Pei Xin/Xinhua, via The Associated Press
The icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, docked in Shanghai last week after its 85-day Arctic expedition.
Why might China need up to 500 personnel in its embassy in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, a country of 320,000 people?
That number would far outstrip any other diplomatic presence in the country, according to Damien Degeorges, a Greenland expert who spoke Thursday morning at an event in London hosted by the European Council on Foreign Relations. (For a podcast of the talk, go here and click on “China’s interest in Greenland and Iceland.”)
“The largest European embassy in Reykjavik is the French one, with less than 20 people. The U.S. Embassy, I’ve heard, is about 70 people,” said Mr. Degeorges, a Greenland University researcher based in Brussels and the author of a study titled “The Role of Greenland in the Arctic.”
“This one, according to Chinese diplomats, may be able to host at the maximum, very maximum, 500 persons,” said Mr. Degeorges, appearing to show his audience a photograph of the Chinese Embassy building.
Then Mr. Degeorges answered his own question about China’s need — or desire — for such a large embassy in Reykjavik: “It gives you the long-term perspective that you can expect in Iceland.”
Indeed.
Everyone is jostling for space in the melting Arctic these days, it seems, as my colleague Elisabeth Rosenthal recently reported. That includes China, which has no Arctic territory.
Yet as the Arctic ice cap melts, it is revealing riches — principally minerals, including important rare earths, but also water, oil and gas. Greenland potentially has up to 10 percent of the world’s freshwater reserves, Mr. Degeorges said.
The biggest island in the world, with a population of just 57,000 people, Greenland is becoming a center of tremendous interest for many countries.
The United States has long had a military base at Thule, 1,200 kilometers, or 750 miles, north of the Arctic Circle. Russia is an Arctic heavyweight, operating the world’s only fleet of nuclear icebreakers.
But the self-ruled territory within the Kingdom of Denmark may be moving toward political independence, leaving an intriguing picture, where an underdeveloped region is suddenly the focus of a great-power rivalry, as was Central Asia when Russia, China and Great Britain sparred there during the 19th and early 20th centuries. As Mr. Degeorges put it in the talk: Greenland is “a new meeting place for global powers.”
Cue the Snow Dragon, China’s biggest icebreaker and the largest nonnuclear one in the world.
In July, it set out on its fifth Arctic exploration and research trip from the eastern Chinese port of Qingdao, sailing straight through the Arctic to Iceland — a first for China. It was also the first time a Chinese ship on an Arctic exploration voyage had called into port in Iceland, where it permitted locals to board and visit. The route of the ship can be viewed here on nicely done maps at the Arctic Portal, and also here, on the expedition’s Web site.
The Snow Dragon, whose Chinese name is Xuelong, returned to China just last week, docking in Shanghai, where the Polar Research Institute of China is based.
China is lobbying intensely for permanent observer status on the Arctic Council, the loose international body of eight Arctic countries that develops policy for the region; it includes Russia, the United States and Canada.
China says it is a “near Arctic state” and that the Arctic is “the inherited wealth of all humankind,” in the words of the Chinese State Oceanic Administration, my colleague Elisabeth reported.
“Chinese activity in the Arctic to some extent mirrors that of other non-Arctic countries,” Elisabeth wrote. “The European Union, Japan and South Korea have also applied in the last three years for permanent observer status at the Arctic Council, which would allow them to present their perspective, but not vote.”
And for those who may question the geographical justification of China’s interest in the Arctic, consider this: Within Chinese territory (as well as Indian territory, of course) is an area known as the Third Pole – the Himalayas.
Calling it a “new concept,” Mr. Degeorges said, the Third Pole notion gave Asian countries like China and India “more legitimacy when it comes to dealing with polar regions.”