Beyond Boundaries: Canadian Defence and Strategic Studies Series. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2018. xi, 262 pp. (Illustrations.) US$34.99, paper. ISBN 978-1-55238-901-0.
China does not rank among the first countries that spring to mind when Arctic affairs enter into public discussion. But as climate change makes circumpolar navigation easier and affords greater access to the region’s resources, China, like many other non-northern nations, has thrust itself into the present-day “scramble for the Arctic.”
How assertively, though, and with what ramifications? As China’s industrial appetite for minerals and fossil fuels grows more insatiable, and as it demonstrates a willingness to flex its muscles in areas of core interest, numerous scholars and policy makers see it as a potentially disruptive force in northern geopolitics.
Not so, at least in Canada’s case, argue Whitney Lackenbauer and the other authors of China’s Arctic Ambitions. To the questions, “Is China a revisionist actor in the Arctic? What are its intentions for the region? And what does it all mean for Canada?” (4), they answer as follows: “Chinese involvement in the Arctic should be seen as an opportunity that, if managed well, can facilitate northern development and strengthen Canada’s legal position vis-à-vis the Northwest Passage, all the while improving international cooperation” (22). (Variations on this theme repeat metronomically throughout the book.) The authors’ rejection of reflexive bellicosity in favour of multilateral engagement is judicious, although some will doubtless find their reading of Beijing’s official pronouncements, and of Chinese motivations generally, overly sanguine. China’s Arctic Ambitions suffers from the disjointed feel common to multi-authored volumes, and although its topic is important, it is narrow to the point that only specialists will find it of interest. It is impressively and widely researched.
The text includes a long introduction and six chapters, the first five of which deal with: the Arctic’s place in Chinese strategy; scientific research; sovereignty and shipping; natural resources; and Arctic governance. The sixth serves as a conclusion, purporting to chart “The Way Ahead.” At every turn, the authors make the case that Western fears of China’s Arctic activities are overblown. In the introduction, they propose that an unhelpful “threat narrative” (4) dominates press and policy discussion of the topic, and they divide academics and journalists into two schools of thought: “alarmists” (or the “conflict school”) and “commentators like ourselves,” who “see opportunities for collaboration and mutual benefit” (9). While it does not invalidate the authors’ larger conclusions, this crude dichotomy is arguably the book’s biggest conceptual weakness: one either shares the authors’ relatively sunny viewpoint or is painted as unreasonably hawkish. The spectrum of opinion here is surely more complex. The “alarmist” label may suit certain commentators—Rob Huebert and David Wright are held up as its archetypes—but seems less convincing, and even straw-mannish, when applied to less pugnacious voices who take a more vigilant stance than the authors do, yet still share their preference for reasoned calm. (In my own taxonomy of Arctic experts, I see more daylight between Huebert’s views and those of Michael Byers or Scott Borgerson, for instance, than China’s Arctic Ambitions seems to.)
That said, Lackenbauer et al. effectively counter the most overheated rhetoric about China’s Arctic interests. If alarmists see a “long con” in progress or “a wolf at the door” (35), or if David Wright sees cunning plots behind China’s “unctuous and circumlocutory diplomatic language” (135), China’s Arctic Ambitions fires back with more measured rebuttals. The authors point out that “the Arctic does not factor very highly on China’s national agenda” (28) and suggest that its bold posture in waters like the East and South China Seas is an unreliable guide to how it will likely act in a distant and difficult theatre like the Arctic Ocean, where it possesses no force-projection capability. Look instead, they say, to Greenland and Iceland—and Canada itself—where China has invested money and extracted resources well within the bounds of each host nation’s norms and laws.
With regard to resources and governance, the authors acknowledge that Chinese policy makers indeed fear a “nightmare scenario … in which the Arctic coastal states divide the region’s resources among themselves and exclude Chinese companies” (100). But despite this, the Chinese “resource grab” much anticipated by Arctic “alarmists” is unlikely to materialize; China has thus far respected sovereignty outside its own perceived sphere of influence, and Arctic resource extraction is, and will remain for some time, prohibitively difficult and expensive. (For this reason, the authors welcome greater Chinese investment in the Canadian north.)
Of specific concern to Canada is increased traffic through the Northwest Passage, which Ottawa has defined as an internal waterway under its jurisdiction. Contrary to fretful language in Canada’s press, the authors predict that Chinese vessels will not use the passage to any great extent for many years (preferring as they do Russia’s Northern Sea Route), and that when they do, they are unlikely to dispute Canada’s sovereignty over it. Indeed, any regular use of the passage on Canadian terms will strengthen Canada’s claim over it. As for the 2013 admission of China to the Arctic Council as a permanent observer state—a step not welcomed by all Canadians, including then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper—the authors caution against provoking a “self-fulfilling prophecy” in which China, which resents any prospect of “a Monroe Doctrine of the Arctic Council,” is more likely to “challenge Arctic state interests” precisely if it is “excluded from the key mechanisms of Arctic governance … on the pretext that it is hostile” (152).
Such points are well taken, as is the book’s reminder that, in the words of Wang Jisi of Beijing University, China’s Arctic policy is governed by a “diversity of views among China’s political elite” and is therefore anything but “monolithic and coherent” (39). For the future, the conclusion recommends a pragmatic strategy of “engagement and hedging” (171). Although one can fairly wonder whether the authors are a trifle too rosy about the reconcilability of Canada’s and China’s Arctic agendas, they have produced a solidly researched and thought-provoking volume.
John McCannon
Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, USA