In 2019, David Auerswald wrote “China’s Multifaceted Arctic Strategy” where he argued that China’s increased investment in Arctic states and its shift towards becoming a major player in the region had the potential to threaten significant political, economic, and military interests for the United States. In light of anticipated changes in China’s Arctic policies and its increased collaboration with Russia, we asked him to reflect on his previous article and the current magnitude of the threat.Read more below.Image: Xinhua photo by Liu ShipingIn your article “China’s Multifaceted Arctic Strategy,” written in 2019, you argued that China’s investment in the Arctic and efforts to become an Arctic power have profound security implications for the international order. How has China’s Arctic strategy evolved over the past five years? My argument in 2019 was that China had engaged in a dual-track approach of predatory investment and appeals to an alternative governance regime for the Arctic, one that would empower non-Arctic states as well as disaffected sub-state actors within specific Arctic nation-states. A 2021 Brookings report largely supports my argument on the governance front. The economic facet of my argument was supported by data from a Center for Naval Analyses report on Chinese investment patterns from 2012 to 2017, which showed that China was investing heavily in vulnerable economies in Greenland and Iceland. That report sent shockwaves through the Arctic security community. In hindsight, the Center for Naval Analyses data was not as accurate as billed. More recent studies by RAND, the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), and a summary article by Marc Langteigne, just to name a few, paint a different picture, arguably using better data. They show that Chinese investment in Western territories has been much less robust than feared.Chinese investments in the European and North American Arctic suffered from three things. First was the global pandemic, which largely
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In 2019, David Auerswald wrote “China’s Multifaceted Arctic Strategy” where he argued that China’s increased investment in Arctic states and its shift towards becoming a major player in the region had the potential to threaten significant political, economic, and military interests for the United States. In light of anticipated changes in China’s Arctic policies and its increased collaboration with Russia, we asked him to reflect on his previous article and the current magnitude of the threat.Read more below.Image: Xinhua photo by Liu ShipingIn your article “China’s Multifaceted Arctic Strategy,” written in 2019, you argued that China’s investment in the Arctic and
