The Decibel - China sets its sights on the Arctic

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

A new report about Chinese companies registering in Russia’s Arctic highlights China’s “no limits partnership” with Russia, and its interest in developing mining and shipping in the Arctic that is melting due to climate change.Senior parliamentary reporter Steven Chase explores the implications for Canada, which has its own claims to sovereignty over the North Pole, the Northwest Passage, and the large swaths of the Arctic seabeds that could be mined.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

You know, Canada for the first few decades, maybe the first 40 or 50 years of its life as a young country, really ignored the Arctic. We didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. Stephen Chase is the Globe's senior parliamentary reporter in Ottawa. He spent years covering the Arctic and the politics around it. And really the rest of the world still treated it as a no-man's land, a terra incognita. And there were expeditions by explorers up there as early as the early 20th century. There were, in fact, a couple of islands named after Scandinavian brewing companies that sponsored expeditions. So I would argue that we really didn't incorporate the Arctic into sort of our mindset as a country until the 50s.

These days, there's more focus on the Arctic. Climate change is making the North more accessible, and there's a renewed interest in the region. Countries that don't even have land in the Arctic are vying for control. Countries like China, whose close ties with Russia mean that it's establishing a major presence in the Arctic. Today, Steve will tell us what a new report reveals about China's intentions for the far north, and what it means for Western countries like Canada. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Steve, thank you so much for being here.

Glad to be here. So what have we learned recently about Chinese companies operating in the Arctic? Well, there was a really interesting report that was dropped last week, really about the no-limits friendship that China and Russia promised each other shortly before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And this report explains just how reliant Russia is becoming on China. Because of the budget crunch that the Kremlin is under as it tries to prosecute a war in Ukraine, it has been forced to rely on the Chinese government and Chinese companies to help keep building out infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. So that means that Beijing is playing a larger and larger role in the Russian footprint in the Arctic.

Okay. And you mentioned this is from a report. Where does this report come from? How do we know this? Sure. There's a really interesting company called Strider Technologies. They are in the United States. They call themselves a strategic intelligence firm. And that means they're very good at combing through both open source data, as well as proprietary data. So they have made their name in this area. We've actually worked with them before. The Globe partnered with them last year to do a really interesting piece looking at the amount of collaboration between Canadian universities and a major Chinese defense university, a military school. And that, of course, led to the government taking

action to prevent this kind of collaboration in the future. So let's talk about some of these details, Steve. You're talking about how China's got a bigger foothold in the Arctic, in Russia's part of the Arctic. What exactly are they doing up there? Well, China is actually not an Arctic nation. It does not have beachfront on the Arctic. But it started to style itself an Arctic nation. It came up with a term that has been ridiculed. It calls itself a near Arctic nation. Near Arctic nation. OK.

By definition, I suppose Spain could be a near Arctic nation as well. And Ukraine, who knows? They see the strategic importance of the Arctic in the future. It is a vast area with vast petroleum and mineral deposits that is untapped and with climate change will become more accessible as we get more and more ice-free days in the Arctic and also is providing an alternative route to ship goods between the Atlantic and the Pacific. You can either go over the top of Russia, if you think of a globe, which is called the Northern Sea Route, or one day you might be able to go through Canada's Northwest Passage. Unlike Canada,

Russia is promoting the Northern Sea Route. They want people to use it. But Canada, on the other hand, is really not promoting or encouraging anyone to do that. Nevertheless, climate change is making a difference. It's unlocking Arctic riches, but it's also helping to exacerbate a growing, I guess, competition for the Arctic. Is there a reason why we don't want to develop it in particular? Why we'd rather people forget about it? Is it because we don't have such a presence up there or what? Well, fundamentally, at a sovereignty level, we believe that any ship that goes through there should have to notify us before they go through, and we've requested that, but countries don't have to respect that. But the second reason,

the reason it's becoming more to the fore now is the argument that international shipping can provide or represents a threat to maritime life that, you know, ships dump their bilge water, they leak oil, they can destroy maritime habitat. And there's some amazing wildlife up there, right? Animals that swim beneath the sea, the polar bears, they rely on that ecosystem flourishing. And the concern would be more from an environmental point of view. Something that I don't think is really uppermost in Russians' minds. And Steve, you mentioned that China is getting a bigger foothold in Russia's part of the Arctic. Do we have a sense of how big that is? months from January 2022, just before the Ukraine invasion, to June 2023, 234 Chinese companies registered to operate in the Russian Arctic.

