Last year, as part of China’s 15th Arctic expedition, two of China’s manned submersibles, the Fendouzhe and Jiaolong, conducted what Chinese news agency Xinhua described as “joint underwater operations” or manned dives under the Arctic ice. This was the first time that China had done anything like this. For the purposes of these dives, China brought to the region two of its deep-sea research vessels, which acted as motherships for the submersibles. These submersibles then conducted more than 40 dives over a 56-day period in the Central Arctic Ocean, some together and some separately.
As we discussed in a longer brief on the topic, these tests were just the latest sign of the growing scope of China’s scientific activities in the Arctic. Many signs point toward China increasingly seeking, among other goals, to develop reliable means to operate, communicate, and navigate within the Arctic region, both below the surface and above it. The manned submersible experiments can be seen as just one important milestone to this end, reflecting China’s growing ambition and capability to expand its presence within its self-defined “strategic new frontiers.”
Towards the “Strategic New Frontiers”
Polar regions (meaning both the Arctic and Antarctica) and deep seas are both part of what in the Chinese political vocabulary is sometimes referred to as the “strategic new frontiers” (战略新疆域). These are strategically important regions or domains that are opening up for exploitation due to advances in technology, and toward which China is already envisioning the next phase of its economic expansion. In addition to polar and deep-sea regions, they typically also include space, cyberspace, and artificial intelligence.
While primarily valued due to their economic prospects, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sees the new frontiers as potential future domains of “military struggle” between great powers. The PLA views recent technological advances in unmanned submersibles and undersea communications as opening the deep seas for military operations – perhaps even in a transformative way. The Arctic, meanwhile, is often defined in PLA assessments as a crossroads of aviation and maritime power projection – a “strategic commanding height” from which the whole northern hemisphere can be brought within strategic reach.
Overall, China views the strategic new frontiers as future theaters of great power competition, where it needs to preemptively establish a strong presence and secure its interests. In this, the frontiers also represent an important dimension of China’s military-civil fusion policy, being regions in which military and civilian interests intertwine, and the advancement of related capabilities and technologies serves both ends.
The Arctic Nexus
The Arctic offers a particularly revealing case for observing Chinese ambitions in the new frontiers since it is a region where many, if not all of the frontiers – particularly polar, deep sea and space – intersect. Their interconnectedness is established in official Chinese policy documents, such as the 14th and 15th Five-Year Plans. The 14th Five-Year Plan of 2021 included a national R&D project specifically for the development of “deep sea and polar technologies and equipment,” with one of the aims being the establishment of a “three-dimensional space-ground-sea monitoring capability” in the polar regions.
Such R&D priorities reflect China’s interest in becoming a leading player in the Arctic frontier. They are also starting to yield significant results: China has growing scientific capabilities in the Arctic with its expanding fleet of polar ice-breakers and research vessels, conducting yearly expeditions in the region. The country’s scientific ambitions are also reflected in a growing number of research priorities for the expeditions. Chinese scientists have, for the better part of a decade, attempted to extend China’s space-based surveillance, navigation, and communication systems to cover the Arctic region. Most recently the expeditions have embarked toward the deep seas, as China has tested a number of advanced polar and deep-sea manned and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) within the Arctic.
Interestingly, many of the unmanned vehicles have been developed by institutions within the Harbin Engineering University. The university has strong links to the PLA and began to research and develop China’s first advanced polar AUV in 2019. The final product of this project, the Xinghai-1000, was tested in the region during the 2023 Arctic scientific expedition. The stated goal of the project was to develop a tool for scientific research, but it also aimed to achieve many breakthroughs in building technologies that are required for operating unmanned submersibles under ice.
In the subsequent years, China has tested and operated at least two other types of AUVs in the region. One of these, the Wukong 6000, completed multiple dives up to 3,800 meters during its first tests in the Arctic in 2024. The manned submersible tests a year later went even deeper, as the Fendouzhe reportedly dived all the way down to 5,277 meters at the Gakkel Ridge, an extremely hard to reach mid-oceanic ridge in the Central Arctic Ocean.
China’s Growing Scientific Capabilities in the Arctic
China’s activities within the Arctic indicate that Beijing takes the scramble for the strategic new frontiers very seriously, and that China is rapidly developing means to access domains previously beyond its reach. The growing sophistication of China’s “three-dimensional” observation capabilities in the Arctic further demonstrates that China is becoming a considerable “near-peer” in the region – at least when it comes to scientific and technological capability.
The military dimension may not be far off either. China’s increased investments in various polar and deep-sea equipment and research areas such as polar acoustics hold considerable dual-use potential as the PLA and some of China’s leading scientists working on these topics acknowledge. Under-ice and deep-sea exploration activities, furthermore, produce a lot of highly relevant data (e.g. on ice morphology, underwater acoustics and seabed topography) for Arctic military operations, particularly submarine operations, although there is no evidence that China has operated submarines in the Arctic Ocean to date.
However, whether the recent activities can be taken as a sign that China’s civilian and military presence will grow with technological advancements in the Arctic remains open to debate. Ideally, in the future, China would like to see the full scope of its scientific and technological means realized in longer-term “three-dimensional” observation capabilities or presence in the region so that its activities in the region would not only be limited to seasonal expeditions.
Yet, this might still be a little ways off, as despite the recent successes, China’s polar capabilities are still lagging behind in many areas. The Arctic states are also likely to react strongly to any indication that China might wish to strengthen its permanent presence in the region. Still, the country’s scientific activities in the region require active monitoring as many signs point toward their continuing to advance rapidly also in the near future as well.
