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Assessment, which put forward 17 recommendations for Arctic shipping (PAME, 2009).
Other normative measures have been adopted by the Council, including the 2004 Guidelines for Transfers of Refined Oil and Oil Products in Arctic Waters, which listed guidelines for tankers transporting oil to and from Arctic ports (PAME, 2004). Moreover, the Arctic Council has provided a platform for encouraging regional states to deepen participation in broader environmental bodies, such as the IMO (Stokke, 2007). The decision of the IMO to develop a Polar Code was to a considerable extent influenced by PAME’s 2009 report (Molenaar, 2012).
Regarding Arctic resources, the Council has worked to establish norms governing resource exploration and extraction. The 2007 Oil and Gas Assessment, undertaken by AMAP, assessed the environmental, economic, and social impacts that oil and gas activities have had on the region and mapped out the regions that are particularly sensitive to oil spills (Stokke, 2007). In 2009, the Council adopted the Arctic Offshore Oil and Gas Guidelines, which set forth the Council’s recommendations regarding the exploration and extraction of oil and gas in the Arctic region. The goal of the Guidelines was to encourage regulators in relevant states to improve domestic legislation regarding oil and gas exploration and extraction. In 2013, Arctic Council member-states signed the Oil Pollution Agreement, which increased the cooperation between Arctic states on preparing for a future oil spill. It required each state to set up a national system for
“responding promptly and effectively to oil pollution incidents”, to coordinate with oil and shipping companies, and to share relevant data with other Arctic states (AC, 2013b).
Since the Arctic Council’s mandate extends into all three areas of China’s key Arctic interests, it is no surprise that China has paid close attention to its workings. Given China’s three key interests in the region, it is no surprise that China’s activity in the Arctic has increased in scope and substance in recent years.
10. China’s Arctic Activities
China has had significant interest in polar activities for several decades. The Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA), the main government agency that organizes Chinese polar research activities, was founded in 1981. Early Chinese polar research was focused solely on the South Pole however, not the North. This is due to the status of the
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Antarctic as a de facto condominium under international law. Under the terms of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty System, which China has ratified, there are no restrictions on building stations, launching expeditions or conducting research in the Antarctic. For this reason, Antarctica is much more accessible for China than the Arctic, and has thus claimed the lion’s share of Chinese polar research budgets (Alexeeva & Lasserre, 2012).
At the end of the 1980s, however, China began sending scientists the north.14 10.1 Expanding Arctic research capabilities
China’s official research program in the Arctic started in 1989 when the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) was opened in Shanghai. Similar to its experience in the Antarctic, early Chinese research in the Arctic was focused on environmental research.
Chinese polar scientists had to catch up with the already established research programs that the other Arctic states had. After a late start, Chinese research capabilities expanded rapidly. China started its first research program in the Arctic in 1992, purchased an icebreaker in 1993, established its own permanent Arctic research station in 2004, and carried out independent Arctic research missions in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 (Jiang, 2014; Sun, 2014). China’s icebreaker, Xuelong (雪龙) was purchased from the Ukraine in 1993 and is the world’s largest non-nuclear ice breaker (Jakobson, 2010). The country will soon have more icebreakers in its arsenal; the State Oceanic Administration announced that China’s second icebreaker would come into service before 2016 (Wang, 2014). China also has a permanent presence in the Arctic. China’s polar research station, Yellow River (黄河), is located on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and has been hosting Chinese scientists conducting research on the Arctic environment since July 2004 .
Despite the rapid expansion of China’s Arctic research capabilities, Chinese officials and scientists involved in Arctic work are cognizant that China lags far behind the eight Arctic nations in scientific knowledge of the Arctic environment (Yao, 2013). In order to bolter its lagging research capabilities, China has expanded cooperation with various international polar research programs. In 1992 China began its first five-year research
14 Some Chinese scholars place the beginning of China’s Arctic activities much further back. They note that China has been involved in Arctic affairs since at least 1925, when China (then Republic of China) signed the Svalbard Treaty. See: Yang, 2014.
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program in the Arctic Ocean; this program was done in cooperation with several German universities. In 1997, China joined the International Arctic Science Committee, an international non-governmental organization that promotes multidisciplinary research in the Arctic environment. China also had a role in the International Polar Year Program and holds a place on the Ny-Alesund Science Managers Committee, the committee that oversees the management of international scientific cooperation on Svalbard (Campbell, 2012). In 2004, China established the Asian Forum on Polar Science with Japan and South Korea. Chinese experts have participated in the IMO in the drafting of a mandatory code for ships traveling through polar waters (Jiang, 2014). In 2013, China cemented its research relationship with the Nordic countries by opening the China-Nordic Arctic Research Centre, a collaboration between China and the Nordic states to jointly conduct Arctic scientific research. All of these cooperative activities have helped Chinese scientists improve their knowledge of the Arctic, which is the first step to developing China’s strategic knowledge of the region.
