted at the time.

Kirsten has already mentioned the Istanbul Bridge, which sailed from the Chinese port of Ningbo-Zhoushan to Felixstowe in the United Kingdom in 20 days, about 11 months ago.

The successful trial run connected China’s busiest port by cargo tonnage to Britain’s largest container port by volume, and was followed by port calls in Hamburg, Gdansk and Rotterdam.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said the vessel was carrying electric cars, lithium batteries and solar panels.

This year, Sea Legend’s ships including the Istanbul Bridge will carry goods from Ningbo to 10 European destinations including Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg—Europe’s three biggest ports—as part of the third-quarter import rush ahead of the holiday season, according to the official schedule.

Traditionally, the small sailing window and higher insurance costs associated with weather-related risks have made the northern corridor a largely impractical choice, but Arctic climate conditions are changing—and war risk insurance is rising because of conflict in the Middle East.

The International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code, which turns 10 on January 1, 2027, is the primary regime governing commercial navigation in the High North via safety and environmental requirements placed upon ship operators.

But as vessel traffic increases in the Arctic, China and its ally Russia could be first in line to introduce new maritime standards that others including the U.S. may need to follow in future.

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