Telling the major geopolitical story of our time – the rise of China – is a significant journalistic challenge due to the country's closed political system and with the Communist Party driving its interests all around the world.
Including in the Arctic.
I have been tracking China's global ambitions for Newsweek for several years and for the article China's Expanding Arctic Ambitions Challenge the U.S. and NATO, I traveled to Spitsbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago. It is a Norwegian sovereign territory and a unique international center where Russia has long-standing claims and China, a strategic ally of Russia's, is expanding its interests to become a "polar great power". Norway, a NATO ally of the U.S., strives to manage the resulting tensions and to avoid potential conflict.
Amid a searingly beautiful, sharp-peaked, glacial landscape of snow, Arctic desert, and storm-tossed seas, via interviews on the ground and other extensive research, I identified multiple activities that raised questions over China's work there.
Not least was whether scientists at China's "Yellow River Station" in Svalbard could be engaging in potential dual-use research that has both civilian and military uses.
China's expanding Arctic ambitions challenge the U.S. and NATORead more China's expanding Arctic ambitions challenge the U.S. and NATOChina's embassy in Norway told me there was no such dual-use research, but the indications on the ground also prompted me to carry out in-depth research on the Chinese documents that I could find available.
Those revealed that a Chinese institute that is working in the Arctic under a civilian sounding name - the China Research Institute of Radio Wave Propagation (CRIRP) - is in fact a unit of China's leading military electronics conglomerate, the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC).
The detailed examination of mostly Chinese-language documents included scores of published scientific research papers, Chinese state policies, and research institute and company websites, including some that had been deleted online but were held in vital Internet archives.
I also drew on an open-source website, Data Abyss, which is partly funded by the Department of Defense, for this analysis.
In addition, I was able to determine that a satellite ground station on Svalbard is servicing a satellite that a Chinese aerospace and defense contractor, Shenzhen Aerospace Dongfanghong Company, operates together with two other Chinese entities. That was partly through Chinese sources, but also through interviews with Norwegian officials.
Traveling to the Arctic was a contrast to a previous reporting trip earlier in the year to the Caribbean island of Antigua. There I uncovered details of secret deals surrounding a Chinese-style Special Economic Zone as well as the extent to which China had built up its connections with the authorities at all levels.
The picture of growing Chinese activity – some by the state and some by individuals who have some degree of support – in the Caribbean, the Arctic and elsewhere is part of a larger body of reporting through which Newsweek is building up a picture of activities around the world that are focused, ambitious, and broadly veiled in secrecy.
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