Russia and China: Changing the Geoeconomic Map?
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Two statements came out of Beijing this week: both treat China’s Ice Silk Road and Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) not as parallel ventures that might one day intersect, but as a single undertaking.
TASS quotes Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who met in Beijing with an aide to the President of Russia and chairman of the Maritime Board, Nikolai Patrushev:
“China’s efforts to shape the ‘Ice Silk Road’ and Russia’s efforts to develop the Northern Sea Route fully coincide. The importance of cooperation on maritime matters within the comprehensive strategic partnership between the PRC and the Russian Federation is constantly growing.”
Two Initiatives, One Argument
TASS reports Patrushev’s remarks:
“We see particular significance in the joint development of strategic logistics initiatives. China has been implementing the Maritime Silk Road concept for more than ten years. Russia, drawing on the vast experience it has accumulated in polar navigation and in operating the Northern Sea Route, has launched the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor project.”
Note the symmetry of the construction. China brings a decade of the Maritime Silk Road; Russia brings polar competence and a newly branded corridor. Neither is described as the senior partner, and neither project is described as absorbing the other.
That symmetry is itself the development. For most of the past decade, Moscow and Beijing have talked about the Arctic in different registers—Russia emphasizing sovereignty and transit control over a national waterway, China emphasizing access and the rights of non-Arctic states. The Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, which repackages the NSR as a route with a destination at either end rather than a jurisdiction to be crossed, is closer to the vocabulary Beijing has used all along.
None of this arrives without warning. Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin made much the same case to a wider audience: the northern corridors are not a bid to displace Suez but a response to expanding world trade, cargo volumes on the NSR grow year after year, and the route is open to any country interested in using it.
The Wider Claim
Patrushev then made the larger argument:
“By developing these initiatives, our countries are capable of changing the world geoeconomic map, making maritime trade cheaper, more accessible and protected against any risks, including military escalation, piracy and sanctions.”
Whether the map actually changes is a separate question. The constraint on the NSR has never been political alignment, but ice-class tonnage, insurance, port capacity, and year-round reliability. What the meeting does supply is the end of a long-standing ambiguity: Russia and China are no longer describing the Arctic in two different languages.
Source: TASS