Donald Trump claims that he "needs" Greenland because the island is surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships. But is this threat real? And what are Russia and China doing in the Arctic anyway?
Although Donald Trump seems to have changed his mind about annexing Greenland, his march into the Arctic is not over yet. Judging by the US president's latest statements, he is counting on receiving carte blanche for a military presence on the island and access to its natural resources – "without limits and without deadlines".
In his quest to acquire Greenland, the American president argued to Denmark, to which the island belongs, and other NATO allies with the threat from Russia and China, including military. "China and Russia want to acquire Greenland, and Denmark can do nothing about it", the master of the White House recently repeated.
However, these statements of his have little to do with reality. China is indeed developing cooperation with Russia in the Arctic, but it is going poorly and actually has nothing to do with Greenland, experts interviewed by DW point out.
What interests does China pursue in the Arctic?
China clearly formulated its interests in the Arctic in 2018 in a document entitled "White Paper on Arctic Policy". In it, Beijing defined the region's resources as the property of humanity, thus justifying its right to participate in their development, and declared itself a "close to the Arctic" country.
Beyond the Arctic Circle, however, China has been active much earlier. It has acted independently, primarily through scientific projects, but it has also tried to establish cooperation with the countries of the so-called "Arctic Five" - Denmark, Canada, Norway, Russia and the United States. However, so far these attempts have not yielded any significant results.
"The Chinese experts I have spoken to are definitely interested in a broader Arctic partnership, but the Scandinavian countries and Canada reject Chinese investment projects for security reasons," says Pavel Devyatkin, a senior analyst at the American Arctic Institute.
China's only major joint project is the one with Russia. This is "Arctic LNG-2" - a large-scale energy facility for the production of liquefied natural gas, located on the Gydan Peninsula (part of Russia) in the Arctic. Chinese companies have stakes in this project, and the gas from it is supplied to China despite international sanctions.
China also cooperates with Russia in the military sphere. The intensity of this cooperation has increased in recent years - and this worries not only Donald Trump, but also NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. So far, their cooperation in the military sphere is limited to exercises that cannot be called large-scale - one of them, for example, is a joint patrol in the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
How did China try to invest in Greenland and why did nothing work out?
Donald Trump's claims would have been more justified if he had used the past tense. China has made several attempts to invest in projects in Greenland, but by the time the US president announced his concern for the island's security, all of them had long since been discontinued.
After gaining self-government in 2009, Greenland tried to attract Chinese investment in the mining sector (the island has huge reserves of minerals), but none of the projects were launched.
The reasons for this are different, notes in an interview with DW analyst Patrick Andersson from the Swedish National Center for China Studies. The Chinese abandoned zinc mining in the Citronen Fjord area due to technical and logistical difficulties. And the "Isua" iron ore mining project was buried due to unfavorable price developments. The exploitation of uranium and rare earth metal deposits in the Kvanefeld deposit did not happen due to protests by local residents.
In addition, China had intended to invest in Greenland's infrastructure, but here too the projects did not materialize - due to the resistance of Denmark and the United States, explains Andersson. The Chinese state-owned company was effectively pushed out of the tender for the expansion of the runways after Denmark took over the financing of a significant part of the project. And the attempt of a Hong Kong company to acquire the former Danish naval base on the island was blocked by the direct intervention of the Danish authorities, acting under pressure from Washington.
"In the foreseeable future, it is highly unlikely that significant Chinese investments will be made in Greenland, especially in infrastructure and the extraction of strategically important minerals", concludes the DW interlocutor. This is due both to the high geopolitical risks for Chinese companies, which prompt them to seek opportunities in other regions, and to the strong resistance from the US and Denmark, he specifies.
How is cooperation between China and Russia developing in the Arctic?
The threat of increased cooperation between China and Russia also seems a bit exaggerated. "It is increasing, but not as dramatically as it is being presented", notes Pavel Devyatkin of the Arctic Institute. The two countries have concluded formal agreements on the Northern Sea Route, the volumes of cargo transported along it have increased, but everything is more complicated than headlines like this one suggest: "Russia reluctantly grants China full access".
Closer cooperation is hindered, among other things, by a fundamental difference in approaches. If China views the Arctic as a common heritage of humanity, then Russia, in its "Fundamentals of State Policy in the Arctic for the Period until 2035", places emphasis on "ensuring sovereignty and territorial integrity".
Military escalation in the region is indeed present, Devyatkin admits. At the same time, he specifies that this is "a classic spiral of action - counteraction: NATO has expanded significantly, Finland and Sweden have joined the Alliance, large-scale exercises are being held, and Russia perceives this as a threat and reacts accordingly".
If the US increases its military presence in the region, Russia and China will take retaliatory measures, the expert believes. "They can increase joint patrols or increase the number of bomber flights, that is, there will be a show of force, but there will be no direct conflict".