FIRE AND ICE

CHINA'S GROWING PRESENCE IN THE ARCTIC IS INFLAMING TENSIONS WITH THE US

- Didi Kirsten Tatlow

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.