Despite recent attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to downplay its military and strategic ambitions in the Arctic, Nordic nations and other NATO members remain skeptical of such claims, expressing concerns about “a widely shared fear that China could weaponize Arctic shipping routes and mineral supply chains,” reported The Economist, a British news weekly, in February 2026. CCP statements at a recent China-Nordic Arctic Research Centre conference in early February sought to soften the party’s earlier aggressive stance of being a “near-Arctic” state despite 1,500 kilometers separating the nearest Chinese territory from the Arctic.
Zhao Long of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, a CCP think tank, told The Economist that “China has very limited goals regarding the Arctic” at the February 1-2 conference. However, those claims contradict a long history of increased CCP activity in the region. In 2025, a CCP icebreaker, the Xuelong 2, completed the country’s largest Arctic expedition to date. A month later, a CCP container ship transited the Arctic along the Northern Sea Route, which has been zealously guarded by a close CCP ally, Russia. Sweden withdrew from the China-Nordic Arctic Research Center in 2023 over concerns about CCP activity in the region. Finland also has reduced cooperation with the CCP in the region. Denmark intelligence predicted in December 2025 that the CCP planned to deploy naval vessels and submarines in the region within 10 years, The Economist reported.
Stoking such trepidation is the CCP’s alliance with Russia, which has a large Arctic military presence. Russia has been isolated in the region since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, notably being sanctioned by the Arctic Council, which suspended most work with Moscow. The CCP has invested in Russian military infrastructure, including ports, in the region, bolstering efforts of the Russian “shadow fleet” to ferry oil to the CCP through the Northern Sea Route. Increased collaboration on dual-use maritime expeditions used to map the seabed and collect climate information useful for missile launches also has occurred, prompting NATO’s top commander, United States Army Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, to quip in December 2025: “They’re not studying the seals and the polar bears.”
The Arctic Frontiers conference, held in February in Tromsø, Norway, also highlighted Nordic concerns about Russian and Chinese intentions. “The Arctic is hot,” Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide said, adding that it is “very hot in the international security landscape,” according to Time, a U.S. news magazine. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, echoed those concerns at the conference. “It is a period of high stress for the High North,” she said, noting that even as Russia has been fighting in Ukraine, it has reopened and modernized Soviet-era military bases in the Arctic region.