/ world today news/ Russia and China are ready to establish a joint working body for the development of the Northern Sea Route, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on March 21 during talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
„Our countries are united by a long land border, so the formation of rail and road corridors in the direction of China-Europe and back through the territory of Russia remains an absolute priority to meet the needs of growing cargo and passenger traffic.” noted the head of the Russian state, recalling the commissioning of infrastructure facilities: “The opening of traffic on the bridges will reduce the cost and conditions of transporting goods between Russia and China, expand the geography of trade and increase the volume of transit with Asia-Pacific countries.”
The promising agreements between Moscow and Beijing to develop cooperation in the development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) are largely due to Beijing’s program to strengthen Chinese positions on this transcontinental artery. At the same time, China’s Arctic interests in one way or another come into contact with the sovereignty of Russia and other countries of the region along the trans-Arctic routes.
“…China is also interested in the Arctic, seeing it as an opportunity for navigation and a place to deploy objects of the space and navigation infrastructure,” wrote the authors of the information note of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, prepared in 2020. “Problems and prospects for the development of the Northern Sea Route as an element of unified Arctic transport systems“.
At the same time, “Chinese Rear Admiral Ying Zhuo (Chief of Staff of the PRC Navy. – Approx. author .) periodically stated that “The Arctic belongs to the whole world, so no one nation has sole authority over it” and that “China must play its part in the development of the Arctic, as the country is home to a fifth of the world’s population.
Back in June 2017, Beijing’s well-known Belt and Road initiative was complemented by a new economic corridor leading from China to Europe across the Arctic Ocean, called the Ice Silk Road or Polar Silk Road ), noted in a joint study of Irkutsk State University and the East Siberian Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (2019-20) “The Northern Sea Route in China’s Geopolitical Plans and Russia’s Position”.
According to Chinese researchers, if it takes 25 days and 625 tons of fuel oil to travel from Europe to China via the NSR, it takes 35 days and 875 tons of fuel oil using the traditional route through the Suez Canal. Thus, the Ice Silk Road will help China “save both time and transportation costs.”
The same material cites assessments by Chinese analysts who claim that the boundaries of the continental Arctic shelf, as well as a number of transboundary regions of the Arctic Ocean, cannot be clearly defined. Accordingly, the effective use of trans-Arctic routes is allegedly possible only with their internationalization – in other words, free access to them for all countries within the concept of “the common heritage of mankind”. “The Northern Sea Route is a global common property and cannot be controlled by individual countries”said Yuan Zongze, an expert at the China Institute of International Affairs.
In support of this approach, Beijing also refers to the facts of repeated and unsuccessful applications in recent decades by Russia to the international Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (applications for sovereign rights over the underwater Lomonosov and Mendeleev ridges on the Arctic shelf, which had only a partial success).
In April 2019, as part of the consideration of the Russian request for the extension of the Arctic shelf, the relevant UN subcommittee announced the geological affiliation of the territories included in the extended limits of the continental shelf to the structures of the continuation of the shelf and the Russian continent. The head of the Russian Mineral Resources Agency, Yevgeny Kiselev, spoke of an expected decision on the application within the next two to three sessions, but the process appears to be at a standstill. According to Chinese experts“whoever controls the Arctic route will control a new corridor in the global economy and international strategy.”
Since the second half of 2010, the PRC has increasingly invested in the extractive industries of all Arctic countries, aiming for indefinite acquisition of strongholds on the Arctic coast. At the same time, in 2016-2019, Denmark and the authorities of autonomous Greenland, under pressure from the Trump administration, rejected the Chinese side’s offer for a long-term lease of the abandoned Nuuk naval base in northeastern Greenland.
In turn, Iceland banned the sale to China of 300 sq km in the north-east of the country (near the port of Akureyri in the north of the island). Finally, Norway refused to sell 217 sq km in the western part of the Svalbard archipelago. So far, similar Chinese projects regarding Canada’s northeast coast have remained unsuccessful.
All these projects are primarily aimed at controlling the main sea passages connecting the Northern Sea Route with the waters of the North Atlantic, which, obviously, has not only purely economic, but also military-political significance.
Speaking about freedom of navigation in polar waters, Beijing challenged the shipping rules established by a number of Arctic countries in the 200-mile economic zone, and also proposed to review Russia’s tariff policy regarding the ice-breaking escort of cargo ships in the Northern Sea Route , as high prices affected the commercial efficiency of using this route.
At the same time, Russian experts also drew attention to China’s white paper on the Arctic, published by the press office of the State Council of China in early 2018. Appealing to the concept of the “common heritage of mankind”, its authors express concern about the expansion of sovereign rights of the Arctic states and the increase of their exclusive economic zones, and last but not least, the Russian one, the most extensive and the largest.
The significant narrowing of the waters of the sub-Arctic seas and the Arctic Ocean, according to Beijing, makes trans-Arctic transport dependent on coastal states. “For us, the issue of Arctic development is key. And we would like Russia not only to meet us halfway in terms of research, but also to provide favorable conditions for the passage of our ships through its waters,”- Li Yuansheng, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Polar Research Center, spoke directly about the need to provide China with direct access to the Northern Sea Route.
At the same time, when it comes to the South China Sea, Beijing categorically rejects the idea of free access to national maritime zones, which is completely understandable in the context of periodically escalating tensions over the “Taiwan issue”.
Both in Beijing and, incidentally, in Taipei, the contiguous sea area is considered an inland sea with all its shelves and oil and gas resources, whose protection and development by Chinese companies is guaranteed by the actively developing fleet of the People’s Republic of China Navy.
And the question here, of course, is not at all the notorious “double standards”, but the strict observance of national interests, among which is to get rid of excessive dependence on the trade and shipping route through the Strait of Malacca…
According to Chinese experts, with all the advantages of the Ice Silk Road, which is able to absorb a significant part of China’s maritime Eurasian transit (up to 350-400 billion dollars, with savings of more than 100 billion per year compared to the traditional Suez route), many organizational and technical issues have not yet been resolved.
In addition to the poor infrastructure of coastal areas and a lack of knowledge of the region, for example, it is not clear whether insurance will fully cover major accidents, as damages from an oil spill, collision with an iceberg or the disembarkation of a crew from a damaged ship can reach hundreds of millions.
According to the International Marine Insurance Union, in the past few years specialist companies have paid more for damage to ships than they have collected in insurance premiums, and as a result insurers often refuse to operate in the Arctic and cargo owners turn to to an albeit longer and more expensive but more predictable route through the Suez Canal (1).
And this is only one of a complex set of questions, and not the most important – just look at the map to make sure that the key point of the route is the Bering Strait adjacent to American Alaska, the guarantee of the absence of whose blockade can be only the confident joint naval power of Moscow and Beijing. Freezing, often shallow coastal seas make it easy for the enemy to mine and sabotage the work, and unofficial (for now) claims to Wrangel Island provoke risks of further escalation.
Note
(1) Uyanaev S., Sazonov S. The Northern Sea Route: prospects for development and cooperation between China and the Russian Federation (assessments of Chinese experts) // Analytical notes of IKSA RAS. 2022. No. 1. [материалът е публикуван преди началото на СВО и последвалата го санкционна истерия].
EU translation
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