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 hard by 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 in fact 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.
Backstory â Tracking China in the ArcticRead more Backstory â Tracking China in the ArcticNewsweek 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.
"China is where I think most of the Arctic tension is becoming really problematic, because we just haven't worked with them in the Arctic before," said Gregory Falco, a professor of aerospace engineering at Cornell University. "It's a new player that we really didn't expect to have there."
China says its aims in the Arctic are peaceful and not to the detriment of others.
"China's policy goals on the Arctic are: to understand, protect, develop, and participate in the governance of the Arctic, to safeguard the common interests of all countries and the international community in the Arctic, and to promote sustainable development of the Arctic," the Press Office of the Chinese Embassy in Oslo said in an email to Newsweek.
"The hype of relevant countries on dual-use research is completely unfounded and sounds more like 'measuring others' corn by one's own bushel,'" the embassy said.
But the U.S. has taken notice of the growing competition with both China and Russia. In a sign of increasing pushback, the Department of State last year reopened a post in the Norwegian Arctic that had been shuttered in 1994. In March, the top science official with the Department of Homeland Security visited Svalbard.
The Norwegian government voiced concern over what some may be trying to do in Svalbard in May in a paper that reasserted Norwegian sovereignty and highlighted the risk of dual-use research. It did not point to any country.
In a statement to Newsweek, Norwegian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Eivind Vad Petersson also signaled concerns about possible dual-use research. "All foreign military activity in Svalbard is prohibited, and would constitute gross infringement of Norwegian sovereignty," he said.
China has previously chafed at research restrictions in the archipelago, where its presence was formalised by a treaty in pre-Communist days in the 1920s. It has called for "freedom of scientific investigation" and "internationalization." Norway says only natural sciences may be studied with an emphasis on climate, and some cultural heritage research.
Dual-use research
The 24-hour polar nights over, the first three Chinese researchers arrived at the Yellow River Station at the end of April.
Planned projects include "operational surveys and scientific research projects in the fields of glaciology, terrestrial and marine ecology and space physics," Hu Zhengyi, the head of the station, told state-run China Daily.
Space physics figures prominently in the work of the China Research Institute of Radio Wave Propagation (CRIRP) which has two active projects running until 2030, according to the Norwegian government's Research in Svalbard website (RiS).
Yet CRIRP's name does not show its full identity.
Newsweek research shows that it belongs to China Electronics and Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China's biggest military electronics conglomerate. Internally it is identified as the state-owned corporation's 22nd Institute, according to statements and photographs on official Chinese-language websites that show they are one and the same.
In China, CRIRP does not hide the goals of its work. It was established in 1963 for military purposes and has led development of China's "over-the-horizon" radar which can detect missiles, some submarine antennae, and even stealth aircraft at great distances, research reports show.
"Strengthening the military," was among the top objectives set out in a speech on the institute's 60th anniversary last year by Chen Xinyu, its director and party secretary, a dual role that underlines his seniority in the Communist establishment.
Congratulatory messages from the country's Central Military Commission, headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hailed the institute's work. It had "adhered to its main responsibilities and fulfilled its primary responsibility in military industry, and made important contributions to China's national defense modernization and the improvement of comprehensive national strength," the commission and other military organizations said, according to the CETC website.
CRIRP has collaborated with 13 units of the People's Liberation Army, including the Navy, the Rocket Force, the Strategic Support Force for Space and the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, according to the open-source intelligence platform Data Abyss in Dayton, Ohio, and to Newsweek research.
For example, it collaborated with PLA Navy Unit 92941 on "radar detection in blind areas in the sea environment," and with Joint Staff Unit 61191 on "space target surveillance radar." Two studies undertaken at the institute's Qingdao branch are prefixed "XXX" indicating they are classified. The Qingdao branch is the lead branch in the institute's Nordic research.
A research description on the RiS website says CRIRP conducts atmospheric and ionospheric observation in Ny-Ålesund including of space weather, the Northern Lights, and electrons—which are also important for target detection, tracking and identification, according to specialists. Remote research is underway via equipment installed in the Yellow River Station that is analysed by teams in China, making it difficult to be certain of end-users, according to accounts of projects shared with Newsweek by a Chinese researcher who was granted anonymity to speak on a sensitive issue.
