China’s presence is being felt in the Arctic. Despite a retreat from the region in recent years, following political pushback and a series of abortive infrastructure and extractive projects, Beijing’s maritime activities – or perceived activities – in the region continue to stoke fears among Western Arctic governments and provide grist for pundits warning about an Arctic in peril. U.S. President Donald Trump illustrated as much during a January news conference where he explained his rationale for wanting to buy, or otherwise acquire, the Arctic island nation of Greenland: “You look outside, you have China ships all over the place.”
The reality, however, is different. Rather than an Arctic Ocean teeming with Chinese-flagged vessels, Beijing’s maritime presence in the region remains modest and, for now, does not pose the security risks many have warned about.
China, to be sure, sees itself as a “near-Arctic” state with scientific, economic, and strategic interests in the region, as spelled out in its 2018 Arctic policy. Beijing has identified Arctic waterways as important for diversifying its access to various strategic resources. It has included the Arctic Ocean as a maritime space within its globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative and proposed to build a “Polar Silk Road” connecting economies throughout the region. Although making up only a tiny fraction of global seaborne commerce, cargo traffic across the Arctic is today dominated by the Russia-China energy trade. Last October, Chinese Coast Guard vessels entered the Arctic Ocean for the first time.
While the past few years have seen Beijing scale back its presence in the region, at home, shipbuilders and research institutes are honing China’s ability to operate in polar waters. Putting its money where its mouth is, Beijing is commissioning new vessels for its polar research program, breaking ground for cold regions engineering laboratories, and directing resources toward developing the country’s next generation of advanced polar ships. It is worth examining these developments, which offer an important proxy for gauging Beijing’s polar aspirations.
Ice classes are a crude but useful way of assessing the capabilities of polar ships. Polar-going hulls, whether ferrying oil or scientists, must be built to operate safely in high-latitude, ice-infested conditions. The International Association of Classification Societies, whose member organizations set the standards for most of the global civilian fleet, divides polar-going ships into Polar Classes, ranging from ships built for operating year-round in all polar sea-ice conditions (Polar Class 1), down to ships only cleared for summer and autumn operations in light ice conditions (Polar Class 7). While polar-capable ships are often colloquially referred to as “icebreakers,” very few vessels live up to the name, which as a technical term is reserved for the minority of ships with the sufficient hull strength and engine power to navigate through thick, often multi-year sea ice, and clear channels for other ships.
China’s Polar Research Fleet
Today China operates a growing fleet of ships that support its research at the poles. The workhorse of its polar science program, and for a long time the country’s only polar-capable vessel, the Xue Long, is a repurposed ice-breaking cargo carrier originally built at the Ukrainian Kherson Shipyard during the twilight years of the Soviet Union. The hull was acquired by China in the early 1990s and outfitted to serve as the country’s first dedicated polar research and supply vessel. In 1999, it carried China’s inaugural research expedition to the Arctic Ocean. It would take another two decades before China acquired a second, and first domestically built, polar research ship, the Xue Long 2. The Polar Class 3 ship, which joined the country’s swelling fleet of oceanographic vessels in 2019, was developed with the help of Finnish icebreaker expertise and remains China’s most powerful polar-going vessel.
Since then, China has accelerated its commissioning of research vessels built for polar research. The country’s newest such vessel, the Ji Di, was floated at Guangzhou Shipyard International last summer following a two-year construction period. Also operated by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the 5,600-ton displacement ship is the country’s first vessel earmarked for hydrographic surveying in polar waters. Despite its name, which in English translates to “polar,” the ship is only rated to Polar Class 6. According to a ministry spokesperson, the low ice class ship – referred to by the U.S. Department of Defense as a “research icebreaker” in its 2024 China Military Power Report – will split its time between summer voyages to the Arctic, likely accompanied by a more powerful and actually polar-capable ship like the Xue Long 2, and sea ice monitoring in the seasonally freezing Bohai Gulf during winter months.
Barely a year before the Ji Di was launched, Sun Yat-sen University, a major public university in the country’s south, acquired its own polar ship, the similarly named Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di. A Canadian-designed and Japanese-built icebreaker and anchor handling tug originally launched in 1982. With a design displacement upwards of 5,000 tons, the Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di saw work at oil and gas fields in the Beaufort Sea in the 1980s and 90s, and later, under Dutch ownership, around Sakhalin Island. The Polar Class 4 vessel was acquired in 2021 by Sun Yat-sen University and subsequently renamed and refurbished for scientific excursions to the poles.
