China is intent on becoming a major player in the Arctic, a goal that has long been thwarted by neighboring Russia, which closely guards its dominance in the region.

Now Russia's resistance, like the ice that envelops the Earth's North Pole, is beginning to melt.

Russia, economically isolated over its invasion of Ukraine, is looking to China for help in developing the Arctic as Western energy companies try to pull out of Russian projects. The most visible manifestation of this new-found partnership is the surge in crude oil shipments via the Northern Sea Route, which stretches across the Arctic from Russia's northwestern coast to the Bering Strait.

Although traffic on the Northern Sea Route is still small compared to routes to the south, it has risen sharply in recent weeks. Russia claims the right to regulate transit traffic on the route. Russia said it had been prompted by demand to allow the passage of larger tankers that do not have the so-called ice class category, raising fears of an oil spill in the remote Arctic. Ice-class tankers have stronger hulls and other reinforcement facilities that allow them to navigate icy waters. In recent days, the first of two larger tankers, each carrying more than 1 million barrels of oil, arrived at a Chinese port.

A Chinese ship crosses the Bering Strait, part of the Northern Sea Route, which has seen a surge in oil traffic.

Russia has joined China in naval exercises and maritime security operations in the Arctic and is looking to China for technical assistance such as satellite data to monitor ice conditions.

Marcus M. Keupp, a lecturer in Arctic economics at the military academy of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, said that China "doesn't have to pay as much attention to official Russian policy" on Arctic issues.

Despite being more than 900 miles from the Arctic Circle, China declared itself a "near-Arctic" nation in 2018. Russia's new overtures could give China a long-awaited opening. Beijing has been looking to expand its role in the Arctic to gain more access to shipping lanes and natural resources, as well as climate and other scientific research opportunities, and to expand its military and strategic influence.

The idea would be to use the shorter distance of the Arctic to transport goods, avoiding the choke points of the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca.

With the exception of Russia, the Arctic states are all Western democracies that are increasingly wary of Chinese investment. Denmark has blocked Chinese plans to build three airports in Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory, over security concerns. In 2020, Canada blocked a Chinese company from buying a gold mine in the Canadian Arctic after military officials raised security concerns.

Russia has not always welcomed China's entry into the Arctic in the past. Russia once opposed China's bid to become an observer at the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council, made up of eight Arctic states, is the main forum for addressing issues in the region, and Russia has previously banned Chinese ships from carrying out research work in the Arctic.

In 2020, even as Sino-Russian relations were at their warmest in decades, Russian authorities arrested an Arctic expert on suspicion of providing information to China.

In the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Moscow's tone has shifted. Under the pressure of Western sanctions, Russia has been forced to rely more heavily on China to prop up its economy, support its war effort and defend its long-term goal of developing the Arctic.



"Russia certainly has the manpower, and it certainly has the regional knowledge, but it no longer has the money or the technology," said ETH Zurich's Keupp, who edited a 2015 edition of a book on the Northern Sea Route. "This is of great benefit to China because China can now really exert influence and economic pressure on Russia and develop this route as it sees fit."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry says China participates in Arctic affairs based on the basic principles of respect, cooperation, win-win results and sustainability. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.



Moscow has turned to Chinese companies to help develop ports, mines and other infrastructure in the Russian Arctic as western companies pull back from projects in the country. Russia revised its Arctic policy document in February. Unlike its previous focus on "strengthening good-neighborly relations with Arctic states," Russia's current policy emphasizes building ties with all countries, which means further opening the door to China.

France's TotalEnergies (TTE) said last year it was scaling back its operations in Russia, citing the war in Ukraine as one reason. BP (BP) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) have also pulled out of joint projects with Rosneft Oil, the Russian energy giant with extensive projects in the Arctic.

Rosneft's chief executive, Igor Sechin, in November called on Chinese companies to participate in Arctic projects such as the Northern Sea Route and Vostok Oil, a major oil project in Russia's far north.

While trade between the two countries has surged, sanctions related to Russia's aggression in Ukraine have made Chinese companies wary of expanding their business in Russia, analysts say. Still, that hasn't stopped Chinese companies from exploring potential partnerships in the Arctic.

Anatoly Tkachuk, a businessman and former KGB officer, said that in January he worked with two of China's state-controlled infrastructure giants, China Communications Construction Co. Representatives of China Communications Construction Co. and China Railway Construction Co., 1186.HK, met to discuss plans to extract titanium and other raw materials from a large deposit in the Republic of Komi near the Arctic Circle. The project will include a railway to carry the material to the coast and a deep-water port to load ships traveling along the Northern Sea Route.


The government of the Nenets region said in August that China Energy Engineering Corp. agreed to open a branch in the region to explore natural gas deposits. The Nenets region is located mainly in the Arctic Circle along the Barents Sea.

If the projects go ahead, the Chinese companies would join state-owned oil giant China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, in the region. CNPC co-developed the Yamal LNG project with Russian gas producers PAO Novatek, Total and China's Silk Road Fund, which started production in 2017; CNPC is also working with Total Energy, state-owned China National Offshore Oil and a Japanese consortium on the Arctic LNG 2 project.

While many of China's projects in the Arctic remain speculative for now, there is one area where activity is already increasing: energy transport. Shortly before the US and its Allies imposed a $60-a-barrel price cap on Russian crude in December, the Russian tanker Vasily Dinkov sailed east across the Arctic to a Chinese oil terminal on the Shandong peninsula. The 843-foot-long Vasily Dinkov was built 15 years ago to carry crude oil west from the Russian Arctic to a transshipment point near Murmansk.

In August and September, 10 more tankers shipped Russian crude to China via the Northern Sea Route, and at least one more is expected to arrive soon, according to commodity data firm Kpler. The number of ships overall is still small compared to the southern route through the Suez Canal, but the increase has put pressure on the fleet of ice-class tankers, which have adopted heavier, sturdier hulls and other modifications to adapt to Arctic conditions.

Unlike the first tankers to sail on the route this year, two of the later tankers do not have ice-class capabilities, according to ROSATOM, the Russian state atomic energy company that operates the route. Rosatom said earlier this year that it would consider using non-ice class ships to handle the growing volume.

"They're doing everything they can to increase shipping capacity to China," said Amanda Lynch, a professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University.

The above polar route has some environmental advantages, as the shorter distance means fewer emissions, however, it also traverses sensitive areas with few resources to deal with emergencies.

"Think Titanic," Lynch said. "Retreating ice doesn't mean there's no ice. As the climate changed, the ice really broke up, and everything became fragmented and chaotic. There are icebergs in the sea. It's still dangerous. If you go there at the wrong time of year, it's still dark and there's a huge storm. There was no emergency assistance. You'll find yourself on your own."