Russia seeking China’s help to develop Arctic shipping route – is it worth it for Beijing?
- Moscow is keen to develop the Northern Sea Route to counteract sanctions, and is ‘significantly more motivated than China’
Russia is seeking China’s help in developing an Arctic sea route that could almost halve the journey time between Europe and Asia, although the heightened geopolitical risk and Moscow’s suspicion about Beijing’s intentions in the region may limit their scope for cooperation.
Russia hopes the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will become a year-round shipping lane as global warming makes it possible to send ships through waters that were previously only passable in summer.
Some shipping is already using the route, but at the moment it is only passable for around 20 to 30 days a year along a 5,600km stretch between the Kara Sea, off the northwest coast of Siberia, to the Bering Strait, which separates Russia from Alaska.
But as more of the Arctic’s ice melts, the route may eventually be extended to Scandinavia and offer easier access to the North Sea than the Baltic.
Travelling between Shanghai and St Petersburg along this route would take a cargo ship around 20 days, compared with around 36 days via the Red Sea and Suez Canal, according to Russian media.
Cargo carried along the route could reach 270 million tonnes by 2035 - a nearly 10-fold increase on 2022, according to Rosatom, the Russian agency that oversees the sea lane.
The impact of Western sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has increased Moscow’s sense of urgency in developing and expanding its use.