The same shipyard that built the Ji Di is currently putting the finishing touches on what will become the country’s fifth polar research vessel, the Tan Suo San Hao. Slated for delivery later this year, the 10,000-ton-displacement ship marks the third vessel in a series of so-called “motherships” commissioned by the Chinese Academy of Science, designed to deploy submersibles to deep-sea areas around the world. The Tan Suo San Hao is the first vessel of its type built specifically for research in polar waters, rated to a Polar Class 4 notation. Researchers affiliated with the project have stated that they plan to conduct crewed dives to the Arctic seafloor, which would make China the first country to do so since Russia’s controversial flag-planting expedition below the North Pole in 2007.
Together these vessels support the country’s polar and other oceanographic research programs, carrying scientists, sensors, and supplies to the Arctic and the Antarctic during the summer and autumn months, when sea ice conditions are milder, and the regions not enveloped in total darkness. Last year marked the first time that three Chinese research vessels operated simultaneously north of the Arctic Circle, with the Xue Long 2, Ji Di, and Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di all dispatched to the far north.
The research carried out aboard these ships forms the bedrock for many of Beijing’s interest in the Arctic. In addition to climate research, data on local marine and meteorological conditions supports the country’s shipping interests in the region. Experts have also voiced concerns about the “dual-use” risks posed by China’s polar research, warning that information about the Arctic environment gathered by its civilian ships makes its way to the People’s Liberation Army, and that sensors deployed during its Arctic expeditions can be used to spy on NATO underwater assets.
Circumarctic capitals may be viewing China’s research in the region with increasing skepticism, but the addition of both new and not-so-new oceanographic vessels to China’s polar fleet has done little to enhance its operational capacity beyond what was achieved with the delivery of the Xue Long 2 over five years ago. China’s maritime capabilities in the Arctic, despite much anxious journalism, remains limited.
China’s Planned Heavy Icebreaker
This may be about to change, however.
China’s polar research program is looking to expand its presence outside the current navigation season and into areas of the Arctic Ocean inaccessible to its current polar fleet. Large-scale polar icebreakers began appearing in state policies about a decade ago with the adoption of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which called for research into advanced, and even nuclear-powered, icebreakers. These and other polar goals carried over into the current 14th Five-Year Plan, and also figured in the country’s 2018 Arctic strategy, which promised to launch more powerful polar-going research vessels and other ship types.
With their experience from the Xue Long 2 project, the Marine Design and Research Institute of China, otherwise known as the 708 Institute and a key site for polar shipbuilding expertise in the country, has gone on to develop designs for China’s next-generation icebreakers. One design proposal describes a 160-meter-long icebreaker with a displacement of about 25,000 tons. The proposed ship is designed to Polar Class 2, capable of breaking through ice 2.5 meters thick or more, allowing it to operate year-round except in the most extreme polar conditions. These specifications make it comparable in size and ice-breaking capability to other planned conventionally powered icebreakers, such as the U.S. Coast Guard’s Polar Security Cutters and the Canadian Coast Guard’s new polar icebreakers. The only Polar Class 2 icebreaker currently in service is the Le Commandant Charcot, a French-operated cruise ship.
Steel has yet to be cut for any new Chinese icebreaker. In an interview early last year, a senior engineer from the 708 Institute noted that, while steady progress was being made toward the development of the country’s first heavy icebreaker, similar projects abroad suggested a projected timeline of five to ten years. At an engineering forum in Shanghai around the same time, experts urged China to finalize the design of its first heavy icebreaker as soon as possible. Last August, possibly in response to the then recently inked U.S.-Canada-Finland icebreaker agreement – or as a jab at Washington’s own glacial icebreaker program – Chinese state media reported that construction of the country’s first Polar Class 2 icebreaker was scheduled to begin in 2025.
A Polar Class 2 icebreaker would mark an important milestone for China. In terms of capabilities, a high-ice class icebreaker would allow China – at least on paper – to extend its presence in the Arctic beyond the reach of its current polar fleet, both in duration and range. Domestic experts continue to emphasize marine research as the planned ship’s main operational role. “Once the heavy icebreaker is successfully developed, China will have the ability to operate year-round in polar environments for in-depth scientific research missions” and be capable of “full-area and all-time entry” into the Arctic, a 708 Institute engineer told state media last year.
Polar logistics is another related role that will likely influence the planned vessel. The Ministry of Natural Resources, which oversees the country’s polar research program, will eventually want to replace the Xue Long, by now middle-aged, which since its commissioning three decades ago has been the main ship resupplying China’s growing number of Antarctic stations. The head of the Polar Research Institute of China’s icebreaker division recently made a similar argument, stressing that the planned icebreaker must be capable of long-endurance polar deployments, while also handling open-water voyages, scientific missions, emergency response, and resupply operations.
