Yahoo News 1 Mar 10;
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – China has started exploring how to reap economic and strategic benefits from the ice melting at the Arctic with global warming, a Stockholm research institute said Monday.
Chinese officials have so far had been cautious in expressing interest in the region for fear of causing alarm among the five countries bordering the Arctic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.
"The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the Chinese government to allocate more resources to Arctic research," SIPRI researcher Linda Jakobson said.
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are already at odds over how to divvy up the Arctic riches, claiming overlapping parts of the region -- estimated to hold 90 billion untapped barrels of oil -- and wrangling over who should control the still frozen shipping routes.
Most Europe-Asia trade now travels through the Suez Canal.
Diverting this traffic through the famed Northwest Passage, which according to different predictions could become ice-free in the summer months any time between 2013 and 2060, would cut travel distance by 40 percent.
"To date China has adopted a wait-and-see approach to Arctic developments, wary that active overtures would cause alarm in other countries due to China's size and status as a rising global power," Jakobson said.
China has no Arctic coast and therefore no sovereign rights to underwater continental shelves, and is not a member of the Arctic Council which determines Arctic policies.
"China's insistence on respect for sovereignty as a guiding principle of international relations deters it from questioning the territorial rights of Arctic states," according to SIPRI report "China prepares for an ice-free Arctic".
Officially, the country's research remains largely focused on the environmental challenges of a melting Arctic.
"However, in recent years Chinese officials and researchers have started to also assess the commercial, political and security implications for China of a seasonally ice-free Arctic region," Jakobson said.
She points out that the country has one of the world's strongest polar scientific research capabilities and already owns the world's largest non-nuclear icebreaker.
Last year Beijing approved the building of a new high-tech polar expedition research icebreaker, to set sail in 2013.
"Despite its seemingly weak position, China can be expected to seek a role in determining the political framework and legal foundation for future Arctic activities," Jakobson said.
Research group: China prepares for Arctic melt
Louise Nordstrom, Associated Press Yahoo News 1 Mar 10;
STOCKHOLM – China is starting to prepare for the commercial and strategic opportunities arising as global warming melts the polar ice cover in the Arctic, an international peace research group said Monday.
Researchers expect the North Pole to be ice free during summer months in a matter of decades, opening up new shipping lanes and potential resource exploration in an area believed to contain as much as a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
Competing sovereignty claims in the region are primarily being discussed by the five nations bordering the Arctic: the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark. Though China is keeping a low profile in those disputes, it's showing growing interest in the Arctic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a new study.
"China is slowly but steadily recognizing the commercial and strategic opportunities that will arise from an ice-free Arctic," said SIPRI researcher Linda Jakobson, who authored the study.
Jakobson said China "is at a disadvantage as it is not an Arctic state but is still keen to have the right to access natural resources."
SIPRI said China is devoting extra resources to Arctic research, mainly on science but also on the commercial, political and strategic implications of the melting of the ice in the region and opportunities to study the sea floor. Beijing has decided to build a high-tech icebreaker for polar expeditions, which is expected to be operational near 2013, the institute said.
"A few Chinese researchers already question China's natural sciences-approach to Arctic research and encourage the Chinese government to make comprehensive plans," Jakobson said in the report.
"These researchers are critical of China's neutral position toward Arctic politics," she said. "But the government does not want to alarm the Arctic states and, therefore, is cautious in its Arctic policies."
Jakobson said China is seeking a more active role in the Arctic Council — an intergovernmental body that deals with issues faced by Arctic nations and indigenous populations there.
China's economy relies heavily on shipping so the country stands to gain from shorter routes to Europe opening up because of the Arctic melt, instead of the traditional route through the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal.
The Shanghai-Hamburg shipping route could be cut by as much as 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) by using the Northwest Passage north of Russia, SIPRI said. That would also allow Chinese ships to avoid the pirate-infested waters off the Horn of Africa.
Two German merchant ships last year traversed the Northwest Passage, a sea lane that has traditionally been avoided because of its heavy ice floes.
In the summer of 2007, the Arctic ice cap shrank to a record-low minimum extent of 4.3 million square kilometers (1.7 million square miles) in September. The melting in 2008 and 2009 was not as extensive, but still ranked as the second- and third-greatest decreases on record.
