China’s Arctic ambition might defy geography, but it perfectly aligns with its bold plan to reshape global culture.
Yellow River research station (China culture in Arctic)
At the entrance of China’s Yellow River Station, Norway, two Fu Lion sculptures stand guard, symbolizing protection and tradition. The statues reflect Beijing’s efforts to infuse its cultural identity into its Arctic presence. © Rerun van Pelt/Flickr
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In a nutshell
China plans to achieve “polar great power” status by 2030
Beijing is expanding its cultural influence through strategic investments
Arctic presence will serve as a foothold to expand Chinese sway in Europe
China, though 1,400 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, has rarely let such mere details impede its ambitions. In 2018, it declared itself a “near-Arctic state” and announced plans to become a “polar great power” by 2030. That goal was reaffirmed three years later in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 14th Five-Year Plan, which pledged “practical cooperation in the Arctic” and the development of the “Silk Road on Ice.”
The yet-to-be-released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) is expected to extend these efforts, with particular emphasis on what Beijing calls the “ice and snow economy” – a broad term that encompasses everything from scientific research, maritime access and more strikingly, tourism and culture. This last point is particularly revealing.
While it is easy to view China’s Arctic ambitions as purely strategic, for President Xi Jinping culture is inseparable from power. His vision is not merely one of territory or trade; but of civilization. For Beijing, the Arctic is a canvas for the projection of Chinese esthetics, history and ideology – part of the CCP’s wider efforts to frame a new world order with its narrative center stage.
Beijing’s Arctic infrastructure
The CCP’s 2018 Arctic policy white paper, which put forward China’s contested claim to “near-Arctic” status, also insisted that developments in the region have a “vital bearing” on the country’s national interests. At the time, those interests were framed largely in terms of environmental protection and scientific research – pretexts that have since facilitated Beijing’s Arctic presence. Through its Yellow River research station in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and the China-Iceland Arctic Research Observatory, for example, Beijing has conducted studies in marine ecology, space physics and glacier dynamics.
Officially, the aim is to ensure “the sustainability of environmental protection, resource utilization, and human activities.” Yet, its research missions often entail oceanographic surveys and acoustic modeling, mirroring CCP operations in the South China Sea where mapping underwater terrain has played a critical role in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) strategic positioning.
Since 2018, China’s polar programs have been overseen primarily by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the same body responsible for its research in the South China Sea. The overlap between Arctic science and the PLA is hardly incidental. It reflects the doctrine of military-civil fusion, the principle that Chinese civilian and commercial sectors must serve the CCP’s national security objectives. Military-civil fusion is not new – its first iterations were developed under Mao Zedong – yet under President Xi, it has been elevated as a core pillar of state strategy.
The 2020 edition of Science of Military Strategy, the PLA’s central doctrinal publication, makes this connection explicit in China’s Arctic affairs: “Military-civilian mixing is the main way for great powers to achieve a polar presence,” it states, urging China to “give full play to the role of military forces in supporting polar scientific research.”
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Facts & figures
Chinese observatories in the Arctic
China observatories Arctic
China is actively conducting research projects in the Arctic, focusing on environmental monitoring, climate change effects, and the strategic exploration of mineral and oil resources. © GIS
China’s Arctic ambitions have accelerated markedly since 2022, propelled in no small part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The resulting Western sanctions have curtailed Moscow’s access to foreign satellite imagery, for instance, and other technologies critical to Arctic navigation, forcing Moscow into a growing – if wary – reliance on Beijing. This shift is reflected in Russia’s revised 2023 Arctic policy, which abandoned its prior emphasis on multilateral cooperation within the Arctic Council in favor of “relations with foreign states on a bilateral basis.”
Yet it would be a mistake to attribute China’s buoyancy in the region merely to Russian misfortunes. Beijing has been steadily entrenching itself in the Arctic through membership in organizations like the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association, which operates Arctic radar systems with both scientific and defense applications, as well as through targeted investments in key dual-use infrastructure across the European Arctic.
Much of this development is concentrated in Norway, Sweden, Finland and especially Russia, where Chinese firms have been involved in the construction of bridges, railways, subway and commuter train systems, and energy-related infrastructure. A significant portion of this activity is focused along the Northern Sea Route (NSR), the Arctic passage that threads through Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone from the Baltic to the Bering Sea, where melting ice is steadily extending the window of the NSR’s maritime navigability.
