China is beginning to turn the Arctic into a commercial shortcut between Asia and Europe, as climate change and geopolitical tensions reshape global shipping routes. Within five years, as much as 3.5% of trade between East Asia, Europe and North America could use Arctic routes, although the market remains very small for now.
Xi Jinping may become the first leader to turn into a major commercial enterprise something resembling the dream of British explorer Captain James Cook: finding a shortcut through the Arctic.
Cook famously searched for the mythical Northwest Passage in the 18th century. His mission failed, but the idea he was pursuing is becoming a reality in a different form today. China is the first major power to turn what until recently seemed like a geopolitical fantasy — using the Arctic as a shortcut between Asia and Europe — into a commercial opportunity.
More precisely, the route now being developed is the Northeast Passage, along Russia’s northern coastline.
Chinese company Sea Legend has launched the first regular freight service along the Northern Sea Route, which connects East Asia with Europe by passing north of Russia. Its vessel, the Dubai Tower, departed from Ningbo on China’s eastern coast and is heading for Felixstowe in the United Kingdom.
The voyage is expected to take around 20 days, roughly half the time required on some alternative routes. The ship can carry 1,740 containers. Sea Legend plans eight crossings between August and the end of October, before sea ice makes navigation more difficult.
It represents the most significant step forward since 2018, when Danish shipping company Maersk tested an Arctic route with a container ship but did not turn it into a regular service.
Two major developments are changing the economics of the Arctic: climate change and geopolitics.
Climate change opens a new maritime corridor
Over the past 50 years, almost half of the Arctic’s summer sea ice has disappeared. The Northern Sea Route remains seasonal, carries significant risks and can sometimes require the assistance of icebreakers. During the summer months, however, it has become increasingly reliable.
At the same time, wars in the Middle East and attacks by the Houthis in the Red Sea have made the Suez route more dangerous, prompting many shipping companies to sail around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope.
This is where the Arctic route’s economic advantage comes into play.
Fuel accounts for around 70% of the costs incurred during a voyage. A dramatic reduction in sailing time can therefore translate into substantial savings.
There are additional costs, however. Insurance premiums for Arctic voyages are around 40% higher than for the Cape route. But when an icebreaker is not required, the northern route can already be competitive under certain conditions.
With oil prices around $90 a barrel, savings on some liquid cargoes, such as liquefied natural gas, could reach 33%.
Still far from becoming a new Suez Canal
The Arctic is nowhere near becoming a new Suez Canal.
Only 23 cargo ships travelled along the Northern Sea Route in 2025, while more than 30 ships pass through the Suez Canal every day.
Insurance company Coface estimates that within five years, 3.5% of trade between East Asia, Europe and North America could use Arctic routes, representing around $64 billion worth of goods.
For now, that remains a very small share of the global market.
China’s leading position, however, has a major geopolitical dimension.
Beijing has described itself as a “near-Arctic state”, despite having no coastline on the Arctic Ocean. It operates icebreakers, conducts scientific expeditions and regards the High North as a strategic frontier — for trade routes, natural resources and, potentially, military and submarine activities.
For now, however, China’s new “Silk Road of ice” depends heavily on Russia.
Moscow claims control over the Northern Sea Route, while permits are issued by Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy giant. This represents a political obstacle for Western shipping companies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions imposed against Moscow.
China, by contrast, can take advantage of its close relationship with Russia.
A geopolitical advantage for Beijing
This may be the most significant development of all.
Climate change is opening a new maritime highway, wars are making traditional routes less secure, and the Sino-Russian relationship is giving Beijing a competitive advantage.
While Western countries debate the consequences of melting Arctic ice, China is beginning to turn those consequences into a commercial service.
There is an irony to this development. The country now turning the Arctic into a maritime highway — effectively pursuing the kind of dream once associated with Cook — is the same China whose propaganda has long condemned British imperialism.
That makes Cook’s story worth revisiting.
When James Cook sailed from Plymouth in July 1776 on his third and final voyage, the British Admiralty had tasked him with finding the Northwest Passage connecting the Pacific and Atlantic through the Arctic regions of North America.
The discovery would have had enormous commercial value. It could have shortened Britain’s routes to Asia and strengthened its maritime dominance.
Cook commanded HMS Resolution. He was instructed to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, cross the Indian Ocean, reach Tahiti and then head towards the western coast of North America. From approximately 45 degrees north latitude, he was to sail north towards Arctic waters and search for a passage to the Atlantic.
The expedition ultimately failed against the ice of the Bering Sea. Cook never returned to Britain. He was killed in Hawaii in February 1779.
But the instructions given to him contain an aspect that may seem surprising today.
