U.S. national-security officials say the Chinese underwater operations offer the latest evidence of a growing threat from China in the Arctic region known as the High North. This year, Chinese military and research vessels have operated around Alaska’s Arctic waters in unprecedented numbers, The Department of Homeland Security reported in November.
Western maritime strategists and military officials say that for China, mastering Arctic travel could yield valuable data about natural resources waiting beneath layers of melting ice, significantly reduce travel times for commercial shipping and bring nuclear-armed submarines closer to potential targets, including the US.
“The Chinese are becoming more and more aggressive throughout the High North,” said U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grinkevich, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top military leader. Chinese ships on research missions often provide cover for military objectives, he said.
China has declared itself a “near-Arctic power”, an unofficial designation Beijing hopes will put it alongside the US and Russia. China’s Foreign Ministry says its activities in the Arctic are appropriate and legitimate, which “contribute to maintaining and promoting peace, stability and sustainable development in the region.”
Beijing sees future sea routes through the High North as a shortcut to global commerce, the so-called Polar Silk Road. China sent a cargo ship across the North Pole this summer to the Polish port of Gdansk, a route twice the speed of travel using the Suez Canal. Chinese officials have said they plan to expand trans-Arctic cargo traffic with Russia, particularly imports of liquefied natural gas.
During the Cold War, the Arctic was a front line dividing NATO members and Moscow. Its waters provide Russia a gateway to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which the US and its allies patrolled closely until the early 1990s – and are monitoring again now.
Arctic waters provide military advantages due to the North Pole’s proximity to other countries. In 1959, the United States sent the world’s third nuclear submarine to dig beneath the ice, sending a powerful warning to the Kremlin. Moscow responded in 1962. Today, both rivals are again sending submarines on Arctic exercises.
Tensions in the High North are rising again due to China’s overreach due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US and its allies hope Beijing will be able to send armed submarines to the North Pole within a few years. China already has military-grade surface ships in the Arctic region while expanding its fleet of icebreaking vessels.
The US and allies are training more Arctic troops in response to new threats. They have increased bycatch-hunting patrols off Iceland and elsewhere. President Trump signed a shipbuilding deal with Finland to expand the U.S. icebreaker fleet and has pressured Denmark to expand protection in and around Greenland.
In December Grinkevich, citing “the alignment of our adversaries”, placed NATO members Denmark, Sweden and Finland under the alliance’s Atlantic and Arctic Command to strengthen the defense of the High North.
Chinese and Russian military aircraft flew patrols near Alaska for the first time last year, with Chinese long-range bombers operating from Russian air bases.
Such cooperation not only gives China new capabilities to attack North America but also increases the likelihood of a joint attack by America’s most powerful adversaries, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, told Congress in April.
‘Basically a battleship’
China updated its national-security law in 2015 to include protecting national interests in polar regions, seeking unfettered access to new sea routes and resources, said Ryan Martinson, associate professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. He said, there is a lot of evidence that China aims to conduct naval operations in the Arctic Ocean.
Beijing says its commercial and research vessels in Arctic waters are peaceful. That was accurate until recently, according to Rob Bauer, a retired Dutch admiral who served as one of NATO’s top military officers until this year. Beijing, in addition to conducting joint air patrols with Russia, is now also sending coast guard vessels such as frigates near the Alaska coast, he said.
“They’re basically battleships, but they’re painted white,” Bauer said. The joint patrolling with Russian Navy ships indicates that China’s aim is not coastal security but military advantage, he said. When more ice melts on international waterways in the High North, the same shortcuts used by commercial ships could get China’s navy across the Atlantic faster, he said.
Arctic travel by commercial and scientific vessels from Beijing benefits China’s navy by gaining experience and data about a region relatively new to its military leaders. China’s policies merge its civilian and military sectors, aiming to strengthen its armed forces through collaboration with universities, research institutes and defense companies.
Beijing’s polar exploration echoes its military expansion in the South China Sea. China began research expeditions and published academic papers about this area about 20 years ago. In 2013, Beijing used what it learned to begin building artificial islands, which now house military airports, according to intelligence officials from the US and Pacific allies.
