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High North Center for Business and Governance:
China in the Arctic: Separating Risk from Rhetoric
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This is an op-ed written by an external contributor. All views expressed are the writer's own.
For the past several years, European debate about China in the Arctic has been caught between strategic concern and incomplete evidence. China calls itself a ‘Near-Arctic State’, operates polar research vessels and stations, and promotes a Polar Silk Road.
These activities matter to EU institutions and European Arctic states because they touch shipping, research, critical infrastructure, data and sanctions enforcement. Yet their scale and meaning remain contested.
In 2022, NATO’s then Secretary General warned that China was investing ‘tens of billions of dollars’ in Arctic energy, infrastructure and research. Project-level mapping published in 2025, however, found that headline totals often include proposals that were cancelled, paused or never implemented.
The useful question is therefore not simply whether China matters, but which activities produce concrete economic, governance or security effects—and which remain projections.
Europe needs a comparative risk framework that evaluates conduct, capability and implementation rather than assumptions derived from nationality or unrealised proposals.
Such cases should not be counted as an enduring Chinese presence
Presence is real—but uneven
The first task is to separate announcements from implemented activity. The proposed 10,500-kilometre Arctic Connect cable between Europe and Asia, discussed by Finland and China from 2017, was halted; Finland subsequently moved toward the Far North Fiber project with US and Japanese partners.
In Greenland, China Communications Construction Company withdrew from airport bids in 2019 after the authorities chose Danish financing. Such cases should not be counted as an enduring Chinese presence. At the same time, implemented projects—especially in Russia—should not be dismissed merely because other proposals failed.
A more accurate description is selective and conditional engagement. Chinese actors usually seek access through existing institutions, bilateral agreements and host-state permission.
Their room for manoeuvre expands where commercial or scientific cooperation remains acceptable and narrows when investment screening, sanctions or research-security concerns intensify. This pattern is neither unrestricted expansion nor purely benign cooperation. It is institutional pragmatism shaped by the rules and political choices of Arctic states.
Changes the picture
China’s 2018 Arctic policy makes its interests explicit: scientific knowledge, shipping, resources and a greater role in Arctic governance. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s loss of Western partners has also opened more space for Chinese finance, technology and markets.
Cooperation now includes energy projects, maritime transport, scientific exchange and a 2023 memorandum on maritime law-enforcement cooperation.
Whereas China's activity elsewhere in the Arctic often remains fragmented, politically contested or unrealised, cooperation with Russia increasingly represents the most consequential pathway for China's long-term Arctic role.
This gives the China–Russia relationship greater practical significance than many of China’s earlier projects elsewhere in the Arctic.
Even so, access remains mediated by Russia, which controls the Northern Sea Route and most relevant ports and resources. The relationship is not frictionless, but Chinese activity is no longer merely hypothetical.
In the first half of 2026, China–Russia cargo on the Northern Sea Route exceeded five million tonnes, and the two governments aim for 20 million tonnes by 2030. The route remains seasonal, costly and dependent on Russian infrastructure; it is not about to replace Suez.
China does not enter a governance vacuum
But Europe should assess a growing corridor linking Chinese trade to Russia’s Arctic economy, not a corridor that exists only on paper.
Still constrains access
For European Arctic states, the central fact is that China does not enter a governance vacuum. Norway, Denmark and Greenland, Finland and Sweden retain authority over projects, research access and infrastructure in their jurisdictions.
They have not always made identical choices, but host-state consent, licensing and security review determine what Chinese actors can actually do. The EU adds another layer through internal-market regulation, economic-security instruments, research funding and its partnerships with Arctic regions.
China’s observer status in the Arctic Council illustrates these limits. It can contribute expertise and join working-level activities, but decision-making remains with the eight Arctic states, with the full involvement of Indigenous
Permanent Participants. China can seek influence through knowledge, diplomacy and economic relationships; it cannot convert observer status into formal authority over the region.
Science is both an entry point and a source of legitimate scrutiny. Research stations, icebreakers, satellite observations and seabed data can advance climate knowledge while also generating information with navigation, resource or security value.
The dual-use question is therefore real, but it cannot be answered from an actor’s nationality alone. In 2025, for example, US authorities monitored two Chinese research vessels operating over the US extended continental shelf to determine whether research requiring coastal-state consent was taking place.
Although this occurred outside the European Arctic, it shows the operational questions European states also need to address: what data are collected, under whose authority, where they are stored and who can access them.
The appropriate response is evidence-based vigilance. Ownership and control, location, data access, sanctions exposure and potential military utility should be assessed project by project. Low-risk climate research or ordinary commerce should not automatically be treated as a security threat.
