The United States and its allies today face a growing challenge in the Arctic from its principal geopolitical adversaries, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation. While Moscow has long maintained a substantial presence in the Arctic, Beijing’s ambitions are more recent. Nevertheless, they pose a more significant, long-term challenge for the U.S. and its partners. 

As the region becomes both more accessible and more geopolitically contentious, Beijing’s designs on the Arctic have risen in importance. They will thus require a concerted response from the United States and its allies and partners, one that spans the economic, military, diplomatic, and intelligence domains.

China as a “Near-Arctic State”

China regularly refers to itself as a “near-Arctic state,” a formulation which was mocked by many in the West when it was first articulated in the 2010s by Chinese scholars and later by policymakers in Beijing. Today, however, the PRC is pursuing a comprehensive Arctic strategy across all domains of national power. As the scope of this effort has become increasingly clear, Western policymakers and analysts have reacted with alarm rather than mirth. Indeed, while the “near-Arctic state” slogan may appear ludicrous as a justification for Beijing’s designs on the region’s natural resources or geopolitical benefits, it reflects the mindset of a Chinese Communist Party that assiduously seeks influence or even dominance across the earth’s core geographies.

As such, China has sought to participate in Arctic scientific research for decades, with the ultimate goal of translating regional presence into diplomatic and political clout. After a long campaign, Beijing received observer status at the Arctic Council in 2013, coinciding with a flurry of official and semi-official statements attesting to the Arctic’s importance in Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions. 

The first well-publicized mention of China as a “near-Arctic state” comes from a March 2010 article in Economic Information Daily, which credits it to Zhang Xia, then-head of the Polar Strategy Research Office at the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC).[1] It then migrated out of the Chinese polar research community and into the broader scholarly orbit when Professor Lu Junyuan of the Jiangnan Institute of Social Sciences used the phrase in his December 2010 book, Geopolitics in the Arctic and China’s Response.[2]

Shortly thereafter, the phraseology entered official Chinese policy discourse. In 2012, there were multiple reports of Chinese diplomats using the formulation in international fora, including the Chinese Ambassador to Sweden. However, in January 2013, the Chinese government made its first formal and unambiguous statement claiming to be a “near-Arctic state” when Beijing’s Ambassador to Norway, Zhao Jun, made the remarks at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromso.[3] By 2015, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was incorporating the concept into the statements of its senior leaders, with Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming justifying the assertion by citing the pending changes to the Arctic’s climate and the attendant impacts on China’s environment, agriculture, and related policy areas.[4] Finally, in January 2018, China’s State Council Information Office released Beijing’s first comprehensive Arctic strategy, which not only enshrined the “near-Arctic state” concept as official doctrine but laid out a holistic vision for China’s engagement in a region seen as increasingly important for its larger geopolitical and geoeconomic objectives.[5]

Beijing’s Arctic strategy begins from the intellectual assertion that climate changes in the Arctic will have significant consequences for China across a range of policy areas, therefore necessitating a serious response from the Chinese government. Significantly, China asserts in the document that while the traditional Arctic states may have sovereign claims over various specific Arctic territories, those rights do not limit the concerns of a “near-Arctic state” like China that is legitimately impacted by various events in the region. This assertion, while relatively benign as promulgated in 2018, has since been used to justify a broad range of Chinese actions that go substantially beyond the limited language of the 2018 document.

As is the case of many such Chinese strategy documents, Beijing’s goals are summarized in a short, clever tagline: “understand, protect, develop, and participate in the governance of the Arctic.” This explicit focus on involvement in the governance of a region geographically far removed from China is married to a similarly explicit focus on natural resources, with the document homing in on energy, minerals, fishing, tourism, and shipping routes as of particular concern to Beijing. 

Shipping routes, and the possibility of their expansion following changes to the climate in the Arctic, is a recurring theme of the 2018 document and of other Chinese strategic thinking on the region in the years since. Much of the discourse surrounding Beijing’s ambitions in the region is related to its use of the Polar Silk Road, first formalized in the 2018 policy document, to project economic power across the Arctic. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping first announced an “Ice Silk Road” in 2017 as he inaugurated a Sino-Russian Arctic economic project. This was expanded to the “Polar Silk Road” of the 2018 white paper, which is best understood as the Arctic adjunct of the famous Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). The concept, as outlined in the 2018 document, is stunningly ambitious: a Chinese-led economic corridor, primarily built around expanded post-climate change shipping routes, stretching from China to northern Russia through the Bering Strait and North Atlantic and finally concluding at European ports. But even beyond simply tying China and Europe closer through a realized “Northwest Passage” of shipping routes in the Arctic, the 2018 document called for Beijing to take leadership over a staggering series of industries or activities in the new Arctic corridor: port infrastructure, hydrographic surveying, energy and minerals exploration and extraction, telecommunications and digital infrastructure, and more. 