And that's an 87% increase over registrations in the full two years before that. And now, as of June 2023, the latest data available, 359 Chinese companies operate in the region. And this is a surge, and it is evidence that where Moscow is having to redirect money to the war, it's now turning to China to develop energy, to build infrastructure, to plumb mineral deposits, and do the sort of things that it needs to do to keep its footprint alive and operating there as the region becomes more important. Yeah. Let's take a second to talk a little bit more about the geopolitics here, Steve, because yes, there's the specific concern about the Arctic. But I guess the other part of the

concern is Russia and China working really closely together here. You mentioned that they have this term, their no limits friendship. I guess, So why is Canada, Western countries, why are we concerned about what's going on here? Sure. And I think that, you know, Russia gets, rightfully gets tremendous criticism, and it's become a pariah on the international stage, largely in the Western stage, because of its unprovoked assault on Ukraine. But the untold story or the story that really doesn't get enough coverage is how this is sustained by China. China is helping it weather sanctions, the sanctions imposed by more than 30 countries. So China has stepped in and really helped Putin weather this international pariah status. They provide international banking services to him where they previously would have used Western companies.

And they buy his oil and gas and his commodities, albeit at a discount. So he could not be prosecuting this war without China. But in return, China is getting something. And this is something that General Eyre, Wayne Eyre, who's the chief of the defense staff, he warned or predicted that as Russia becomes more and more dependent on China to survive, it will become a bit of a vassal state. So in some ways, China is helping to realize its Arctic ambitions through this partnership with Russia. And the concern going forward is as the northern sea route becomes, and northern routes become more and more viable for transporting goods, alternative to the Suez Canal, alternative to the Panama Canal,

they will be far more important, as will Russia's increasing designs on the region and the sort of conflict that might ensue. Okay, so it does sound like, as you're saying, Russia's really put a focus on that region. I wonder about China. Do we know what China exactly is doing up there? We've talked about the, you know, a bigger foothold, companies operating up there. But do we know the capabilities that China has in the Arctic there? China has been building its own polar research vessels. We have found Chinese monitoring buoys washing up on our Arctic shores. So on Canadian Arctic shores there. Yeah, so we actually don't have a very good handle on what goes on underneath the ice in the north. Canada has a terribly small presence in the north

in terms of monitoring. In the fall of 2022, the Canadian military started finding Chinese monitoring buoys washing up on our Arctic shores. And these are the sort of buoys that people have hypothesized are useful these are the sort of buoys that people have hypothesized are useful for measuring the thickness of the ice and helping plan for what kind of submarine depths you would need if you were going to run submarines through the area.

We'll be back in a minute. Steve, let's take a step back and talk about the Arctic maybe a little bit more broadly here. I know you yourself have been up there. I guess I'd like to talk about which countries have land in the Arctic and how do we decide who controls what part of the Arctic? So there are eight countries in the Arctic that have Arctic territory. Canada, Greenland, which is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the United States. So there is sort of a competition or a process underway to sort of win the rights to the polar seafloor assets. There's something called the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

And under this agreement, a country can secure control of the ocean floor beyond its sort of internationally recognized 200 nautical mile limit if it can demonstrate the seabed as an extension of its continental shelf. And as you can imagine, all the countries we've talked about, the Antarctic Territory, are making applications for this. And in fact, there was a bit of controversy in Canada back in, I think it was 2013, when former Prime Minister Stephen Harper discovered that Canadian government officials did not actually plan to claim the area under the North Pole itself.

And he ordered them back to the drawing board to make sure that their submission included the geographic North Pole. Canada has a, I would argue, a sort of funny relationship with the Arctic because before the Second World War, we basically ignored it. And, you know, we still have a paltry presence up there. I would argue the most visible display of Canadian sovereignty is definitely not our warships. It's the Canadian Coast Guard ships that bring supplies to northern communities several times a year. Our greatest ally, the United States, actually doesn't recognize our claim that the Northwest Passage, which is the route through our Arctic archipelago that would take you from the Atlantic to the Pacific, they don't recognize that as an inland waterway like Canada likes to think it is. They say it's an international waterway. The Arctic suffers from neglected Canadian policy, and we largely rely on the Americans both to protect it from Alaska and with their greater military might, but also with their submarines and their patrols. So we've talked a little bit about how Canada's kind of asserted sovereignty over the North, but what else have we done over the years, Steve? and more embarrassing chapters in the 50s when the Canadian government actually relocated Inuit families, I think it was from Quebec, to very northern communities of Resolute Bay

