The partnerships between Chinese and Russian businesses are encouraged at the highest level by Russian political authorities, as shown by Russian Deputy Prime minister Dmitri Rogozin 7 December 2015 statement, given in Beijing, when he invited Chinese involvement in the Northern Sea Route (“Moscow invites Beijing to take part in Arctic sea route project”, RT, 7 December, 2015). This invitation is rooted in the nexus of Russo-Chinese political, logistical and business partnerships, heightened by the Chinese “New Silk Road” strategy (Lanteigne, ibid).
The “New Silk Road” is an immense process for the development of land and maritime transportation, as well as energy, mineral and cyber infrastructures, officially launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. It is accompanied by legions of commercial contracts and political deals between the Chinese public and private sectors and their counterparts in the different countries and continents belted by the “One Belt, One Road” initiative (Shannon Tiezzi, “China’s New Silk Road” vision revealed – a new series in Xinhua offers the clearest vision yet of China’s ambitious “New Silk Road””, The Diplomat, May 09, 2014). The New Silk Road is conceived as being a gigantic “loop” spanning from the centre of the “Middle Kingdom” to Rotterdam and from the port of Quanzhou in Fujian to Kenya, Egypt and Europe (Tiezzi, ibid). It goes with massive investments made by the Chinese-led Asian Investment and Infrastructures Bank (AIIB).
An example of the involvement of the actors of the maritime New Silk Road in the Russian Arctic is the way the China Shipping Ocean Company (COSCO) has sent more than five of its ships on several voyages along the Northern Sea Route in 2016. Mr Ding Nong, CEO of COSCO, one of the biggest shipping company in the world, announced in October 2016, at the Arctic Circle conference in Reykjavik, capital city of Iceland, that
“As the climate becomes warmer and polar ice melts faster, the Northeast Passage has appeared as a new trunk route connecting Asia and Europe” … “COSCO Shipping is optimistic about the future of the NSR and Arctic shipping” (Atle Staalesen, “COSCO Sends 5 Vessels Through Northern Sea Route”, The Independent Barents Observer, October 10, 2016, and Jean-Michel Valantin, “Arctic China (1)- The Dragon and the Vikings”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 24 May, 2014).
It is interesting to note that, for such an important business actor, climate change is fully recognized and turned into an opportunity, and that climate disruption is in fact turned into a massive commercial advantage.
In other terms, Chinese interests and needs meet the Russian Arctic strategy, and are turning this warming region into a continental-wide hub of commerce, energy and natural resources development, while reinforcing each other: the Russian Arctic becomes the basis for a long game energy, business and military strategy, while the Eurasian corridor it creates becomes a new and essential segment of the New Silk Road.
The strategic convergence of these two Eurasiatic giants is based on the new alliance of the oil, gas, nuclear and finance sectors, and on the will to turn the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change into a large spectrum support. This shows that potential threats, if understood and anticipated early enough, can be transformed into strategic opportunities (Helene Lavoix, “Business and Geopolitics: Caught Up in the Whirlwinds?”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 19 October, 2016).
This convergence has deeply transformative consequences, because it is starting to attract other actors, for example in East Asia, such as Viet Nam, South Korea and Japan to the Arctic, besides historical Arctic actors such as European Norway. Furthermore, railroads are built, through investments and development, to link Russian Arctic harbours to Central Asia (Atle Staalesen, “Chinese money for Archangelsk rail and port”, The Independent Barents Observer, December 10, 2015 and “This Arctic Shipping makes it into the history books: From South Korea to Kazakhstan through the Northern Sea Route”, The Independent Barents Observer, July 25, 2016).
Is the warming Arctic becoming the “centre” of an emerging Eurasian market with related security shift, while the Arctic keeps on warming?
It is the issue the Red (Team) Analysis Society will study in the next part of this series, by continuing to underline how geopolitical and environmental changes are of importance to the business and security communities.
To be (soon) continued.
About the author: Jean-Michel Valantin (PhD Paris) is the Director of Environment and Security Analysis at The Red (Team) Analysis Society. He is specialised in strategic studies and defence sociology with a focus on environmental geostrategy.
Featured image: 50 Years of Victory at North Pole by Christopher Michel 50 Years of Victory North Pole Icebreakers, 12 July 2015, CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons and Flickr.
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