Since the enunciation of the Polar Silk Road, Beijing has pursued numerous projects of considerable scale and ambition, with varying degrees of success. The best example of a successful PSR project, though one that slightly predates the 2018 white paper, is Beijing’s investment in the Yamal LNG project in Russian Siberia. Chinese entities now control roughly 30 percent of the project.[6] Beijing has followed this effort with other flagship PSR investments in Russian Arctic energy, including a combined 20 percent Chinese stake in Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 in northern Siberia.[7]

Outside of Russia, China has shown particular interest in PSR projects in the Nordic countries. But Beijing’s efforts to pursue significant infrastructure and related efforts in the European Arctic have, so far, mostly failed to come to fruition, largely for economic security reasons in the host countries. Nevertheless, Beijing has pursued railway projects in Finland and Norway[8], mining and infrastructure developments in Greenland[9], and telecommunications and port developments across Scandinavia.[10] The PSR, in other words, has served more to demonstrate the scale of Beijing’s Arctic ambitions, and to deepen its economic ties with its “no limits partner” in Moscow, than to truly realize the original vision of the 2018 policy document.

China’s Geopolitical Ambitions in the Arctic

While the Polar Silk Road and the 2018 Arctic Policy offer a useful roadmap for Beijing’s direction of travel in the region, its geopolitical and security ambitions have come into even clearer focus in recent years. The growth of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been accompanied by a far more aggressive naval presence in key Arctic areas, including in waters abutting core U.S. interests. Beginning in 2015, the PLAN began operating regularly in the Bering Strait near Alaska—operations that have morphed into regular Sino-Russian naval patrols and integrated air assets.[11] These operations are also increasingly close to Alaskan waters, and have become a distinct operational pattern. China is now regularly operating, both independently and with Russia, near the Aleutian Islands and gaining practical operating experience in strategically vital seaways near a core U.S. geography.

Additionally, China and Russia marked a major escalatory threshold in July 2024, when a joint patrol comprising Chinese H-6 and Russian Tu-95 bombers flew together into the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).[12] While they remained in international airspace, the incident marked the first time a Chinese bomber patrol had entered the ADIZ. Additionally, and concerningly in terms of joint operational art, it has been reported that the Chinese and Russian aircraft on that patrol departed together from the same Russian airbase, moreover. 

This pattern of significant Arctic cooperation between the two was further enshrined in the April 2023 cooperation agreement signed in Murmansk between the China Coast Guard and Russia’s Border Guard Service.[13] And in October 2024, following exercises with Russian forces, two Chinese Coast Guard vessels conducted their first ever transit of the Arctic Ocean.[14] When they were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in the Bering Sea, Washington described it as the northernmost location at which China Coast Guard vessels had ever been observed.

This increasing mission presence belies the claims of China’s 2018 Arctic policy to merely seek a more inclusive approach to Arctic governance. Beijing, using both the PLAN and CCG, is consistently increasing its day-to-day presence in the Arctic and using its partnership with Russia to operationalize that presence. Significantly, Beijing has increased its polar oceanographic, hydrographic, and acoustic research in ways with potential dual-use significance. Canada has recovered Chinese monitoring buoys in the Arctic, and the Chinese Polar Research Institute has even announced an underwater listening device for Arctic deployment. Given Beijing’s demonstrated capacity in the Pacific to harness ostensibly scientific capabilities for anti-submarine warfare purposes, these developments are deeply troubling for Western allies concerned with China’s polar ambitions.

In the European Arctic, China has exploited ambiguity regarding the sovereignty of Norwegian-claimed Svalbard to establish the Yellow River Station at Ny-Alesund. While ostensibly scientific in nature, this station is a persistent Chinese presence at roughly 79 degrees north inside a NATO country’s territory. China is known to conduct Arctic GPS tracking research and upper-atmosphere observational readings at the station, both of which have uses outside traditional scientific inquiry. While Norway disputes China’s interpretation of the international treaty governing the establishment of a scientific station on Svalbard, one point is clear: Beijing itself sees the station as a permanent, nationally controlled base from which to operate in the Arctic.

A similar dynamic is at play in Iceland, where the PRIC has established the China-Iceland Arctic Science Observatory (CIAO). While the Icelandic partner owns the property, the PRIC has a 99-year lease to conduct scientific operations. China is conducting space-weather atmospheric research and remote sensing work at the Karholl site, further representing an institutionalized Chinese presence within an Arctic NATO member. Both Svalbard and Karholl build upon China’s first overseas satellite ground station, established above the Arctic Circle in 2016 near Kiruna, Sweden. Stockholm later became concerned enough with the potential dual-use nature of Beijing’s presence that, in 2020, it decided not to renew the agreement. 

