THE MAGNET OF GLOBALIZATION — CHINA’S ARCTIC POLICY

All China’s actions in the Arctic, including the new official Arctic policy, should be understood in the context of its claim to the role of the main engine, main supporter, defender and driver of globalization in the modern world, including the Arctic. Using the example of the Arctic, China is working on a new model of globalization for humanity, which is more than the Anglo-Saxon model, based on non-market factors of scientific validity, social justice, environmental balance and unconditional respect and consideration of local specificness. China came to the Arctic later than many other non-Arctic countries and therefore can achieve tangible success in its policy if only it can offer participants a completely new agenda for discussion. It seems that the idea of globalization with the Arctic specifics, the idea of the Chinese model of globalization, practiced in the Arctic, which contains a new “white book” (Artic policy of China) — this is the new agenda. The entire spatial, institutional and functional structure of the modern development of the global Arctic in the Chinese strategy is being tested, tested by a magnet — for what is attracted to the globalization phenomenon that China wants to lead in the Arctic, and for those areas that are very much tied to the anchors of the already existing national or international order — and to which this magnet does not act. Chinese thinking in the Arctic is a map centered at the North pole: the primary “no man’s” sea space, the land outskirts are secondary. And this is very unusual for us, residents of a country with a vast Arctic land. Central to China’s Arctic strategy is the new Arctic governance, which is understood as a purely global, not domestic, phenomenon, involving the broad participation of non-Arctic players. This particular focus on Arctic governance is better understood if we recognize that the former Anglo-Saxon model of globalization failed precisely because it relied too much on market forces and market institutions and had too market-driven or weak institutions of global governance against this background. China, in its way of learning from the mistakes of its predecessors, wants to avoid them in its model of globalization and therefore for the Arctic offers an integrated system — an algorithm for the formation of the necessary global governance: understand-protect-develop-participate-manage.

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