Already, a trip from Dalian in China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands via the NSR takes 33 days, compared to 48 through the Suez Canal. But for Beijing, the appeal of the NSR extends beyond logistics. The corridor provides an alternative route to the Suez, the South China Sea and critically, the Strait of Malacca – a passage so strategically fraught that former president Hu Jintao dubbed China’s dependence on it the “Malacca dilemma.”
Beijing’s investments along the NSR reflect this strategic calculus. It has committed $300 million to a coal terminal in Murmansk and signed on to develop a deepwater port at Arkhangelsk, on the White Sea. Through loans from the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, it has financed up to 60 percent of Russia’s Yamal liquefied natural gas project, the “crown jewel” of Moscow’s Arctic ambitions.
The project terminates in the port city of Sabetta, where Chinese firms have built not only the port itself but also Sabetta International Airport and the Bovanenkovo-Sabetta railway, which links western Siberia to the Arctic coast. In the former, the China Communications Company has partnered with Russian Titanium Resources to develop a vast titanium deposit. This project also includes the construction of a railway linking Sosnogorsk to Indiga on the Barents Sea and the expansion of Indiga’s deepwater port.
GIS DOSSIER ARCTIC
Outside of Russia, China does not own any ports in the European or North American Arctic, yet its influence is manifest via other means. Hutchison Ports, a Hong Kong-based company, operates the container terminal at Stockholm Norvik Port, a vital node in the region’s logistics network. In 2023, the ports of Gothenburg and Shenzhen formalized a sister port agreement, ostensibly focused on sustainable transport and increased trade volumes, though such agreements often serve broader strategic aims.
China’s presence also extends to critical infrastructure. In Sweden, China Railways Group, via its subsidiary China Railway Tunnel Group, is engaged in the construction of tunnels for the extension of Stockholm’s metro. Until 2024, MTR Corporation, also based in Hong Kong, operated parts of the city’s subway and commuter trains. In Norway, the Sichuan Road & Bridge Group constructed the Halogaland and Beitstad bridges, completed in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Meanwhile in Finland, the China Investment Corporation has been managing more than 1 million square meters of logistics property since 2017, including facilities in Helsinki’s IA Vuosaari harbor area, Kouvola’s railway logistics centers, and the logistics and warehouse space at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.
Infrastructure as culture
Infrastructure is a language of power, a means of reshaping global influence through concrete and steel. China’s push into port infrastructure, for example, is part of its wider ambition to become a “great maritime power” by 2035, a goal pursued with strategic patience and intent. In 2017, the PLA Navy (PLAN) entered the Baltic Sea for the first time, collaborating with Russian forces for joint exercises. Last August, a four-vessel flotilla from both nations conducted its first-ever patrol above the Arctic Circle, passing through the Bering and Chukchi Seas near Alaska.
Officially, the PLAN has yet to dock at any of Beijing’s European port holdings. Unofficially, precedent suggests it is only a matter of time. Across parts of Africa and Latin America, for example, commercial ports already serve PLAN warships for maintenance and refueling. There is little reason to believe the Arctic will be an exception.
Infrastructure is symbol, culture, projection – for Beijing, perhaps, all three. Consider China’s flagship icebreaker, Xue Long 2 (“Snow Dragon 2”), which launched in 2019 and participated in the flotilla that navigated the Arctic Circle last year. In Chinese tradition, both snow and dragons are laden with meaning. Snow is often depicted as a mystical and cleansing force – one of purity and renewal. In ancient texts such as the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) and Book of Rites (Li Ji), and even in Tang Dynasty poetry, snow is portrayed as both harsh, evoking the bleakness of winter, and hopeful, carrying the promise of spring’s renewal. Or, in the present context, promises of China’s expanding influence in the Arctic, with the CCP’s hopes for a new geopolitical era.
The dragon, too, is emblematic of power and authority. Throughout China’s imperial history, it marked the emperor’s divine right to rule. The seal of Emperor Taizong of Tang (598-649 CE), for example, bore the inscription Longzhong (“Among Dragons”), signifying his status as the “Son of Heaven.” In the Qing Dynasty, too, the imperial throne was known as the “Dragon Throne.”
In naming its premier icebreaker Snow Dragon, then, Beijing’s message is hardly subtle. More broadly, the cultural allusions embedded in the naming of its strategic assets and geopolitical ventures – such as the “Silk Road on Ice,” Beijing’s preferred term for the “Polar Silk Road” – are neither incidental nor merely nostalgic. Names shape identity; they influence how nations perceive and relate to one another and in China’s case, serve to cultivate a sense of familiarity – even inevitability.
