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OTTAWA — China’s envoy to Canada says the two countries “see eye to eye” on the need to support Greenland’s territorial integrity and Beijing wants to play a productive role in the North — even as analysts warn Moscow and Beijing are working together in the region.
“China’s consistent policy is to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. That goes to Greenland, that goes to Canada, and that goes through all the other countries,” Chinese Ambassador Wang Di said through an interpreter this week.
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His comments come at a time of increasing tensions in NATO over U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand for the U.S. to take over Greenland, and his contradictory messages about using the American military to secure the Danish territory.
“It is not acceptable to selectively apply the international law, the United Nations system, or the purposes and principles of the UN Charter,” Wang said.
“China’s position is also very, very clear on the rhetoric about the 51st state,” he said, referring to Trump’s repeated talk of making Canada a U.S. state.
Beijing has seized on these concerns to portray Washington as an erratic actor and to present itself as a trustworthy country abiding by UN rules — despite China’s rejection of the United Nations ruling in 2016 that Beijing is encroaching on areas of the South China Sea that belong to other nations.
For years, China has called itself a “near-Arctic state,” despite the fact that its borders are nearly 1,500 kilometres distant from the Arctic Circle. Wang said his country wants to support efforts to fight climate change in the North.
“The Arctic region is a region that concerns the interests of all the world,” he said.
“Chinese activities in the Arctic region only have one goal, that is to promote the development of this region and to uphold the stability and peace of that region.”
Ottawa has welcomed some Chinese collaboration on climate change, but has been skeptical of Beijing’s involvement in the North.
In the Arctic foreign policy document that Canada released in late 2024, the government said China is seeking to develop commercial shipping opportunities and exploit natural resources, including critical minerals, gas and fish.
It noted that Beijing sends research vessels into the Arctic, though it described some of China’s forays as “dual-use,” with both research and military applications.
The document said China can only conduct research in Canada’s economic zone with Ottawa’s consent under UN rules and “Canada will carefully review any such requests.”
At a Tuesday panel on the link between Arctic and Pacific issues, experts said Beijing is focused on research in the Arctic but is also increasingly involved with Russia’s military.
China has shifted focus in area
Jennifer Spence, head of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard University’s international affairs school, said Beijing has shifted its focus to research after dropping a push for investment in the Arctic.
“China is actually reversing a lot of those activities. They’re not investing in it because of the policy reactions by Arctic states who initially were very open to Chinese business and have very much reversed that,” she told the panel, held by the Asia Pacific Foundation.
“It’s us that are continuing to use this terminology of ‘near-Arctic state’ and ‘Polar Silk Road,’ whereas China itself has actually reduced its use of that terminology.”
Elizabeth Wishnick, a China specialist with the Center for Naval Analyses — a Washington-funded research centre for the U.S. Navy — said Russia has been more co-operative with China because of its growing dependency on Beijing.
That’s due to international sanctions driven by Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“There have been few other options in terms of investment in the Arctic, as other countries have withdrawn, largely,” she told the panel. “After 2022, you see this deepening Russia-China military co-operation emerge, and you see that in the Arctic region.”
Before 2022, Moscow was reluctant to allow China to become an observer state at the Arctic Council, she said.
Wishnick said despite Trump’s claim that Russian and Chinese vessels are circling Greenland, Beijing only briefly attempted investments in Greenland and has mostly abandoned them since.
Beijing and Moscow are more active in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia, she said.
“You’ve seen co-operation between the Chinese and Russian coast guards and their militaries doing various kinds of exercises in this particular region. And that’s because China is the most important user of the northern sea route,” she said.
“For China, it’s a strategic passageway. And Russia needs China’s help in developing it.”
Wishnick said China’s research in the North is increasingly important because of its breakthroughs in undersea technology and space — even if no Arctic government has supported the view that China deserves a special role in the region.
“But that technology is all dual-use, which also elicits concerns by many Arctic states,” she said.
She said Ottawa and Washington could address their security concerns by boosting Norad’s radar systems in Greenland.
“That would deal with the actual threat, which is hypersonic missiles — not Russian and Chinese vessels circling the territory,” Wishnick said. “This could open a new conversation, once cooler heads prevail.”
Wang said Beijing took note of Carney’s Tuesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The prime minister called on middle powers to band together against economic coercion by “great powers.”
While that speech did not specifically call out Washington — or Beijing — Carney said many nations have employed double standards in how they talk about a rules-based global order that is falling apart.
Wang said China and Canada should “jointly safeguard international fairness and justice” to avoid “double standards and the law of jungle” in geopolitics.
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