NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE R ussia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has altered the relationship between Russia and China. While Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin already were on a path of greater cooperation and mutual leadership of the autocratic, authoritarian world, as an offset to U.S.-led democratic capitalism, the Ukraine war has shifted the relationship toward Chinese dominance. This matters because, despite Russia’s relative dependence on China, China faces significant economic decline. Every component of China’s GDP is under sustained, structural pressure.
The Ukraine conflict is accelerating three of China’s long-term initiatives to contest its decline: reducing the cost of its manufactured goods by getting its exports to market more cheaply and quickly; seeking a stable, long-term supply of low-cost energy, especially oil and natural gas; and reversing and resolving the historic territorial deprivations it faced in its “century of humiliation.” Let’s consider each of these objectives in turn.
China’s economy depends on its ability to export to the world, given the vital role it plays in global supply chains. That is a problem as countries seek to be less dependent on China. The PRC also is no longer the low-cost producer it once was. It faces competition from Southeast Asian countries, Mexico, and others. Its continued trade importance depends on shipping. Shanghai is the largest port in the world. The current primary route to European ports from Shanghai is south through the Strait of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean, through the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. This is a lengthy, expensive route and is vulnerable to reinvigorated military focus by the U.S. and its allies in the Indo-Pacific.
So China is now eyeing the north.
Of the two poles, the Arctic is affected more than the Antarctic by global warming. A significant reason is the “amplification” resulting as the ice melts — which it is doing at a rate of about 13 percent per decade — and exposing more of the adjacent landmasses or the sea itself. The ice reflects sunlight, while the land and sea absorb it, causing greater warming and therefore faster melting. Because the Arctic is an ice-covered ocean, whereas the Antarctic is an ice-covered landmass, polar amplification is more pronounced in the north than in south.
China’s action in the world’s polar regions has been consistent with its rhetoric. The PRC has conducted research and expeditions there for nearly 40 years. China is building its fifth Antarctic research station; the first was established in 1985. Government-supported expeditions to the Arctic extend back to the mid 1990s and include a brief period of occupation of an Arctic station in 2004. Multiple government organizations exist, notably the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), to conduct academic research on the region. China has made related investments for years. In the mid ’90s, the government bought a Ukrainian icebreaker and converted it to a research platform. Since then, China has built and deployed another icebreaker, and a third is under construction.
The northeast sea route, along the Russian Arctic coastline, now navigable during the summer, provides shorter sea lines of communication from China to Europe and beyond. China is not the only country with intensifying navigational, economic, and military interests in the region, as Arctic warming makes it more accessible. The U.S. and Russia are also active there. China’s primary interest is in using the Arctic to help arrest its declining economic prospects.
The Ukraine-induced shift in the relative fortunes and strength of China and Russia has also hastened the PRC’s drive toward its second long-term economic objective: securing low-cost, long-term supplies of traditional energy. Here, too, Arctic access is important for Beijing. The region is home to as much as 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves and 13 percent of undiscovered oil reserves. And, as with the export routes to Europe and the United States discussed earlier, Chinese access to Arctic sources of energy is much easier than are its routes to the Middle East through the Malaccan Strait, Indian Ocean, and into the Persian Gulf. Northern sources of energy have been a priority for China for years; Beijing has invested billions into the Yamal liquefied-natural-gas facility in the Russian Far East. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, with Russia gaining a guaranteed market for its output in exchange for the investment capital. The Arctic region and Russian Far East offer tempting opportunities for China to build on these investments, particularly with Russia becoming even more dependent on China.
And then there’s Beijing’s desire to reverse the ignominies of the 19th century, in which it lost territory to imperial Russia. This is not a quixotic objective. China’s most recent historic identity, the Qing dynasty, is far more associated with its Manchurian region, much of which is now the Russian Far East, than with Taiwan. This territorial revanchism is being institutionalized. The Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources recently issued a map that uses Chinese names for Vladivostok, Sakhalin Island, and other places in northeast Russia. This area, which is larger than Ukraine, was part of China’s “Outer Manchuria” until it was seized by Russia during the 19th century. Chinese citizens were deported from there en masse during the Soviet period. Even with the Russian military presence in the region, including military headquarters, the Russian population is just 6 million people, with 100 million Chinese just across the border. Greater Chinese regional influence is likely, particularly with Russia in a weakened position. The PRC is unlikely to choose confrontation. But it will slowly build a presence until a fundamental change to the region becomes obvious.
