China and the United States in the Arctic

The Arctic Ocean has an area of about 6.01 million square miles and makes up about 4.3% of the Earth’s oceans. The melting of Arctic sea ice has led to increased human activities in the Arctic and has heightened interest in and concerns about the region’s future. The supremacy of the military presence and security interests of the two Cold War-era superpowers – the former Soviet Union and the United States – have now been replaced by the multiple political interests of the eight North Pole states, dominated mainly by the military and security interests and naval capacity of Russia, Canada, the United States, Norway, and Denmark. The exclusivity of Arctic governance has also been challenged by the activities of states from outside the region who are taking a special interest in many aspects of the Arctic that focus on scientific research, shipping, and resource development. China is one of these outside states with growing interest in the Arctic.

The emergence of the Arctic as a region of political and economic opportunity adds yet another dimension to U.S.-China relations. This report explores and compares the policy and influence of two states in the Arctic: The United States as a key Arctic littoral state and China as an Arctic stakeholder. Their respective policy and legislations, presence, and influence in this region, engagement with international and regional institutions will be unfolded in this report before yielding to a discussion on the divergence and convergence of interests between China and United States in the Arctic. It can be concluded that there exist lots of divergence of interests between the two. Meanwhile, the Arctic is an arena where the U.S. and China, for the most part, enjoy converging interests, such as on issue areas that touch upon aspects of the law of the sea—be it conservation and climate change, marine scientific research, or construction of port and infrastructure facilities.

Given the current development in the Arctic region driven by the Ukraine conflict, the longstanding post-Cold War perception that the Arctic region would benefit from a disconnect from security concerns has lost its essence. Instead, the geopolitical importance of the Arctic region is coming back into focus with Russia’s full military escalation of Ukraine and the worrisome loss of the status quo in Arctic cooperation. The joint statement by seven states of the Arctic Council in March 2022 to pause participation in all meetings of the Arctic Council indicates grave impediments to international cooperation in the Arctic.

China and the United States should aim to achieve cooperative activities, particularly on research, which could play a useful role in stabilizing the troubled state of their current ties. The Ukraine conflict, while severing partnerships between researchers inside and outside of Russia across many fields of science, has a particularly profound impact on climate science in the Arctic, in which China and the United States could work together. China has the potential to be a strong partner for the United States if it can match up its own interests in the Arctic with the United States’ interests and, together, address questions that are important to both nations.