In the Arctic, the US and NATO are most concerned about maritime warfare. Submarine navigation depends on detailed knowledge of sea-floor topography and undersea conditions. China is cataloging the world’s oceans Military experts say computer models will be built to guide the submarines and help them avoid detection.
“China doesn’t deploy the world’s largest fleet of oceanographic survey ships because they want to protect the whales,” said Hunter Stires, a naval strategist who advised the Navy secretary until this year. “China aims to lead in ocean and climate science because understanding the ocean and climate is a critical factor for success in naval operations, especially anti-submarine warfare.”
US analysts say the data China has gathered from its Arctic divers north of Alaska and Greenland is not just to study climate change, Beijing’s state news agency reports, but also to educate the Chinese navy, which operates relatively noisy submarines that US forces can easily track.
Arctic ice hinders detection by airborne submarines that operate in other oceans. Layers of water temperature and changing salinity from melting ice interfere with sonar. Colliding icebergs and the chirping of marine mammals produce sounds that make it difficult for submarines to detect. Information collected on Chinese Arctic voyages enables its scientists to create computer models of undersea conditions, which its navy can later use to plot routes, allowing them to operate more freely in the open ocean.
Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said China’s ultimate aim is to end “US undersea dominance” at a conference in Canada in 2024.
To help Beijing reach that goal, Paparo said, “I expect Russia to provide submarine technology.”
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Beijing sells electronics and components to Russia for the military equipment Moscow needs to wage war in Ukraine, and ships civilian products banned by international sanctions on the war.
Western military officials believe Russia is repaying China’s help by sharing advanced technologies in space, stealth aircraft and undersea warfare. Russia’s nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines and its agility in deploying them have kept the country a superpower, despite economic decline since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
China is already mastering other complex naval areas. It now effectively deploys three aircraft carriers, among the most demanding surface warfare forces to build, manage and deploy. Only America has more.
Both Beijing and the US lack ships capable of navigating the thick Arctic ice compared to Russia, which has more than 40. China commissioned its fifth icebreaker last year. The US has only two such ships in operation, and Trump is buying more.
After years of development, China launched its first domestically built icebreaker in 2019 with Finnish help. Last year, it built and deployed its first domestically designed icebreaker in 10 months, a quick accomplishment that drew concern among Arctic countries.
Russia has also advocated greater Chinese involvement in the governance of the High North and invited China to develop infrastructure in Arctic Russia. The two countries created a working group in 2023 to develop the Northern Sea Routes. They agreed to coordinate Arctic maritime law-enforcement initiated by their recent joint patrol.
“China wants to shape the rules before they are decided,” said David Cattler, a former US intelligence official and NATO assistant secretary-general for intelligence and security. “Early presence shapes future influence.”
Western military officials said China’s growing presence and influence in the Arctic helps Russia now, but could prove a problem for Moscow later. Since the Cold War, the Arctic has offered Russia a remote sanctuary for most of its nuclear arsenal. Until now, only the US could seriously threaten Russian bases or military assets there.
Chinese ships operating in Russia’s north could complicate matters for Moscow, especially if the two countries’ national interests diverge and the existing “no-limit partnership” breaks down. “Chinese actions in the High North are as direct a challenge to Russia as any other power,” Stires said.
At present, it is the Western countries that are warning about China’s naval advance in the Arctic.
French Admiral Pierre Vandier, who oversees NATO efforts to prepare for future war, sees the possibility of China’s navy sailing from the Pacific to the Atlantic over the Arctic, bypassing the Suez or Panama Canals or the more easily observed and defended routes around South Africa.
“For all of us, for NATO and for the US, it means that the threat in the Pacific is omnipresent,” Vandier said in an interview. “If we have Asian forces in the Atlantic, that would be a huge game-changer. And we need to be ready for that.”
Write to Daniel Michaels here Dan.Michaels@wsj.com And listen to Engel Rasmussen sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
