The Arctic shipping route is essential to safeguard China’s development over the next decade, a senior Chinese official said in Beijing, calling for greater efforts to expand its practical use.
With proposals for the next five-year plan incorporating security and development, China must ensure its international transport channels remain unimpeded, Ma Jiantang, deputy director of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference’s economic committee, said.
China’s traditional trade lanes pass through the Strait of Malacca, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, but “in the event of a major international crisis, there is a real possibility these corridors could be disrupted,” Ma, a former head of the National Bureau of Statistics, warned at a China News Service forum on Tuesday.
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The recommendations for the next five-year plan adopted by the Communist Party’s Central Committee in October said it is essential “to consolidate security in the course of development and pursue development in a secure environment”.
“We must better prepare ourselves for worst-case scenarios, effectively prevent and mitigate all kinds of risks, and enhance the resilience of our economy and society, so as to safeguard China’s new pattern of development with its new security architecture,” they said.
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Ma said the Arctic shipping route should be placed “higher on the agenda to support China’s development” over the next 10 years.
Russia has been actively promoting the potential of the route, also known as the Northern Sea Route, which could reduce transit times between Asia and Europe by up to 40 per cent. A joint Sino-Russian subcommittee focused on the route’s development met for the first time in St Petersburg in November last year.