China's Economic, Scientific, and Information Activities in the Arctic

Stephanie Pezard, Irina A. Chindea, Naoko Aoki, Domenique Lumpkin & Yuliya Shokh

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How might China's scientific, information, and commercial activities in the Arctic contribute to the country's broader security goals by enabling the collection of intelligence, allowing access to critical infrastructure, or providing other types of military advantages? China's activities in the Arctic have increased, and China's overall approach to strategic competition, which fuses the public with the private and the civilian sphere with the military, has heightened U.S. concerns that China might be on its way to becoming a security and military actor in the Arctic and that Russia is enabling this pathway.

In this report, the authors present an analysis of China's economic, scientific, and information activities in the Arctic and call special attention to the intelligence collection and military risks that they might present, including the threat signals for these risks. The authors explore five categories of activities: natural resource exploitation, knowledge development, access to infrastructure, data transmission, and public diplomacy.