A New Era of Arctic Geopolitics

Within the last decade, economic and strategic alignment between Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has steadily evolved and reached unprecedented levels. Western sanctions targeting Russia following its invasion of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022 have accelerated their geopolitical alignment and elevated the PRC as Russia’s most important trade partner and critical supplier of technology and dual-use components that support Russia’s defense industry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have also found common ground in weakening the United States and its leadership of the international system. Putin’s visit, with a large government delegation, to the PRC on May 16-17, 2024, the first after his most recent inauguration, suggests that he is positioning his country for an even deeper, long-term partnership with Beijing. The Arctic plays an important role in this evolving partnership. Moscow has looked to Beijing to develop the Northen Sea Route (NSR), invest in its Arctic energy projects and related support infrastructure (e.g., space and science), and enhance military cooperation. In return, Moscow has become Beijing’s conduit for greater activity in the Arctic, as the other seven Arctic Council and NATO members have become wary of the PRC’s strategic ambitions, coercive economic tactics, and focus on dual-use infrastructure investments.

As the analysis in this paper will show, Russia-PRC cooperation in the region supports commercial and military ends. This is the last and concluding brief in a series of four papers assessing Moscow’s and Beijing’s growing alignment in the Arctic. Previous briefs assessed their cooperation in space, especially in the realm of satellite navigation supporting Arctic operations, their scientific collaboration and exploration, including research supporting undersea technologies, and their deepening civil-military collaboration, including efforts to pursue joint maritime law enforcement on the NSR. This paper summarizes their evolving Arctic collaboration in the context of a deepening strategic partnership and relies on open-source government documents, policy analysis, and anonymized interviews with leading experts and officials from North America and Northern Europe.