But Beijing’s interests at the poles go beyond just science. Shipping and natural resources are also factors driving investment in polar shipbuilding. In 2021, the Ministry of Transport greenlit a feasibility study for the development of a “heavy icebreaking rescue vessel.” According to the directive, the project is part of building the “Polar Silk Road” – Beijing’s strategy to develop shipping routes across the Arctic – and is intended to strengthen the country’s search and rescue capacity in the region. Although a far-fetched prospect, heavy icebreakers built for escort and ice management operations could in the longer term allow China to make use of the transpolar route across the Central Arctic Ocean. Besides being the shortest of the Arctic shipping routes, the transpolar route lies outside Russia’s exclusive economic zone and its icebreaker escort regime along the Northern Sea Route – a fact often highlighted by Chinese researchers.
At the same time, research is underway on the use of nuclear propulsion in the country’s future icebreakers. The China National Nuclear Corporation, one of the country’s two state-owned nuclear majors, announced in 2018 that it was embarking on a project to develop a “nuclear-powered ice-breaking integrated support ship.” Except for a handful of patent filings, however, little is known about the project.
Domesticating the Technology
The melting polar ice cap has sparked an increase in ice-class orders in recent years. Chinese shipbuilders, which today build over half of the world’s merchant newbuilds, have delivered polar cruise ships, ice-strengthened ore carriers, and other cargo vessels to service extractive activities in the high north.
New energy ventures in the Russian Arctic, especially the Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2 projects — both backed by Chinese capital — have led to an influx of high ice-class tanker new buildings, purpose-built for plying the iced-up waters along the Northern Sea Route. While the lion’s share of these orders has gone to South Korean shipyards, a few have come China’s way. Guangzhou Shipyard International has delivered high-tonnage ice-class oil tankers, the Boris Sokolov, handed over in 2020, and the Anatoly Lamekhov, completed in 2024. Both vessels were built to the Russian Arc7 ice class notation (approximating Polar Class 3) and can handle sea ice up to 1.8 meters thick. The shipyard has also built two Polar Class 3 heavy load carriers, the Audax and Pugnax, completed between 2016 and 2018, which were hauling liquefaction modules from Chinese fabrication yards to the Gydan Peninsula in Russia until U.S. sanctions caught up with their Singaporean operator late last year.
These vessels were built using designs licensed from abroad. Or like the Xue Long 2, developed with the help of foreign know-how. But Beijing’s growing interests in the polar regions have meant it has looked to secure access to these technologies and is now going it alone. Specialized high strength steel, podded propulsion systems, and other hardware developed at Chinese institutions represent a concerted effort at bringing polar shipbuilding in-house. Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, China’s chief builder of liquified natural gas tankers, presented in 2019 its own designs for large-scale Arc7/Polar Class 3 gas tankers, albeit without any takers. The Ji Di survey vessel — while having little to boast of in terms of icebreaking capability — has been hailed by state media as representing “a new generation” of Chinese polar-going vessels “designed and built entirely at home.” Engineers working on the Tan Suo San Hao project have likewise celebrated breakthroughs in several “technological bottlenecks” related to polar ship technology.
More significantly, the country’s shipbuilding industry is investing in the research infrastructure needed to develop the next generation of polar vessels and equipment. In 2023, the Ship Science Research Center (domestically known as the 702 Institute) broke ground on a project to build the country’s largest development and testing facility for ice-going ships. At the center of the project is a large-scale ice basin, a crucial piece of equipment for testing icebreaker hull designs. Naval architects have in the past singled out such infrastructure — or rather, the country’s lack of them — as a major barrier to developing its own advanced icebreakers. To date, most Polar Class hulls built in China have been model tested at European design firms. Adding to this, the 708 Institute, in collaboration with China’s marine classification society, unveiled last year the Far East Winterization Laboratory. This is the country’s first test facility capable of simulating polar environments as low as -70℃, built to test and certify polar equipment.
Propulsion systems are another pivotal piece of hardware. Ships intended for independent ice operations must be able to generate sufficient thrust to break through meter-thick sea ice. Here, too, China has so far relied on foreign expertise, with the most recent additions to the country’s fleet, such as the Tan Suo San Hao, being fitted with foreign-developed thrusters. But as one group of researchers notes, “under the current international situation” China must strive to develop its own propulsion systems “if it wants to build polar icebreakers.”
To that end, domestic manufacturers are trying their hands at ice-class propulsion systems, developing a Polar Class 3 azimuthing system akin to that installed on the Xue Long 2. In November last year, the 708 Institute joined hands with the 704 Institute and 712 Institute – state research institutes specializing in shipboard electrical systems and propulsion systems, respectively – and the 471 Factory, a manufacturing subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation, to form a joint task force for the development of “high ice-class propulsion systems” for polar vessels.
