A few days after the Houthis announced a new naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, whilst the Iranian-backed Yemeni group stepped up its attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure – culminating last Sunday in an attack on Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery – Beijing negotiated a safe passage directly with the terrorists. Since then, at least four Chinese oil tankers laden with Saudi oil have safely passed through one of the world’s most strategic chokepoints. China is the only world power permitted to deal with terrorists whilst buying oil from Riyadh, to supply technology and missiles to Tehran whilst opening up new trade routes in sensitive parts of the globe. From China’s perspective, there is no contradiction: Beijing’s priority is to secure access to energy resources and trade routes, in accordance with the age-old rule from international relations textbooks (attributed to Elizabeth I’s courtier and explorer Walter Raleigh) which states: he who rules the seas rules trade, and he who rules trade rules the world’s wealth, and consequently the world itself. This is why the Chinese leadership, whilst ensuring safe passage through Bab el Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz to protect its energy supplies, has for years been working on alternatives, above all to secure virtually monopolistic trade routes between Asia and Europe. And the Arctic is the Chinese priority on which Trump, perhaps, was right.
This week, the Chinese company Sea Legend will launch the first regular container shipping service via the Arctic route, dubbed the ‘Ice Silk Road’. Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the weekly service will sail along Russia’s northern coast between Ningbo, on China’s east coast, and Felixstowe in the UK, halving the sailing time between Europe and Asia from the current forty days. China has long been investing in the Arctic route, a route that major European shipping companies had not previously chosen for practical reasons: on the one hand, relations with Moscow; on the other, the fragile Arctic ecosystem, which would be exposed to even greater pollution and potential accidents due to the frequent passage of mega-container ships. Now, however, the melting of the glaciers has meant that the route is no longer excessively costly, with no need for an escort by icebreakers – in which, incidentally, Beijing has invested heavily over the years (among those who follow China’s Arctic strategy, it is said – ironically, but not entirely so – that this is perhaps why the Chinese Communist Party has never given up on oil and coal: to increase emissions and melt the Arctic Circle’s ice more rapidly). When US President Donald Trump began talking about the Arctic, and the possibility of ‘annexing’ Greenland by flouting the norms within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, he was in fact raising a very real issue: China wants to secure a monopoly on a trade route without paying too much heed to the risks of environmental impact. But for China (and Russia), the Arctic is not just about trade: for days now, Canada and the United States have been monitoring two Chinese icebreakers, the Xue Long and the Xue Long 2, which are officially on research missions in Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska and which, in July, crossed the US exclusive economic zone in the Bering Sea. These ‘scientific’ missions may in fact conceal a systematic collection of underwater data of high strategic value.