These examples are buttressed by Beijing’s steady increase in Arctic hard power capacity, epitomized by the rapid strides in its icebreaker fleet. Over the last 25 years, China has reached parity with the United States in icebreaking capacity, now fielding three operational vessels that can operate in the Arctic for sustained periods. This is a significant increase in capacity, and will likely serve to further Beijing’s ability for dual-use research and presence missions in both the North American and European Arctic in the years ahead.

The U.S. and NATO Policy Response

As the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) look for a revamped mission and focus for the venerable alliance, addressing Chinese (and Russian) ambitions in the Arctic can serve as a core rallying point. The U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland are all directly impacted by Beijing and Moscow’s predations in the High North and can serve as both an ad hoc and institutional “coalition of the willing” within NATO on Arctic matters. Many of these countries are also well-versed in specific aspects of Arctic military and intelligence operations, including Finland’s renown in icebreaker building and the Norwegian military’s prowess in Arctic land operations. Given the geographic and functional breadth of deterring Russian and Chinese aggression in the region, harnessing the unique strengths and capacity of this combined subset of NATO Arctic powers will be essential to preventing adversary advantage in the region.

The Trump administration has created an important intellectual framework for responding to Beijing’s ambitions in the North American Arctic. The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), as well as the 2026 National Defense Strategy, offer useful framing devices for a U.S. approach to adversary activities in the region.[15] By emphasizing a return to the traditional U.S. concept of “hemispheric defense,” and broadly interpreting the Western Hemisphere to include longstanding U.S. strategic interests like Greenland, Washington has created a useful roadmap for prioritizing the Arctic as a core interest, one tied both to homeland defense and to larger Great Power competition with Eurasian-based adversaries. 

Under that strategic rubric, the United States has substantial individual steps it needs to take to ensure its readiness for the future of Great Power competition in the Arctic. From a military perspective, the U.S. Department of War must improve Arctic domain awareness, to include better sensors, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, data sharing, and early warning detection in both the air and maritime domains across the region, with a particular focus on the U.S. and Canadian Arctic. Improving joint U.S.-Canadian readiness through the traditional architecture of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is likewise critical, particularly given chronic Canadian underinvestment in its air and maritime contributions to the combined defense of North America. 

After decades of concentrating on U.S. Central Command’s “Area of Responsibility,” the U.S. military must return to its Cold War-era focus on operating successfully in cold weather environments. As the Biden administration’s 2024 Department of Defense Arctic Strategy points out, this will require an improved focus on cold-weather equipment, communications, logistics, infrastructure, and related competencies, as well as a robust tempo of realistic Arctic training exercises.[16] Much of this will require a more sustained and modernized U.S. presence in Alaska, Washington’s own foothold in the North American Arctic. But, as U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) has repeatedly argued, Alaska’s defense infrastructure needs expansion and modernization to meet the challenge of an Arctic-focused Beijing and Moscow. 

For example, the U.S. Army’s Arctic warfare training footprint in Alaska can be broadened substantially and centered upon a full buildout of the 11th Airborne Division, with both its brigades serving as integrated, Arctic-focused units. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson can serve as the joint hub of Arctic warfare readiness, with expanded cold-weather aviation and long-range fires capabilities resident there. The U.S. can also expand its prepositioning of cold-weather focused equipment into an Arctic Prepositioned Stock, better preparing the Joint Force and Canadian allies for potential contingencies in the region without relying on time-consuming resupply from farther afield in adverse weather conditions. The current Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Alaska could also be significantly expanded to fulfill a multinational Arctic military training function analogous to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. 

Given the increased naval activity in the region by both China and Russia, often operating together, an expansion of the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy presence in Alaska is needed as well. While a Navy presence in Alaska should become more routine to address the rapidly escalating nature of Sino-Russian maritime capabilities in the Bering Strait, the chronically under-resourced Coast Guard will continue to be the principal U.S. maritime force in Alaskan waters. While the Coast Guard requires a much larger top-line operating budget, given the enormous and varied missions assigned to it, there are practical steps available to improve the service’s posture in the North American Arctic.

In addition to the announced assignment of Polar Security Cutters (PSCs) to Kodiak and Seward, the establishment of a permanent Coast Guard Arctic base at Nome would provide the appropriate level of presence. Moving the already-announced Fast Response Cutters (FRCs) that will be homeported in Alaska farther north, homeporting some of them closer to the Arctic, would also be useful. Finally, during the navigable season, the Coast Guard’s most capable vessels, the National Security Cutter (NSC), should increase its deployment tempo in the Bering Sea to serve as a direct deterrent response to Beijing and Moscow’s growing presence.