and Grease Fjord, hundreds of kilometers away, farther north, to sort of basically exist as human flagpoles to sort of help build the case for Canadian sovereignty. And no, that was an exceptionally dark chapter. And Canada, I think, apologized finally in 2010 for this. But it's certainly one of the more ham-fisted and cruel things that we've done in that respect. And so what is our current federal government position on the Arctic and Arctic sovereignty? That's a good question. We don't hear a lot from the Canadian government about the Arctic. Stephen Harper, the former prime minister, put far more emphasis on the Arctic than this government does. This government speaks in terms of climate change, mostly, and about the concerns that climate change pose,

which is a valid concern to the people of the North and also the animal life in the North. And they are concerned for the welfare of people who live up there. I think anyone can make a very good case that Canada does not spend enough to take care of our northern residents in the ways that other countries do. They lack the kind of infrastructure that most Canadians take for granted. So Canada's, under the Trudeau government, it's more been about sort of welfare issues and climate change.

Under the Harper government, it was more about sovereignty. They felt that they needed to try to assert themselves up there because, of course, we'd already seen the first inklings of Russian ambitions. Back in 2007, an independent expedition actually symbolically planted a Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole, sort of as a signal of what's to come. And so Mr. Harper spent time trying to assert sovereignty up there,

but he was, over the years, his efforts, I think, were thwarted by budgets and time. He initially had announced they were going to build a naval base up in Arctic Bay, which is the northern tip of Baffin Island. That really was downgraded to simply a refueling facility that's only used a few months of the year. He also talked about a research center. I think it was on Resolute. We really don't hear a lot about that these days. It's not a major focus. However, I will note that the Canadian government in recent months

agreed to acquire Predator drones from American manufacturers that I think they are going to use to try to cover some of this area with these autonomous vehicles or these remote control vehicles as a way of sort of offsetting our paltry presence up there. I did recall years ago doing a story where some Canadian rangers who are the Inuit and other indigenous people who actually operate as our eyes and ears up there, Canadian rangers had spotted a submarine. I think it was the northern tip of Balfon Island. And then we scrambled the jets days later to try to figure out what happened.

But of course, there's no point in scrambling jets days later on that sort of thing. So, yeah, the one thing that is noteworthy recently was the acquisition of these Predator drones to help with patrols. Yeah. I mean, it does sound a little bit, Steve, like we're trying to play catch up here. So we're getting these drones now. But I guess what technology does Canada have? And why don't we have what China has, for example, up in the Arctic? Well, one of the things that people have been asking for is, and we've been talking about for years as acoustical listening devices underwater or otherwise that would help track submarines that are moving silently through the north, because of course, we'd like to know who's going through our Arctic archipelago. The government is very circumspect

about this. The government is very, doesn't really like to talk about it. There's one thing that I really have to mention because it's an important part of this night. It would be unfair having criticized the government for maybe a lack of attention to the Arctic is Canada has agreed with the United States to upgrade the early warning system that we use across the North to track incoming threats, airborne threats. How it's going to play out, the government's talked about new technologies that will help us to better quickly identify threats. And that is something we're going to watch carefully because it's still being rolled out. And that, of course, is more part of our partnership

with the Americans through NORAD, which is really the vehicle through which Canada and the United States protect the North and protect that territory. And I imagine when we're talking about all this, this must be very expensive to have this equipment up in the north operating there. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. The government announced billions of dollars in commitments. Of course, these will be spread over a long period

of time, but it's a fair chunk of change, especially when you have a lot of competing budget demands in the south of Canada, where most people live, and where it's out of the field of vision for most Canadians. Yeah. And even when you're talking, Steve, about northern communities having trouble even like building houses and getting those kind of supplies up there. So there's a lot of competing demands up north, I guess, as well. Yes.

Just to end here, Steve, you've been reporting on the Arctic for a long time. I guess, how worried should Canada be about this news of China's Arctic footholds? Well, I can tell you that the military is concerned about it because it was only six months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, when we started to realize that Russia is leaning heavily on China to sort of weather this, the international condemnation and the sanctions, that we had the commander of the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command tell MPs, it was Major General Michael Wright, he said that Chinese-Russian collaboration in the Arctic is a scenario that they're very concerned about.

He said, I would definitely agree that if Russia and China were to cooperate in the Arctic, it would pose significant threats to Canada's ability to protect its sovereignty. We haven't managed to follow up with him yet, but these are the sort of concerns that go beyond the typical one to two year timeline that most people operate on, that the average Canadian operates on and that the average Canadian government official operates on. These are more long-term threats brought on by the Ukraine war and climate change that are making the Arctic a far more important field of play. Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Oh, you're welcome.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Kasia Mihailović produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White Cheryl Sutherland and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin David Crosby edits the show Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor Thanks so much for listening

and I'll talk to you tomorrow