How China’s Arctic plans went awry

Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet, penned one of his most famous works, “To a Mouse,” in 1785. It’s about a small rodent whose plans are suddenly and catastrophically disrupted when the narrator, while plowing one of the fields on his farm, accidentally destroys the mouse’s nest, which it had built to survive the coming winter. It includes the immortal line “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” — or, in standard English, “the best laid plans of mice and men / oft go awry.”

What does a poem about what Burns called a “wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie” have to do with China and its Arctic aspirations? A great deal, as it turns out. Over the past few years, Beijing’s best-laid schemes to become a key stakeholder in the high north — perhaps even a “polar great power” — have gone disastrously aglay, leaving China with, as Burns put it in connection with his famously unhoused mouse, “nothing but grief and pain / rather than promised joy.”

What grand future had Beijing planned for itself in the Arctic? Leaving aside the massively overblown claims that China has committed itself to dominating the region, aspiring to become the Arctic superpower, there is little doubt that Beijing has long aspired to become a major player in the high north.

Climate change and the shrinking of the polar ice cap have transformed the Arctic into what China officially classifies as one of the world’s “new strategic frontiers,” a space ripe with new opportunities to extract natural resources (oil, gas, rare earth elements and even fish), to invest in infrastructure and to develop new and more secure shipping routes (the Northern Sea Route and the Transpolar Sea Route).

So it is perhaps unsurprising that China would have developed an ambitious vision of itself as a “near-Arctic” power, perhaps even a “polar great power,” over the past decade or so. But what was China’s Arctic strategy? Answers can be found in statements such as China’s 2018 White Paper, various speeches delivered by President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials with responsibility for Arctic policy, and a number of People’s Liberation Army military publications.

First, the plan was to become a polar great power by building on China’s record of scientific diplomacy. While outwardly promoting the pursuit of scientific research for the common good, China’s prominent scientific figures, and high-level members of the Chinese Communist Party, asserted that scientific endeavors are also driven by the desire to assert a “right to speak” about Arctic affairs, to cultivate China’s identity as an Arctic stakeholder, and to ensure access to strategic resources. 

Second, the plan envisioned an intensification of regional economic partnerships. Beijing sought to enhance its access to Arctic economic resources by investing in a wide range of onshore mining, offshore oil exploration and extraction, and infrastructure development projects. 

Third, Beijing saw enhanced participation in regional governance initiatives as a key element of its Arctic strategy. It aspired both to play a larger role within existing institutions, like the Arctic Council and various Track II forums, and to create alternative Chinese governance mechanisms — including the “Polar Silk Road,” the China-Russia Arctic Forum and the China-Nordic Arctic Research Center — to complement, or even transcend, existing institutions. 

Fourth, without sovereign jurisdiction in the region, Chinese leaders pursued cooperation with Russia in the economic and governance fields. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin released a joint statement mere weeks before Russia attacked Ukraine proclaiming a “no limits” partnership that included “practical cooperation for the sustainable development of the Arctic” and the further opening of bilateral Arctic maritime commerce.

Finally, China’s Arctic strategy potentially involves an expansion of its military footprint in the region. Chinese military texts treat the Arctic as a space of future military competition, noting that “the game of great powers” will “increasingly focus on the struggle over and control of global public spaces” like the Arctic. These texts further argue that China “cannot rule out the possibility of using force” in the inevitable “scramble for new strategic spaces.”

But recent events have sent those best laid schemes well and truly aglay. 

To be sure, Beijing has enjoyed some measure of success. It became an observer on the Arctic Council; invested heavily in Russian Arctic infrastructure; and made its presence felt in the high north, especially in the field of scientific diplomacy.

But the harsh reality from Beijing’s perspective is that recent developments, much like Burns’s plow, have left considerable pain in place of once-promised joy. The fate of both China’s Polar Silk Road initiative and its “without limits” partnership with Russia tell perhaps the most important part of the tale. 

Almost all of China’s ambitious plans have come to naught. Notable among these faltering or failed projects are Chinese investments in the Kuannersuit rare earths and uranium mine and the Isua iron-extraction projects in Greenland; the acquisition of TMAC Resources, a mineral exploration and development company in Canada; China’s proposed railway connection between northern Finland and Norway; liquified natural gas investment in Alaska; land acquisitions in Iceland and Norway; the purchase of a gold mine in Nunavut, Canada; a tunnel between Finland and Estonia; and its effort to establish an underwater communications conduit along the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Europe.

At the same time, the suspension of the Arctic Council since the onset of the Ukraine War has closed an important window into polar affairs for China. And this is just a snapshot of China’s misfires and setbacks associated with the Western members of the Arctic community. 

While one might have expected China to have had greater success with Russia, this aspect of China’s Arctic strategy has also mostly been a failure. Chinese apprehension about a too-close political and economic relationship with Moscow has been growing steadily since February 2022. Chinese firms have been tentative at best in their engagement with the Arctic liquefied natural gas project in Siberia, and no Chinese cargo vessels transited the Northern Sea Route in 2022, reflecting Beijing’s concerns about Western sanctions. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s “no limits” partner has become more of a hindrance to Beijing than a help.

Whether in the economic, diplomatic or military realms, the combined effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, mounting resistance among Western powers that largely predates that invasion, and China’s own unforeseen economic woes have effectively sent Beijing’s grand Arctic schemes seriously awry.

So it seems that Scotland’s bard was indeed on to something: the best laid schemes of mice and men (and CCP strategic planners) aft do gang aglay. Perhaps this is a wee lesson all hubristically self-assured planners — Chinese and American, strategic and otherwise — would do well to reflect on.

Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. Follow him @aalatham.