torsdag 8. august 2024

China's Expanding Arctic Ambitions Challenge the U.S. and NATO

As the Arctic summer melts the polar bear tracks on the sea ice around Norway's Spitsbergen Island, dozens of Chinese scientists are arriving at a facility guarded by a very different kind of white creature—stone lions from Shanghai.

About 50 researchers from China are expected this year in the Norwegian science station of Ny-Ålesund in the Svalbard archipelago, where a male and a female lion watch the door of China's "Yellow River Station." It is the highest number of researchers since the COVID pandemic began, with some expected to stay through the polar winter. The growing Chinese presence is a sign of the Arctic's increasing importance to Beijing as China emerges as a global power to challenge the United States and its allies, even though at its closest China is 900 miles away from the Arctic Circle, the distance from New York to Tallahassee.