10.2 Developing Arctic strategic knowledge
While China’s interest in the Arctic is not recent, its interest was never considered
‘strategic’ before 2010. Alexeeva & Lasserre (2012) surveyed major Chinese journals’
Arctic related content for the years 1988 to 2008. They found that of the 680 articles that included the word Arctic (北极) in their title, most are related to climatology (49%), and the others to biodiversity (23%), environment (10%), technology (10%), and history of Arctic indigenous peoples (8%). They found that “no major Chinese scientific article ever considered political issues in the Arctic before 2007” (Alexeeva & Lasserre, 2012). The Arctic was simply not seen as a region where China had strategic interests, at least not compared to other areas around the globe, and therefore there was no need for an Arctic strategy. As China’s scientific knowledge of the region of the region improved, as well as its capability to project its power abroad, its strategic interest in the Arctic has emerged.
China began to develop its ‘strategic’ understanding of the Arctic after 2007.
In a bid to better understand all aspects of the Arctic, the Chinese government funded a multiyear research project starting in 2007 on ten specialized topics: the Arctic and human society, Arctic resources and their exploitation, Arctic scientific research, Arctic transportation, Arctic law, Arctic politics and diplomacy, military factors in the Arctic,
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China’s Arctic activities, the Arctic’s strategic position, and China’s Arctic policy and recommendations (Jakobson, 2010). The project, which was ostensibly undertaken to help the government formulate its Arctic strategy, was organized by the CAA and was completed in 2009, though its conclusions were not released to the public.
At the same time, some assertive voices within China have began to claim China’s right to participate in Arctic decision-making. Some officials have pointed out that the high seas are the property of all mankind, and thus Arctic resources are common resources;
moreover, since China is located in the Northern Hemisphere and is impacted by changes in the Arctic, it has every right to participate in Arctic dialogues and cooperation (Wang, 2010). Governance of the Arctic has been framed as a global responsibility rather than as a regional one. Since the warming of the Arctic affects the whole world, SIIS Institute for Global Governance Studies director Ye Jiang argues, “Arctic governance should be embedded as part of global governance” (Jiang, 2014). Global governance presumably includes China. Voices from within the PRC military are even more hawkish. Regarding sovereignty in the Arctic, Admiral Yin Zhou, former head of the Chinese Naval Strategy Institute has asserted “the Arctic belongs to all people around the world and no nation has sovereignty over it” (Chang, 2010).
China has maintained that it will respect the boundary negotiations that are taking place between the Arctic states as they work to establish definite national boundaries according to UNCLOS rules; at the same time however, China feels that it has legitimate interests in Arctic issues such as sea lane navigation, fishing, and research, and thus a legitimate role in shaping regional governance structures (Jiang, 2012).
10.3 Domestic Arctic actors
Responsibility for Chinese Arctic programs is spread out over several different agencies.
The State Oceanic Administration (SOA) is the chief body responsible for polar issues.
Under the SOA, the office of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA) is directly responsible for polar expeditions and research planning. The CAA is also the body responsible for building China’s second icebreaker, which will be completely built in China, with a Finnish shipping company providing the technical knowledge (Wang, 2014). The SOA also heads the Chinese Advisory Committee for Polar Research (CACPR), which is the governmental consulting body on Arctic issues. CACPR is
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comprised of experts from 13 Chinese bureaus or ministries under the State Council and the General Staff Department of the People’s Liberation Army, though it is unclear if the PLA has a direct role in Arctic planning (Jakobson & Peng, 2012).
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is the body chiefly responsible for Arctic cooperation on the international level. The most important department within the MFA dealing with China’s Arctic cooperation is the MFA’s Department of Law and Treaty, which “prepares China’s official statements on the Arctic, coordinates Chinese representation at Arctic Council ministerial meetings, and is the Chinese counterpart in bilateral and multilateral engagement on Arctic matters” (Jakobson & Peng, 2012). The MFA Department of Law and Treaty holds an important role in China’s Arctic Council participation, and its officials regularly attend top-level Council meetings. The Department’s director Gou Haibo, deputy-director Jia Guide, and first-secretary Shi Wuhong, have all attended the Council’s meetings as China’s representatives since 2007.
China has several Arctic focused research institutions that provide advice to policymakers in the form of policy recommendations. The most important are the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), located in Shanghai; the China Institute for Marine Affairs, which is focused on maritime law and China’s maritime strategy; and the Institute of Oceanology, a multidisciplinary research institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Jakobson, 2010).
Several prominent Chinese think tanks also regularly conduct influential research on Arctic issues, namely the Chinese Institute for International Studies (CIIS), China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), and Shanghai Institutes of International Studies (SIIS). The publications of SIIS vice-president Yang Jian, the director of Arctic research at SIIS, are generally recognized as the most authoritative unofficial writings on China’s thinking on rights and sovereignty issues in the Arctic (Jakobson & Lee, 2013).
Lastly, there is significant Arctic-related research being conducted at several prominent Chinese universities including Ocean University of China in Qingdao, Dalian Marine University, Xiamen University, Tongji University in Shanghai, the Chinese Antarctic Centre of Surveying and Mapping at Wuhan University, and the Research Centre for Marine Developments of China in Qingdao.
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