"My assessment is that this institute does it all, from climate to bore hole drilling for oil and gas to classified radar research," said L J Eads, the founder of Data Abyss, which is co-funded by the Pentagon.
"There is still clear environmental and atmospheric research that isn't advancing the PLA," Eads said, referring to China's People's Liberation Army. "The problem is that it's also dual-use."
The likelihood that research from Svalbard could be used for military purposes is underlined by research by Yang Shenggao of the People's Liberation Army University of Science and Technology, another collaboration partner of CRIRP. Yang used data from Svalbard and from Chinese bases in the Antarctic to study missile guidance.
"Military systems can better predict and mitigate the effects of ionospheric disturbances" on radar signals for "the precise guidance of ICBMs, ensuring that they remain on their intended trajectories despite ionospheric variability," one of Yang's papers says.
Norway's polar scientists appeared to downplay concerns in comments to Newsweek.
Geir Gotaas of the Ny-Ålesund Program of the Norwegian Polar Institute said: "We have no reason to question your findings that CRIRP is a research institute under CETC. However, the entity registered in RiS as being engaged in research on Svalbard is CRIRP."
"They appear—for all intents and purposes—to be a legitimate research actor," Gotaas said, also referring to the institute's involvement in another research body, the European Incoherent Scatter Association (EISCAT), which has a radar on Svalbard.
That radar connects to a network of stations in Norway, Sweden and Finland, where another institute belonging to CETC supplied 30,000 antennae for a massive, new "scatter radar" called EISCAT_3D. Swedish authorities are restructuring the association into a Nordics-only company on security grounds. CRIRP will not be part of the new company.
Maria Thuveson, Executive Director of the Swedish Research Council, told Newsweek by email that while EISCAT_3D's antennae came from China, other essential components were from Nordic countries. She declined to say if CRIRP would participate in research in future.
Satellites are another major dual-use concern for Norway and for the U.S. The satellites of at least nine Chinese entities, including the defense contractor Shenzhen Aerospace Dongfanghong, are being served by SvalSat ground station on Svalbard, according to Norway's communications authority NKOM.
That microsatellite operated by the Shenzhen company and two other organisations in China had not been found to violate rules barring data transmission specifically or wholly for military purposes, according to NKOM spokesman Kai Steffen Østensen. Its purpose was "earth observation of the polar area and to serve shipping on Arctic passage." Having an owner who was involved in "dual-use type of operations" did not disqualify a satellite, Østensen said.
Asked about possible satellite activity by China on its ships in the Arctic just outside of Svalbard's waters and further afield in the region, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mariken Bruusgaard Harbitz said, "Norwegian authorities follow closely the activity in the High North."
Across the Arctic
Svalbard is not the only place in the Arctic where Chinese scientists are active.
In the Chukchi Sea by the Bering Strait, where the U.S. and Russia meet, scientists from the military-linked Harbin Engineering University are researching underwater acoustics which is crucial for safe submarine navigation.
Chinese research is underway in Iceland, too, benefitting from active support from Icelandic officials and scientists. The Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) in Shanghai, which operates China's Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, opened a China-Iceland Joint Arctic Observatory in Kárhóll in 2018 with Icelandic partners to monitor the upper atmosphere and space and to research LiDAR technology, which measures distances to targets with lasers.
"People say, why is China interested in the Arctic. But why shouldn't China be interested in the Arctic?" said Gørild Heggelund of the Fritjof Nansen Institute in Oslo. "They are interested in science, especially in regard to how changes in the Arctic are going to affect China itself."
Dual-use research by China was the "main concern" in the Arctic, said Marc Lanteigne, a professor of political science at The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. "Chinese scientific interests and projects in the Arctic are likely to be used for strategic and military progress. It's understood that this information will be transmitted to the Chinese military. That's simply the nature of the Chinese government."
The reason why the Arctic is so important for China's scientific research is highlighted in its publications.
"In the Arctic region, there is the shortest straight line connecting North America, northern Europe and northern Asia, so the strategic position of the Arctic region is becoming increasingly important," according to a study published by Polar Research, a journal published by China's polar research institute.