The Admiralty ordered Cook to take care not to enter Spanish possessions. If contact with Spanish subjects was unavoidable, he was instructed not to cause them “umbrage or offence”. With the inhabitants of the lands he visited, he was expected to show “every kind of Civility and Regard”.
He could claim territory in the name of King George III only if it was not already claimed by another European power.
Cook’s ship therefore did not receive a licence to conquer. Instead, he was instructed to navigate carefully among existing sovereignties and avoid unnecessary conflict with the populations he encountered.
Imperial expansion and the limits of power
This caution was genuine. The British Empire was already a major global power, but its expansion took place within an international system containing formidable rivals.
France and Spain controlled vast empires. Russia was advancing towards the Pacific through Siberia and Alaska. No European power could simply behave as if the others did not exist.
The caution shown towards Spain was therefore primarily a consequence of the balance of power. It was not pacifism. It was realism.
Britain had just emerged from a period of enormous wars. The Seven Years’ War, which ended in 1763, has sometimes been described as the first world war, with fighting in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.
London emerged victorious and gained an unprecedented imperial position. But victory had come at an enormous cost. The empire had to be administered and defended.
In 1776, precisely as Cook embarked on his Pacific expedition, the Thirteen American Colonies declared independence. Britain was entering another war that would eventually involve France and Spain. The last thing London needed was for a Royal Navy captain to accidentally create another crisis in the Pacific.
Cook’s instructions therefore belonged to a strategic culture in which expansion had to be disciplined.
Explore, yes. Map, yes. Identify ports, routes and resources. Establish British claims over territories not already claimed by other powers. But avoid unnecessarily creating a casus belli.
The treatment of indigenous populations is where Cook’s world becomes even more surprising.
In an earlier set of instructions, Cook was told that he could take possession of suitable locations in the name of the British Crown “with the Consent of the Natives”.
James Douglas, Earl of Morton and president of the Royal Society, gave Cook and the expedition’s scientists similarly striking advice. Morton urged them to show “utmost patience and forbearance” towards the people they encountered.
He called on the crew to restrain themselves and, above all, avoid the unnecessary use of firearms.
He went even further. Indigenous peoples, Morton argued, were the natural and lawful owners of the lands in which they lived. No European nation had the right to occupy part of their country or settle there without their voluntary consent.
A conquest did not automatically create a legitimate title, because these peoples had not been the aggressors.
This was not an insignificant document. Morton was president of the Royal Society, which was directly involved in the expedition.
The contradictions of the Enlightenment
This is where the Enlightenment enters the story.
Part of 18th-century European culture viewed non-European societies through hierarchical categories that today would be regarded as paternalistic and often racist.
But the Enlightenment also contained another tradition. Natural law and the law of nations forced Europeans to ask what rights belonged to other peoples.
Being technologically less advanced did not mean being deprived of property, sovereignty or human dignity.
Of course, reality did not always match these principles. Cook’s voyages involved clashes and deaths. He himself sometimes resorted to coercion. Morton’s recommendations did not prevent Cook from claiming the eastern coast of Australia for George III in 1770.
Our image of empire is largely shaped by the 19th century: India, the Opium Wars against China, the colonisation of Africa and the Victorian Empire. This was the era when Europe’s naval, industrial and technological superiority became overwhelming.
In 1776, that imbalance did not yet exist to the same degree.
Cook’s British Empire was aggressive, competitive and interested in trade and expansion. But it operated in a multipolar world. It had to contend with France, Spain and Russia.
And within Britain itself, different cultures coexisted: the strategic logic of the Royal Navy, the interests of merchants, the ambitions of explorers, the curiosity of scientists and the natural-law thinking of the Enlightenment.
Cook’s story is therefore more complicated than a simple indictment of imperialism.
It does not absolve the British Empire. Instead, it reminds us that even in the 18th century, at the heart of the institutions preparing European expansion, some people were already asking a question that would accompany Western history for the next two centuries: where does the right of a powerful state end, and where do the rights of others begin?
China’s Arctic ambitions
The geographical distinction is important.
The Northern Sea Route that China is now beginning to exploit runs north of Russia, along the Siberian coastline. Ships travelling from China cross the Bering Strait and then head west towards the Atlantic.
It is the modern version of the old Northeast Passage.
The Northwest Passage that Cook sought during his third voyage, by contrast, lies north of North America and passes through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Today, the difference is also economic.
The Northwest Passage remains difficult to navigate. Narrow straits and ice make the route unpredictable. The Siberian route is more accessible and can rely on Russia’s fleet of icebreakers.
In other words, China is now commercially exploiting the other great Arctic route once dreamed of by European explorers.
And it is doing so without the same degree of self-questioning over a changing climate whose consequences China itself is increasingly helping to shape.
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