China has already begun a neocolonial approach toward its former territory in Russia. Chinese farmers have migrated into border regions in the Russian Far East, often settling on former collective farms that fell into disuse after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Abandoned properties and buildings have been turned into Chinese migrant farming operations. From Russian state data, the BBC has estimated that Chinese citizens control as much as 350,000 hectares of agricultural production land, about 15 percent of Russian arable land in the region. Despite tacit approval from Moscow, the migration has caused tension with local Russians. Often the Chinese facilities are maintained as a private compound, fenced off and restricted, the occupants rarely leaving. There have been conflicts, including incursions into the secure facilities by local Russians demanding food and stealing property. In one survey, more than a third of Russians polled considered the migrations to be Chinese expansionism in Russia, and half thought that the migrations endangered Russia’s sovereignty. This was before the global pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, and the world’s recognition that China faces economic decline — and before Russia’s increasing dependence on the PRC had grown conspicuous.
We are seeing other indications that the PRC is pressing its advantages in the Russian Far East. In May, Russia agreed to provide China access to the port of Vladivostok for domestic trade in China’s northeast provinces. The announcement cast this as part of China’s “plan to revitalize northeast China’s industrial base and facilitate the cross-border transport of domestic trade goods with the use of overseas ports.” Around the same time, Russia agreed to supply natural gas to China from its Far East pipeline, terminating in Vladivostok.
Despite the growing perception in the U.S. and elsewhere that China seeks military superiority and superpower status, the greater likelihood is that China will continue to seek every advantage it can get while avoiding direct confrontation. It will operate in grey zones — science diplomacy, Chinese farmers homesteading on former Soviet collectives, innocent-sounding trade agreements and investments. These are methods of operating with subterfuge and denial. All the while, China builds footholds and creates opportunities to pull all the levers it can to eke out economic growth. Gradual economic conquest of the Russian Far East and parts of the Arctic would confer significant benefit to China in terms of access to cheap energy and other commodities and a shorter, less costly route to Europe via the northeastern sea route as the Arctic continues to warm.
This pattern is a longtime hallmark of China’s, and it has intensified in the Xi Jinping era. About a decade ago, for example, the PRC was embarked on an intensive program of land reclamation in the South China Sea. At the time, the PRC denied that those efforts had a military purpose. Gullible Westerners played along. Now the CCP is clear about its military intent, notwithstanding prior denials and gaslighting. If PRC behavior with its the man-made Pacific islands is a guide, the country’s self-declaration as an Arctic player will lead to the world’s having to manage Beijing’s intrusion into the region, which it already has dubbed “the Polar Silk Road.” Similarly, China’s presence in the Russian Far East is poised to slowly grow until Beijing has effectively reversed the effects of the Soviet-era Chinese depopulation of the region. The world must take notice of the PRC’s ambitions in these areas. Fortunately, the U.S. government is aware of China’s polar ambitions. Last fall it issued the National Security Strategy for the Arctic Region. The document calls out “increasing strategic competition in the Arctic, exacerbated by Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine and the People’s Republic of China’s increased efforts to garner influence in the region.” The administration is building on a tougher line toward the Arctic than its predecessor had established. The U.S. is right to place security at the center of its Arctic policy.
International recognition of the PRC’s aims has begun to emerge. The actual Arctic states, which (unlike China) have littoral territory in the Arctic, have maintained governance routines since the signing of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy in 1991. Within a few years, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States — the Arctic nations — established the Arctic Council to coordinate policy pertaining to environmental protection, rights of indigenous peoples, and other priorities. This level of cooperation was made possible in part by the fact that the former Soviet Union was gone and nonmilitary cooperation where feasible was a way to draw post-Soviet Russia into international bodies. The Ottawa Declaration establishing the Arctic Council declares that the intent of the council is to “provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, . . . in particular” on “issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic.”
