As the Arctic summer melts the polar bear tracks on the sea ice around Norway’s Spitsbergen Island, dozens of Chinese scientists are arriving at a facility guarded by a very different kind of white creature—stone lions from Shanghai.
About 50 researchers from China are expected this year in the Norwegian science station of Ny-Ålesund in the Svalbard archipelago, where a male and a female lion watch the door of China’s “Yellow River Station.” It is the highest number of researchers since the COVID pandemic began, with some expected to stay through the polar winter.
The growing Chinese presence is a sign of the Arctic’s increasing importance to Beijing as China emerges as a global power to challenge the United States and its allies, even though at its closest China is 900 miles away from the Arctic Circle, the distance from New York to Tallahassee.
Svalbard, belonging to American NATO ally Norway but close to China’s strategic ally Russia, is an accessible international scientific center that has become a microcosm of the struggle between world powers in the Arctic.
A Newsweek investigation shows that a Chinese scientific institute, that is operating on the island where research for “war-like purposes” is forbidden, is part of China’s defense establishment, raising questions over whether it is defying the ban by carrying out potential “dual-use” research that has military as well as civilian applications. Meanwhile, a Chinese aerospace defense contractor is being served by a satellite ground station on Svalbard, even though Norway forbids data transmission “only or mainly” for military purposes, raising additional security questions.
Newsweek has tracked the expansion of Chinese power and influence from the remote islands of the South Pacific to the Caribbean and into the heart of the United States. The Arctic marks a new frontier that has major strategic importance, given its proximity to America and its NATO allies. The Arctic also has economic importance as the world’s warming climate gives more access to new shipping routes and previously inaccessible ocean mineral riches. From a scientific perspective, the Arctic holds a key not only to civilian research but also to developing powerful military capabilities from the deep sea to outer space. China says that “polar security” is part of its state security.
