Chinese state media have been hyping a new “Maritime Silk Road” that runs through melting ice in the Arctic Circle to European ports including Russia’s St Petersburg in the Baltic Sea.
This week, a Chinese cargo ship specially designed and built to plow through ice, successfully left Arctic Circle waters on Saturday and headed for Europe.
The Tian’en, constructed by the state-owned shipping juggernaut China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company’s Specialized Carriers Co., is now leaving the Norwegian Sea. It is en route to the French port of Rouen, where it is expected to call as soon as this Wednesday, according to Xinhua.
The ship cast off from Lianyungang in east China’s Jiangsu province on August 4 and her maiden voyage through the Arctic’s Northeast Passage began after it crossed the Bering Strait on August 17, a waterway dubbed the “Polar Silk Road.”
“It is the shortest route linking northeast Asia and northern Europe,” Captain Chen Xiangwu told Xinhua.
He added that all waste produced would be sorted and handled onboard to minimize pollution.
Shipping shortcuts from China’s major container ports to Europe via the Arctic Circle can reduce trip times by up to 12 days compared with traditional routes via the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal. This can lead to savings of up to 300 tons of fuel, according to COSCO.
Yet the Arctic Circle route presents obvious challenges such as icebergs and pack ice, and when the Tian’en sailed through heavy swells, the use of elevators on the 36,000-ton vessel was suspended for safety reasons.
In a white paper expounding its Arctic policy earlier this year, Beijing stated its hopes for merchant ships and even tankers to ply new routes via the Arctic Circle to advance its Belt and Road initiative.
The warming Arctic climate and summer shrinkage of the sea areas enclosed by pack ice has attracted the attention of many countries, including China and the United States, who hope to harness and make more commercially viable new routes near the top of the world.
There have also been reports about Chinese travel agencies organizing journeys to the North Pole by air – landing by helicopter or on a runway prepared on the ice – or traveling aboar an icebreaker.
chinese are great capitalists
they will be the new superpower in the earth
New Silk Road via Arctic is a good idea. But then who will control the order in this maritime shipping? Imagine a ship leaks oil or oil tanker sinks who will pay the bill? So let us not carried away by these claims and glamour.
It is important all nations obey the rule of seas including China everywhere including South China Sea.
Agreed!
Superpower in what- business, arts, literature, practice of human rights, democracy …….?
Would you clarify please?
Perry Kamath all of the above.
Hypocrite.Your country is bomboming half the world into the stone age.
William Diaz : Yes China has already been planting fifth colomnists in rest of world.
China has a long way to go to be a super power people will not stand for human .rights abuse it’s not all money
Ami, or westerner, you are just jealous.
No bigger abuse of human rights, worldwide, than from the criminal rogue state USA.
They make an awful lot of this, and yet it is not stragihtforward getting across this route (as the article does mention in passing). We were up in the Arctic early this August, and there was too much sea ice to reach even Wrangell Island, right at the Eastern end of the Tian’en’s sea route. This is still happening one year in three, and even when this route is open, it is only for a few weeks each year. Yes, global warming will change this,.