Chinese ship takes Arctic shortcut: Smart business, or a geopolitical flex?

For years, China has been talking a big game about the Arctic.

The Asian country lies far from the Arctic Circle – almost 1300 kilometres – but still, it has declared itself a “near-Arctic state”.

It has teamed up with Russia on coast guard patrols in the Arctic Ocean and explored a flurry of resource and technology projects in Arctic towns. (Most never materialised.)

The Chinese are now promoting the first regular cargo service to use the Northern Sea Route, an Arctic shortcut from Asia to Europe across the top of the world. This week, the Dubai Tower, a Chinese cargo ship, finished a three-week journey from Qingdao to Teesport in England.

But many Arctic watchers who tracked the Dubai Tower’s little blinking dot as it moved across the screen on maritime websites are asking the same question: is this smart business – or more of a bold geopolitical move?

The Northern Sea Route is thousands of kilometres shorter than alternatives through the Suez Canal or around the Cape of Good Hope. And as climate change intensifies, polar ice is disappearing, increasing its accessibility.

Yet shipping executives say the route is still too difficult, dangerous and expensive for China or any country to make this a regular service. And the season for operations is short – basically August and September, with maybe a few days in July and October. Even then, cargo ships need an icebreaker escort.

“It’s not commercially feasible,” said Vidya Mani, an associate professor at the University of Virginia who focuses on global supply chains.

Shipping experts said that the route required specialised reinforced vessels. Its remoteness made it riskier. And the insurance premiums run higher. The costs quickly pile up, they say, making the route unprofitable.

But behind these voyages, geopolitical analysts see something else.

“This is a big deal,” said Dexter Roberts, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who focuses on China. “China is the only non-Arctic country that is actually doing something like this.

“China is a master at doing things that don’t seem commercial, necessarily, in the beginning,” he added.

Eventually, he said, “it all adds up to a geostrategic win”.

In the 1990s, China stepped up its Arctic research and made its first expedition to the North Pole. In more recent years, its government developed plans for trade along what it calls a polar Silk Road, though its “overtures have been met with suspicion”, according to a study published by Harvard’s Kennedy School.

The 175-metre-long Dubai Tower left China on August 19, carrying 1300 containers of electric vehicles, batteries and other renewable-energy equipment. This is the first of eight planned voyages that the shipping line Sea Legend has said it will run through the Arctic this season. The route can shave two weeks off the Asia-Europe trip. As Sea Legend executives pointed out, it also avoids conflict zones in the Middle East.

Sea Legend originally said the Dubai Tower would pull into Felixstowe, a British port, this past Monday. Instead, it docked on Wednesday in Teesport, another British port, according to VesselFinder, a maritime-tracking database. Clearly, it ran a little late.

That’s another problem. Because of extreme weather in the Arctic and the bobbing icebergs, voyage time along this route is harder to predict. And predictability is a must for many kinds of shipments.

Another complication is that most of the route runs along Russia’s northern coast. That means shipping companies must pay the Russian government access fees. At the moment, many Western companies would be wary of that, given the sanctions on Russia over its war with Ukraine.

South Korea is testing the route, and last month, its first commercial ship set sail for England through the Arctic. But these are pioneers. In 2025, just 13 container ships transited the Northern Sea Route, a record, according to Peter Sand, a shipping industry analyst. That compares with more than 1800 container ships that used the Suez Canal last year, he said. Russian warships and Russian tankers carrying natural gas also use the Northern Sea Route.

Lasse Kristoffersen, chief executive of Wallenius Wilhelmsen, a global Norwegian shipping business, said his company had no plans to acquire ships equipped for the Arctic. But he said that if global warming continued at the same rate, the route could become more popular.

“If you look at the current trend, unfortunately, it seems that that day will come,” he said.

More Arctic trade will help Russia. Already it is using the Northern Sea Route to strengthen its bond with China. The new service “obviously brings China and Russia even closer”, said Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia program at Defence Priorities, a research institute in Washington.

The crew of the Dubai Tower seemed excited for other reasons.

“I hope I will get to see the Northern Lights,” said one sailor, in a video posted on social media by the company and labelled a “Heart-to-Heart in the Cabin”.

Maybe, the sailor added, he would even see a polar bear.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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