China’s Polar Silk Road Reaches Britain Through Russia’s Arctic Corridor

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Nov 3, 2025 - 10:53 Updated: Nov 3, 2025 - 01:10
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China’s Polar Silk Road Reaches Britain Through Russia’s Arctic Corridor

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A Chinese container ship has completed a voyage through the Arctic to a UK port, cutting transit time to Europe in half and signaling a deeper alignment between Beijing and Moscow.

The Arctic, a region once defined by thick snow and isolation, is becoming a testing ground for power, now that it’s been proven that shipping times between Asia and the British Isles can be cut from roughly 40 to 18 days because of melting ice.

The Istanbul Bridge, a 965-foot vessel operated by Chinese line Sea Legend, reached its first European stop in Felixstowe, Britain’s largest container port, on Oct. 15 via the Northern Sea Route, a corridor running entirely through Russian-controlled Arctic waters.

It is the first regular, liner-type container route of its kind through the region.

In 2018, China released a white paper outlining its “Polar Silk Road” plans region as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) worldwide infrastructure Belt and Road Initiative, defining itself as a “near-Arctic state.”

Seven years later, carrying roughly 4,000 containers from Zhoushan, the vessel made stops in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands.

Its cargo included electric vehicles and solar panels, Reuters reported.

Analysts say the voyage shows China’s growing capacity to operate in the Arctic and bolsters both the CCP’s and Russia’s ambitions to redirect trade away from Western-monitored waters. Some noted, however, that the route’s capacity is limited by the availability of Russian icebreakers necessary to clear the way.

‘Aggressive Development’

The Northern Sea Route, long blocked due to thick ice cover restricting passage for most of the year, is increasingly open to summer navigation due to rising temperatures. The 3,700-mile corridor, which stretches along Russia’s northern coastline across the Arctic Ocean, links East Asia to northern Europe and bypasses NATO’s maritime chokepoints.
According to lifting and shipping company Containerlift, Russia’s “aggressive development” plans aim to transform the Northern Sea Route into a year-round shipping route, potentially altering global trade dynamics.
Last month, Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom and China’s Ministry of Transport signed an agreement in China’s Harbin to jointly develop the Northern Sea Route.

“Russia sees the Northern Sea Route as a key transport artery of the 21st century, capable of providing faster, more efficient, and safer connections between continents,” said Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev.

“I am confident that the decisions taken today will give additional impetus to the development of Russian-Chinese cooperation in developing the potential of the Northern Sea Route and will allow us to materialize opportunities for cooperation in major capital projects.”

Kristian Bischoff, Europe and Russia analyst at Risk Intelligence, told The Epoch Times by email: “I would say that it definitely fits into the trend of China asserting themselves as a major player in the Arctic, as well as working to streamline their supply chains to Europe.”

Sanctions

U.S. President Donald Trump announced new sanctions on Russia on Oct. 22, targeting its two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

“At least for now, we are still waiting for the wider impact” of those sanctions, Bischoff said.

China will likely still purchase Russian oil, he said, but they will also “likely press Russia for discounts as sanctions evasion is not inexpensive.” Bischoff also believes China will “spend some political capital in continuing to purchase Russian energy products.”

In a 2023 report, Bischoff noted that despite Russia’s historical dominance over the Northern Sea Route, it is now being challenged by China’s “robust shipbuilding industry and its aggressive Arctic strategies.”

He told The Epoch Times that “it is fairly unlikely that the aging Kremlin-controlled parts of the ‘shadow fleet’ can do ice transits, so it will be down to the Chinese to keep the oil flowing out of the Russian arctic ports.”

“Russia is currently building ice-classed oil and [liquefied natural gas] vessels, but China is probably ahead on that account,” he added.

Bischoff said China may also be able to “press the price of energy products because they are the ones with the established supply-chain and capabilities.”

“If we think of the sanctions as not preventing Russian oil from entering the market, which would heavily influence global oil prices and destabilize [the] world economy as Lukol and Rosneft are around 5 percent of total, but as a way to limit Russian revenues similar to the price caps set by the West earlier, then I don’t think it will be a major issue for the current sanctions regime,” he said.

UK Dilemma

Writing in The Council on Geostrategy’s online magazine, Sari Arho Havrén, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, on Oct. 10 said that the CCP’s Polar Silk Road illustrates the Arctic’s importance for Beijing and London as a major gateway for trade, security, and resources.

“Concurrently, however, Beijing’s strategic ambitions in the Wider North threaten to reshape the region, challenging the UK’s interests.”

She added that the rush to commercialize the Arctic “places the UK in a dilemma.”

Havrén said that as a NATO member, “Britain faces increasing geopolitical and military rivalry in the Wider North, a recognized hotspot for great power competition.”

“However, growing Chinese-Russian cooperation—evidenced by over 100 joint military exercises and Chinese support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—exposes the UK’s weakness in depending on a Chinese state which exploits trade for its strategic aims,” she said.

‘Not a Revolution’

In 2024, a record volume of nearly 38 million metric tons of goods, including oil and liquefied natural gas, was shipped along the Northern Sea Route, according to Rosatom.

However, Samuel Furfari, who was a senior official at the EU’s Energy Directorate-General from 1982 to 2018, told The Epoch Times that despite the development, this is “not a geopolitic revolution in terms of energy.”

The collaboration between China and Russia on crossing the Northern Sea Route is “ongoing,” he said. “Most of the market of gas is going in the south of Europe.”

He also noted that the Chinese regime needs the collaboration of Russia’s nuclear icebreakers, as it is the only country able to produce them.

“So it may be the beginning of a change. But for that, you really need to have much more icebreakers, because it’s not one icebreaker for each LNG carrier that you are going to change. You really need a lot of work to do that,” he said, adding, “It’s limited to China. I don’t see Japan, Korea, or Malaysia following this path.”

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