Other bits of infrastructure that support Chinese vessels in the Arctic have come online, too. Last summer, the country’s Maritime Safety Administration began broadcasting daily sea ice forecasts for Arctic waters. In 2019, China’s first remote sensing satellite earmarked for polar sea ice monitoring, dubbed Ice Pathfinder in English, was inserted into orbit. Plans have also been announced for synthetic aperture radar satellites to help monitor Arctic waterways, part of a wider effort to reduce its dependency on sea ice data gleaned from foreign remote sensing satellites.
Cooperation with Russia
China’s budding expertise in polar shipbuilding could be a boon for Russia. Beijing is already propping up Moscow’s shipping interests in the region, with most commodities and goods moving through the Northern Sea Route either bound for or originating in China. In 2023, China’s Ministry of Transport and Rosatom, the Russian state company overseeing the development of the route, established a joint commission for developing Arctic shipping.
Moscow has been wary of relying too heavily on Beijing for fears of a larger Chinese presence in the Arctic, including transferring sensitive polar and defense-related technologies. In 2021, for example, Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade disqualified Chinese shipyards from bidding on a contract to build two diesel-electric icebreakers: “Transferring design documentation for icebreakers to China is unacceptable, as it would place Russia in competition with a partner in Arctic development,” a ministry spokesperson explained.
However, Moscow, which hopes to more than quadruple cargo volumes on the route by 2030, is lacking in both ships and shipbuilding capacity. Up to 70 icebreakers and ice-capable newbuildings will be needed by the end of the decade, according to government officials. Limited domestic capacity means that the majority of these hulls will have to be built at foreign shipyards, and Russia is reportedly turning to India and China to fill in the gaps. During a state visit to Moscow in 2024, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, together with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin, vowed to strengthen cooperation in polar ship technology and shipbuilding. Chinese shipping company Newnew Shipping is now in talks with Rosatom to build at least five ice-class container carriers for year-round Arctic shipping, part of a newly launched container line connecting Arkhangelsk with ports in China. It is uncertain if these orders will fall to a Chinese yard.
U.S. sanctions aimed at Russia’s energy industry and other sectors have served as an effective deterrent for Chinese shipbuilders. And with brimming orderbooks, China’s shipyards are in no hurry to go after politically risky orders. Should wartime sanctions be eased, however, China could emerge as a postwar partner in building the fleet that would serve Moscow’s extractive ambitions in the high north.
The People’s Liberation Army at the Poles
This leaves the People’s Liberation Army. China’s military leadership has taken notice of the polar regions, areas now linked to its navy’s global aspirations. It was Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo who, in 2010, told state media that China ought to safeguard its rights and interests in the Arctic Ocean. The polar regions have in recent years come to be variously described by the country’s military think-tankers as emerging “domains for military struggle” and as constituting a “new frontier for national security.”
The dual-use connections here are obvious; the same shipyards that build the world’s cargo fleet, construct China’s rapidly expanding navy; many of the same institutes that design the country’s research vessels, develop its warships. Newly published research from these institutes suggests that the People’s Liberation Army, together with the country’s shipbuilding complex, is exploring polar operations.
Scientists with the People’s Liberation Army-Navy, for example, have worked with the 708 Institute and other centers to study ship-ice interactions in polar waters. The navy’s research and development arm has shown interest in polar-going icebreakers, while surface warfare experts at the Dalian Naval Academy have argued in more general terms that China “must urgently develop its polar equipment.” Experts affiliated with the Equipment Development division of the Central Military Commission, the uppermost echelons of China’s military procurement bureaucracy, have advocated for better standardization of the country’s polar technology. Whether these projects are a passing interest or indicative of a wider strategy that will see Chinese warships operate in polar waters is unclear.
Conclusion
China might be expanding its fleet of polar-capable vessels in strictly bean-counting terms. But looking at the operational profiles of its more recently commissioned ships shows that plans for new and more powerful polar icebreaker vessels continue to stress scientific research as the main driver. That is not to say that the country’s research into polar shipbuilding will not be applied toward other objectives it may have in these regions.
Like many of Beijing’s high-tech pursuits, its foray into polar shipbuilding has been marked by techno-nationalist rhetoric focused on self-reliance. Domestic experts have tended to stress both the need to catch up with countries seen as more competent at building polar-ready ships, such as Canada and Finland, as well as the importance of securing access to critical technologies before they are geopolitical fenced off. This was most recently evident with last year’s trilateral Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, which in part sought to curb China’s potential role as a “preferred supplier” of icebreaker technology to the global shipbuilding market.
The country’s sprawling network of state shipyards and research centers, including new facilities earmarked polar technology, has allowed China to absorb foreign knowhow and develop domestic solutions to many of the engineering challenges it faces in the polar regions. Technical achievements like these are one thing; however, factors such as experience and tacit knowledge – at the drawing board, in the shipyard, and at sea – are harder to assess. It remains to be seen what capabilities China’s newfound interest in polar shipbuilding will yield.