A footnote to that high-minded declaration provides further clarity: “The Arctic Council should not deal with matters related to military security.”
By 2019, China’s ambitions in the region could not be ignored even within the collaborative confines of the Arctic Council. At a meeting of the council in Finland, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broached the verboten issue of Arctic security by simply acknowledging the obvious. He cited Pentagon analysis that “China could use its civilian research presence in the Arctic to strengthen its military presence.” He added that “China’s pattern of aggressive behavior elsewhere will inform how it treats the Arctic.”
From Beijing’s perspective, these opportunities are much more viable than the conquest of Taiwan, where the world rightly is focused on the potential for conflict. The communist regime knows that war with Taiwan would be costly, that the outcome would not be assured, and that such a war would damage the Chinese economy, given the dependence it has on a prosperous Taiwan. Also, it is uncertain but probable that many of the advanced democracies would align with the U.S. in defense of Taiwan should China act. In Japan in 2022, the Kishida government, recognizing that China is looking northward, announced that it will increase its 2023 defense budget and set a goal to reach 2 percent of GDP by 2027, nearly double the current level, which will make it the third-highest defense budget in the world. Japan is showing resolve, given China’s aggressive adventurism in the region. Japan’s outlying island chains to the south have factored into territorial disputes among Japan, the PRC, and Taiwan in recent years. Tokyo also recognizes Beijing’s intention to dominate the areas north of and around Japan and intends to counter that. But Japan’s military build-up is at least as important because of its concerns to the north as the south.
In contrast to Taiwan, who will shed a tear for Russia were Moscow to find itself unable to thwart Beijing’s designs on its resources or territory? The post-Ukraine shakeup of the global security landscape since early 2022 will enhance China’s ability to press its intentions in regions where it claims legitimacy and is willing to impose itself. Moscow is dependent on China to prop up its energy exports and for other means of economic support. It has no real ability to resist a more aggressive China should it come to that, and Moscow may come to rue the many avenues of approach, such as access to the port of Vladivostok, that it has opened for Beijing in the wake of its Ukraine invasion. In the Arctic in particular, Russia has lost all its leverage within the Arctic Council. It was chair of the council at the time of the invasion. The seven other members suspended their activities shortly after the war began. The chairmanship rotated to Norway in May of this year, but the council is moribund. And now Finland and Sweden, which had been the two non-NATO members of the Arctic Council, have joined the alliance.
Russia’s relative vulnerability will further embolden Beijing to assert itself even more into the Russian Far East and Arctic littoral. China will seek to increase its energy investments in the region, and Russia will need them. The PRC may seek greater access to Russian territorial waters for its operations there.
While Beijing at present denies any military or hegemonic intent in the Arctic and Russian Far East, PRC designs on the Arctic and northern reaches probably will follow its established pattern: Deny the obvious until even the most willing to be misled can’t look away. Then embrace it as appropriate and justified by the hostile actions of others, usually the United States. While denying and obfuscating, of course, turn up the intensity of the activity so that by the time it can no longer be denied, the world has little choice but to accept it.
The PRC has been executing a long-term plan to play a greater role in this part of the world. What started out as seemingly benign oceanographic and climate research is now getting noticed for what it is. As with the militarized landfills in the South China Sea, there is no basis for China’s declaration to be a near-Arctic state in international law or practice. It is a made-up self-designation. It reflects Beijing’s desire to play more of a regional role and to offset the many challenges it faces in producing long-term economic growth.
It is too early to know how that will play out over time. But it seems almost certain that Russia will become more of a supplicant. And we can’t rule out the possibility that Beijing will gain greater influence if not outright control over Russian resources and quite possibly Russian territory. Beijing has historic affinities in the Russian Far East and had been clearing a path for greater influence in the Arctic, where it has no territory or legacy, even before the war on Ukraine. China seeks shorter global trade routes for its exports, access to ample sources of low-cost oil and gas, and reversal of a historic humiliation. The war in Ukraine has created or enhanced paths for China to accelerate progress toward all three of those objectives, on which its future economic fortunes depend.