The Chinese polar route
According to the text, the Chinese government will demonstrate to companies the feasibility of building infrastructures and conducting trial commercial trips, which will provide the routes for a future shipping route through the North Pole. This new step would give Beijing a faster sea route to many ports, since today, Chinese merchant ships must use other much more distant routes, say the Suez or Panama channels. The document states that all countries will have the right to use this route, since it will also seek to establish strategies to protect the environment and achieve greater cooperation.
The government of China has made clear its intention for a while, to restore the formerly called the Silk Road. But now, he also announced his plan to create a Polar Silk Road, which will try to establish a maritime trade route through the seas around the North Pole. This plan is part of the Silk Road and Belt Initiative strategy, which was presented by President Xi Jinping in 2013, and which wants to establish a corridor that crosses the Polar Circle and connects the Asian giant with three major economic poles: America North, East Asia and Western Europe.
The intention of Beijing is to use the new sea routes opened by global warming, which will reduce the time and cost of trade with some of its main partners, according to the Chinese authorities.
A document called China Policy for the Arctic was published this week, which is the first official statement from the Asian country in which it expresses its intentions to navigate an ocean that is not very frequented, but full of natural resources.
According to the text, the Chinese government will demonstrate to companies the feasibility of building infrastructures and conducting trial commercial trips, which will provide the routes for a future shipping route through the North Pole. This new step would give Beijing a faster sea route to many ports, since today, Chinese merchant ships must use other much more distant routes, say the Suez or Panama channels.
According to several estimates, the new route could reduce to 20 the 48 days it currently takes to get to Rotterdam from China through channels.
The document states that all countries will have the right to use this route, since it will also seek to establish strategies to protect the environment and to achieve greater cooperation, due to the shared interests of Beijing with the Arctic nations, since China, in fact , has no coasts in this ocean, which itself surrounds Russia, the United States, Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark, and others, who dispute the exploitation of the resources that are hidden under those waters.
Of course, environmental groups and international analysts already warn of a supposed interest of the Chinese government in joining the race for control of an area rich in oil and natural gas, which is estimated to be equivalent to between 16 and 26 percent of undiscovered terrestrial reserves, something that Beijing denies.
But China's policy for the Arctic does recognize China's interests in the oil, gas, minerals, fisheries and other resources of that region, though it says it will seek to develop them cooperatively with other Arctic nations and states.
Clearly, China is not the first to announce new intentions about the Arctic in recent dates, as the Russian government also announced the launch of the Iceberg Project, a plan for the development of hydrocarbon fields with total autonomy under water and ice, in the Arctic with severe winter conditions, explained the Foundation for Advanced Studies of Russia.
And now, according to the media of both nations that have been showing strong ties of cooperation for some time, the Chinese idea of the Polar Silk Road is an original initiative of Russia and therefore, both countries have been working for months in his design.
This Belt and Silk Route La Ruta Initiative, of which the Polar Route is a part, is inspired by the permanence that it has in present-day history, the passage of the old goods caravans between Europe and Asia, which used the Route of the original Silk. The new one, according to the Chinese government, will encourage the construction of infrastructures and connectivity between some 70 countries through land and sea routes.