Over the past three years, Russia’s cooperation with China has reached unprecedented levels. Still, there is one area where the two countries have been unable to find common ground: the Arctic. Even in the current geopolitical climate, the differences between Moscow and Beijing’s approaches to the Arctic have so far proven too great to overcome, limiting China’s advances in the Far North.
Publicly, Russia and China maintain they have a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” which ostensibly extends to Arctic issues. Yet their interests in the region can be quite disparate.
China first took a serious interest in the Far North in the early 2010s, initially seeking a seat on the Arctic Council, the region’s most important multilateral organization. Russia did not immediately agree to admit China, setting two conditions: that China respect the sovereignty of regional powers and abide by freedom-of-navigation rules. In 2013, China was finally granted observer status, and with it, a platform to articulate its regional objectives.
In 2018, China’s State Council published the country’s first-ever white paper on Arctic policy. The document described China as a “near-Arctic state” with a vested interest in the region’s affairs. It argued that the Arctic belonged to all mankind, and so China had the right to enter its waters and airspace, just like other “constructive” parties.
The Arctic was easily integrated into China’s global Belt and Road Initiative—in the form of a proposed “Polar Silk Road”—and its vision of a “Community of Common Destiny.” Overall, it presented Beijing with an opportunity to burnish its image as a responsible great power.
China’s stated objectives in the Arctic have not changed significantly since 2018. It remains committed to conducting scientific research, conserving the region, carrying out commercial activities, and assisting with the Arctic’s joint management in line with international law.
Indeed, all of China’s statements and documents on the region reiterate its willingness to engage in multilateral cooperation for the benefit of the Arctic. Meanwhile, the military-political dimension always goes unmentioned, with neither the 2018 white paper nor any subsequent pronouncements hinting at the expansionist designs about which then U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned in 2019.
Russia’s Arctic policy is based on altogether different principles. For Moscow, it is all about unlocking the region’s economic potential and defending sovereignty. Essentially, Russia wishes to commercialize the region—with an emphasis on oil and gas exploration and the creation of a transportation corridor—and militarize it, too.
Furthermore, Russia would do this unilaterally, all references to dialogue and cooperation with regional partners having been removed from the country’s main documents on the Arctic amid the breakdown in its relations with the West.
Unlike Beijing, Moscow has put great stock in national projects with limited foreign participation. Tellingly, the Northern Sea Route is treated by the Kremlin as a domestic transport route. While China welcomes the internationalization of the Arctic’s transportation corridors, Russia has resisted this trend in favor of autarky.
This fundamental disagreement has long hampered Russia’s cooperation with China on Arctic issues in every area except oil and gas. In the 2010s, the two countries actively collaborated on oil and gas projects in the Arctic, many of which the Chinese financed, much to Russia’s gratitude, particularly after the West imposed the first sanctions against it in 2014.
However, this partnership could not be extended to other areas of cooperation. Take infrastructure: in 2016, the state-owned China Poly Group signed a memorandum of understanding with the Arkhangelsk region administration on the construction of a deep-sea port in Arkhangelsk. China was expected to invest $78 million in the project and connect the port with the proposed Belkomur railway line. But the project never transpired.
Working together on infrastructure is difficult when Russia sees every new project through a national lens while China views it as a building block in a Polar Silk Road, an initiative Russia cannot help but be wary of in its multilateralism.
Russia’s break with the West and increased economic dependence on China has not smoothed over these tensions, even after repeated commitments by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to strengthen cooperation in the Arctic, and the establishment of a bilateral Subcommission on Cooperation on the Northern Sea Route.
Since 2022, Beijing has taken the same stance on the Arctic as it has on the war in Ukraine as a whole: neither condemning nor supporting Moscow. Following the invasion, the seven other members of the Arctic Council refused to attend any meetings chaired by Russia, leading China to declare that it saw no point in excluding Russia and suspend its own participation in the organization.
China took the same approach to economic cooperation, continuing to work with Russia on energy and infrastructure projects—until that ceased to be viable. The story of Arctic LNG 2 is indicative. In April 2019, two Chinese oil majors agreed to acquire a combined 20 percent stake in the project, instantly making Beijing Arctic LNG 2’s largest investor. But in December 2023, CNPC and CNOOC pulled out of the project in response to the tightening of U.S. sanctions.
Between 2022 and 2023, Novatek, the Russian LNG producer behind Arctic LNG 2, ordered gas turbine equipment and other technology from China for the project. Beijing resisted U.S. pressure and continued to fulfill these orders until January 2025, when sanctions imposed in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency brought everything to a halt.
Russia and China play up their scientific and cultural cooperation on Arctic issues, but their practical use has been doubtful. While academic contacts are often cited as a success story for Russia and China, they grew less frequent after February 2022. Chinese students still attend academic conferences in Russia, and joint expeditions to the Arctic continue, but these initiatives do little to meaningfully deepen Sino-Russian cooperation on regional issues.
The fact is that expectations that China might expand its presence in the Arctic through partnership with Russia have not been fulfilled. For Beijing, the priority remains having the freedom to work with all the Arctic’s interested parties. As such, while China continued to fulfill Russia’s technology orders for energy projects in the Arctic and import energy from the region, it has refrained from investing further in Russia’s Arctic initiatives out of fear of sanctions.
China genuinely values its relationships with the Arctic’s other powers, and does not want to risk alienating them by getting overly close to Russia. Since becoming an Arctic Council observer, Beijing has looked for opportunities to work not only with Moscow but also with others in the region, including Iceland and Norway. Admittedly, its proposals are given less and less consideration nowadays, with national security concerns usually cited as the reason.
Despite these setbacks, China remains set on the internationalization of Arctic projects and committed to multilateralism in the region. With war raging, Russia is less likely than ever to help China in this endeavor.
Claiming neutrality while simultaneously developing relations with Russia, China has taken a wait-and-see position toward its strategic partner, with respect to the Arctic as well as in general. And as Beijing waits for the resolution of Russia’s conflict with the West, it continues to take what it can from Moscow, starting with its know-how—by now a familiar dynamic in their relationship.