Finally, in order to manage both the increasing demands of a changing Arctic and growing needs in the freshly competitive Antarctic, the U.S. must change the paradigm through which it views the critical strategic assets known as icebreakers. PSCs, with utility in both polar regions, are scarce strategic assets, and, given existing constraints on the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base, will likely remain so in the future. They should be reserved for the most challenging environments and missions, with regular icebreaking functions increasingly delegated to medium icebreakers of the Arctic Security Cutter (ASC) class, of which eleven are currently planned for production. Moreover, while the original ASCs were built in Finland and the follow-on vessels are scheduled for U.S. construction, it is critical that an indigenous American capacity for ASC construction consolidate over the coming years. Without a stable icebreaker industrial base capacity resident in the United States, it will be difficult to maintain a long-term U.S. presence in the changing Arctic.

The Greenland Puzzle

The aforementioned policy responses primarily address Chinese and Russian ambitions in the North American Arctic. However, given the public interest and geopolitical competition in Greenland, it is worth considering the dynamic nature of the world’s largest island and its impact on both Chinese and American thinking on the High North. 

China has made several, largely unsuccessful forays into developing Greenland’s infrastructure. Given the island’s strategic location along the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap, the potential dual-use nature of such investment sparked concerns in both Washington and Copenhagen, and led to Danish action to prevent such investments. While this satisfied immediate American concerns regarding Western capacity to prevent Beijing’s Greenlandic ambitions in the immediate term, it did not resolve either long-term fears of China’s potential interest in Greenland or Washington’s longstanding interest in preserving the island from malign foreign presence.

Indeed, Washington has attempted to intervene in Greenland since at least the 1860s for precisely this purpose: to deny a potential foreign adversary access to a strategically vital geography proximate to the United States. In addition to American purchase attempts under Presidents as varied as Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. occupied Greenland during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from acquiring U-Boat stations there following the occupation of Denmark. The 1951 treaty between Denmark and the U.S. that ensures American military access to Greenland stems from Cold War-era concerns about Soviet nuclear submarines transiting the GIUK Gap to threaten the U.S. East Coast. These concerns, updated to include ballistic missile threats to North America, continue to broadly animate America’s focus on Greenland in the 21st century and in the context of China’s Arctic ambitions.

From a U.S. perspective, the most pressing Greenlandic security concern remains a medium- to long-term challenge: what happens to the Greenlandic security architecture if Nuuk eventually gains independence from Denmark? This is not simply a theoretical problem. Prior to the United States expressing interest in acquiring Greenland during the second Trump administration, Greenland’s own 2024 national security and defense strategy called for independence by the 2030s.[17] While Washington’s rhetoric may have curtailed an immediate Greenlandic desire for independence, further strides toward autonomy reflect a fifty-year trend and will likely continue in the years ahead. Therefore, it is essential that Washington develop a long-term approach to maintain Greenlandic sovereignty from China’s demonstrated desire to subvert the island for its strategic and economic purposes.

To that end, Washington enjoys a strong policy lever to productively influence events in Greenland. In the event of an independent Greenland, which may not honor the 1951 treaty that was negotiated with its former colonial master, the U.S. can propose an agreement similar to the Compacts of Free Association (COFAs) with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. These would allow Greenland to operate as an independent state but with significant defense guarantees from the United States, in exchange for unrestricted American military access to the island. It would also likely include U.S. economic and trade support to incentivize such a positive relationship with Greenland. This architecture would prevent the nightmare of a developing, sparsely populated state proximate to the United States that is ripe for subversion by the PRC. 

Looking North

China is engaged in a multi-decade, multi-domain, dual-use effort to become a major economic, military, and diplomatic power in the Arctic. This effort, moreover, stretches across both the European and North American Arctic, posing real challenges to NATO. In recent years, while the United States allowed many of its Cold War-era Arctic capabilities to atrophy, Beijing invested heavily in the architecture required to manifest its pretensions to being a “near-Arctic state.” As in other peripheral regions, from the Pacific Islands to the Antarctic, China is using the distraction of other powers and its own ability to funnel significant resources into narrow projects to rapidly catch up to entrenched stakeholders. 

As China increases both its capacity and willingness to challenge U.S. and NATO interests in the Arctic, it is imperative for Washington and its partners to develop individual and joint responses. As Beijing often acts in concert with Russia, particularly in the North American Arctic, these responses cannot be separated from the larger dynamic of the Sino-Russian “no limits partnership.” Developing adequate force structure, including icebreakers and aviation assets, and prioritizing Arctic issues in national strategic planning documents are necessary correctives to nearly two decades of Chinese expansion in this critical domain.