Jostling Powers
Yet China's Arctic interests are much broader than science, as global powers jostle like the ice floes in the region's freezing seas. In 2019, the former Secretary of State Michael J. Pompeo tweeted that Beijing's 2018 claim that it was a "near-Arctic state" was "a communist fiction."
"China has strong military interests in the Arctic, including trying to get a nuclear-armed submarine up into Arctic waters," said Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of politics at New Zealand's Canterbury University and author of the book, China as a Polar Great Power. "If China achieved this it would be a game-changer in terms of nuclear deterrence, providing it with second-strike nuclear deterrence."
In another sign of increasing presence in the Arctic, four Chinese naval vessels ventured close to U.S. waters off Alaska in the Bering Sea in July to be met by U.S. Coast Guard vessels.
Economic interests are interwoven with strategic, research—and intelligence activities.
Chinese officials believe that the Arctic ice cap may melt by 2050, thus opening the Northern Sea Route to China's commercial shipping fleet. That would cut about a third off current shipping routes and potentially be a huge benefit for a country that is the world's biggest goods exporter.
State shipping giant COSCO, which has Communist party cells on board its vessels and supports the PLA, has already begun to travel the route with Russian icebreakers. In June, Russia's state nuclear company Rosatom and China's Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Company signed a deal in St. Petersburg for a year-round container service along the Northeast passage.
Other economic interests of China—alongside other countries such as Norway—include mining for deep-sea minerals. The International Seabed Authority may begin distributing mining permits as early as 2025.
China's ambitions in the Arctic were long-term and included research and governance, but also intelligence activities, said Jon Fitje Hoffmann, Special Advisor to the Governor of Svalbard. "It's difficult to assess any kind of damage or any kind of concrete questions where we have a concern," he said in an interview. "It's more the long-term development and how they are going to go about to increase their influence. They have an enormous intelligence apparatus to their disposal and clearly they want to use it."
CLOSE XChinese interests—often individuals who cannot be directly tied to the state but occasionally also institutions—have also tried to establish themselves in Longyearbyen, Svalbard's main settlement, by buying property or offering to build housing, or asking to set up a LiDAR station, Fitje Hoffmann said. The attempts had been unsuccessful with Norway aiming to keep the archipelago mostly Norwegian and shoring up government control of important infrastructure.
The U.S. has taken notice of China's deepening interest. In 2022 the White House published a national Arctic strategy that highlighted the growing role of a country it has identified as its main strategic rival.
The Department of State reopened an American Presence Post last year in Norway's Arctic city of Tromsø. It had been shuttered in 1994. In January, the Department of Homeland Security announced $46 million in funding for a new Arctic knowledge center at the University of Alaska Anchorage. And in March, Dimitri Kusnezov, the top science official at the department, visited Svalbard with Canada's chief government science advisor, on a second trip to the region within a year. His office declined to comment.
Yet the U.S. is behind in some ways, having just two icebreakers—one of which is laid up. American shipyards have not built a heavy icebreaker in 50 years, according to Alaska Public Media, though in July the U.S., Canada and Finland announced a joint plan to build new ice ships. China launched its third icebreaker, the Jidi, in June, with a fourth due next year. Russia has dozens including nuclear powered vessels.
Potential cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic is also a concern for the United States and its allies now.
In April, Esther McClure, the Defense Department's director of Arctic and oceans policy, spoke of "a lack of clarity" about Russian and Chinese intentions. The two countries have strengthened their alliance since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought it under toughened Western sanctions. The Pentagon declined to comment, saying an updated Arctic strategy was due later this year.
One place for potential Sino-Russian collaboration is Svalbard itself.
Last year, Russian officials offered to set up a rival research center there for Russia, China and other members of their BRICS alliance in the largely abandoned former Soviet coal-mining settlement of Pyramiden, about 60 miles southeast of Ny-Ålesund.
"The Chinese have virtually no experience working in the Arctic...we have many educational institutions in the Arctic zone, only there can the Chinese learn a lot about the Arctic," a member of Russia's Arctic Development Project Office, Alexander Vorotnikov, told Russian media SVPressa.
China's polar institute did not reply to questions on whether it might join.
"They are keeping their plans close to the vest," said Lanteigne.
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