Conversely, the language of cooperation should not exempt opaque, strategically located or sanctions-sensitive activity from scrutiny.
EU’s 20. Russia-sanctions package designated entities based in China
The EU’s China relationship
Arctic assessments cannot be separated from the wider EU–China relationship. At the July 2025 EU–China summit, the EU described a €730 billion trading relationship but also a €305 billion goods deficit, systemic distortions and growing Chinese manufacturing overcapacity.
In April 2026, the EU’s 20. Russia-sanctions package designated entities based in China for supplying dual-use goods or weapons systems to Russia’s military-industrial complex.
Trade defence, economic security and concern about China’s support for Russia therefore shape how European policymakers interpret Chinese activity in the Arctic—even when a specific Arctic project is civilian.
This wider context should sharpen analysis, not substitute for it. Failed Chinese proposals in Greenland are not evidence of a realised sovereignty challenge, although they may reveal strategic interest and long-term ambitions.
Nor should China become a catch-all explanation for every form of Arctic pressure. An exclusive focus on Beijing risks overlooking how competition among allies, strategic resource interests and broader geopolitical developments can also shape Arctic outcomes.
Michael Albertus’s discussion of ‘recolonisation’ and the return of territorial acquisition is relevant here: current pressure on Greenland shows that coercive Arctic geopolitics can also originate outside the China–Russia relationship.
Europe needs a comparative risk framework that judges conduct and capability, not a single-country narrative.
What comes next
Four developments are likely to determine the weight of China’s Arctic role.
First, China–Russia cooperation will remain decisive. Continued Western sanctions may increase Russia’s need for Chinese markets, equipment and logistics, while Russian concerns about dependence may still limit Chinese access.
The practical test is whether cooperation produces durable assets, regular shipping and enforceable institutional arrangements—not how ambitious joint declarations sound.
The challenge is to build European capacity and common security standards
Second, critical infrastructure will move to the centre of European Arctic policy. Subsea cables, satellites, ports, energy facilities and research networks combine civilian value with strategic vulnerability.
The policy challenge is to build European capacity and common security standards while preserving useful international science and commercially viable connectivity.
Third, climate change will expand access unevenly rather than create an open Arctic overnight. More shipping and resource activity will increase demand for monitoring, search and rescue, environmental protection and reliable communications. It will also create more opportunities for Chinese participation.
Physical presence, commercial viability and strategic effect must therefore be monitored over time rather than inferred from climate projections alone.
These trends point toward neither simple containment nor a return to unrestricted engagement. Instead, they suggest a model of conditional access in which cooperation remains possible but becomes increasingly dependent on transparency, reciprocity, ownership structures, data governance and security considerations.
They favour conditional access: clear rules, transparent ownership, reciprocal research arrangements, enforceable data conditions and proportionate restrictions where concrete risks are identified.
Fourth, Europe's economic-security agenda will increasingly shape Arctic governance. Instruments related to foreign investment screening, research security, critical infrastructure protection, export controls and sanctions enforcement are becoming more closely connected to Arctic policy.
Future debates may focus less on whether China should participate in Arctic projects and more on the conditions under which participation is considered acceptable.
Policy implications for the EU and European Arctic states
Establish a shared project-level register of Chinese Arctic activity that clearly distinguishes proposed, paused, cancelled and implemented projects, identifies beneficial ownership and records changes over time.
Apply a common risk-assessment template to critical infrastructure and research cooperation, covering location, control, data access, sanctions exposure and plausible dual-use functions, while retaining lower-risk cooperation. The framework should also include mechanisms for consultation with Indigenous organisations and relevant local authorities where projects may affect regional communities.
Use the EU’s forthcoming 2026 Arctic-policy review to connect regional policy with economic security, research security and digital sovereignty. The review should give particular attention to resilient European-owned subsea cables and other connectivity, as the recent SWP analysis recommends.
The EU and European Arctic states should judge Chinese engagement by what is implemented
European policy debate should move beyond the binary choice between alarmism and complacency. China is an important Arctic actor, but its influence is uneven, constrained by host states and increasingly concentrated through Russia.
The EU and European Arctic states should judge Chinese engagement by what is implemented, where it is located, who controls it and what capabilities it creates. The central challenge is not determining whether China is present in the Arctic. It is distinguishing between anticipated influence and measurable influence.
A policy grounded in evidence rather than assumptions will be better positioned to restrict genuinely risky activities, preserve beneficial cooperation and maintain credibility in an increasingly contested Arctic. This keeps Europe’s Arctic policy aligned with evidence rather than headlines.