The invocation of the “Silk Road,” for instance, frames China’s Arctic aims not as an expansion into unfamiliar terrain but as the logical extension of a historical enterprise. The implication is that China’s expanding regional presence is not an aberration but the latest chapter in a centuries-old saga.
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For President Xi, such narratives are instruments of power. Since 2017, he has repeatedly stressed the importance of “telling China’s story well,” a phrase that, in Beijing’s lexicon, has less to do with national image than national destiny. Shaping the global discourse is integral to the CCP’s aim of China’s so-called national rejuvenation and ultimately, the creation of a “global community of shared future,” in which the Party’s Marxist-Maoist ideology is to be positioned as a viable alternative to the Western-led order.
Infrastructure design is an integral part of this endeavor. Beyond its utilitarian function, the built environment is a vehicle for China’s ideological and cultural messaging. Design, after all, is the most direct means of shaping spaces and the meanings attributed to them.Bridges, for instance – particularly those with iconic status – are more than mere connectors of places. They shape place identity, such as in San Francisco or London. German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in reflecting on the nature of architecture, went so far as to argue that bridges do not merely occupy locations but, in fact, bring them into being.
The CCP appears to share this view. State media outlets have described the Halogaland Bridge as “Norway’s new landmark and business card,” attributing regional development to its construction and citing local voices that speak of a “special relationship” with the structure itself. Infrastructure, in this sense, cultivates belonging.
Similar attributions have been made by Beijing to Chinese-built airports, railways and subways in the European Arctic, often underscoring the distinctly Chinese design, style and motifs embedded into these projects. Consider, for instance, the China-Iceland Arctic Research Observatory, where the tiered structure and central vertical axis have been noted for their subtle nod to Chinese pagodas – symbols of harmony and spiritual ascent in Chinese tradition – while also integrating the modern materials and technologies necessary to withstand the harsh Arctic climate.
At the entrance to China’s Yellow River Station in Norway, two Fu Lion sculptures stand sentinel. The name “Yellow River” itself carries considerable weight: China’s Yellow River basin is widely regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization, and a symbol of cultural resilience and continuity.
Through such means, China is steadily inscribing itself into the Arctic landscape and its historical narrative. The message is one of familiarity: China belongs to the Arctic, and the Arctic to China. It is a quiet process, woven into infrastructure that appears purely functional at first glance, in architectural design, in names that shift the contours of memory and even details as seemingly inconsequential as Fu Lions. It is also slow, unfolding with the deliberate patience that defines Beijing’s strategic approach.
This process is hardly confined to the Arctic; Beijing pursues similar tactics globally. Yet it is worth considering here, where its ambitions are typically framed in terms of military strategy and energy security. They are, of course, those things as well. But those are not ends in themselves.. They serves Beijing’s wider aim of a “rejuvenated” China, not merely dominant but prescriptive, one able to shape global norms and order in its image.
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Scenarios
Likely: China expands its Arctic footprint
China has elevated the Arctic as among its primary geopolitical priorities, and its expanding presence in the region – through maritime routes and critical infrastructure projects – looks set to intensify. These efforts transcend mere strategic aims; they embed China into the Arctic environment and, over time, are likely to influence how the region is publicly represented and to whom it is perceived as belonging.
This aspect of China’s engagement, whether in the Arctic or beyond, is often dismissed as incidental, a secondary concern to its broader strategic ambitions. Yet, in many respects, it is central to Beijing’s global approach. Precisely because it is overlooked, however, Beijing has been able to increasingly imprint itself onto landscapes and histories far from its own. In Stockholm, for instance, where Beijing is involved in the construction of new metro lines, Chinese artwork may soon adorn the station walls – another quiet claim of identity and ownership. The subway itself is an interesting construct, often a reflection of urban identity and at times linked, in psychological terms, to a kind of collective subconscious. To shape such a space, even indirectly, is to shape how a city sees itself. Should Beijing have its way, that image will increasingly be intertwined with Chinese values and identity, as dictated by the CCP.
Also likely: Beijing succeeds at changing the global discourse around China
Little can be done about how China names its projects and strategic assets; it is, of course, free to do as it likes in this regard. Yet the design elements of Beijing’s infrastructure projects in the Arctic, as well as its activities more broadly, merit closer scrutiny. Otherwise, China might not only resolve its “Malacca dilemma,” carving out a path toward becoming a “polar great power” and a dominant maritime force, but it might also refashion identity and history – not just of the Arctic, but of the entire world. Infrastructure, after all, is rarely just infrastructure.
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