Chinese Policy in the Arctic: Finland
In April 2017, while on a State visit to Helsinki to commemorate Finland’s 100th year of independence, Chinese President Xi Jinping boasted “enduring friendship” between the two countries, citing it as an “example for peaceful co-existence and friendly exchanges between two countries.” The two sides even issued a joint statement, lauding the “solid foundation of mutual respect” promising mutually beneficial collaboration to tackle global challenges including climate change and sustainable development. With a broader aim to establish a considerable presence in the Arctic Circle, termed as China’s ‘Polar Silk Road’ Beijing considered its partnership with Helsinki its ‘model relationship’ in Europe. Seven years on, considerable enthusiasm surrounding this partnership seems to have waned. Marred by espionage scandals, increasing Chinese assertiveness, and Finnish efforts to integrate firmly into the geopolitical West, including its push for a NATO membership, has reduced the relationship between the two to a shell of what it once was, leading many to term the breakdown of these relations as the demise of the Polar Silk Road.
A Case for Collaboration
Historically, Finland was one of the few capitalist countries that did not have strained ties with the Peoples’ Republic of China. In 1953, it became the first country from the capitalist bloc to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Beijing and maintained, what has been termed as ‘pragmatic positivity’ for most of the Cold War period, staunchly supporting PRC’s membership in the UN, thus setting a strong foundation for friendly ties between the two. Finland was seen by Beijing as its ‘model relationship’ in Europe given the former’s sensitivity towards China’s “core interests” and firmly supporting the One-China policy.
Finland was also singled out as an important player in China’s ambitious Arctic Corridor project that aims to link the Polar Silk Road with the central European market through railways passing through Rovaniemi and Helsinki- making Finland the Arctic gateway to the European market. During Xi’s much celebrated visit to Helsinki in 2017, the two countries signed numerous collaborative projects covering industry, infrastructure, tourism and cultural exchanges.
Besides its strategic position in China’s Arctic Corridor, Finland also stood to give China benefits from a well-established forestry industry which attracted significant interest from Chinese investors including one of China’s largest bioenergy companies, Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group. Furthermore, in 2016 the state-owned CAMC Engineering became a major stakeholder in the Kemijärvi Boreal Bioref bio-refinery project. The two also collaborated on several smart energy solutions, energy transition and low-carbon economy projects.
Widening Fissures
Despite the considerable enthusiasm surrounding the partnership, tensions in the relationship started appearing as early as 2017, particularly after the launching of Xi Jinping’s ‘new era’ politics or the ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, a new more assertive brand of Chinese diplomacy that sought to eliminate internal and external enemies of the Chinese Communist Party. Reports of internment camps to suppress minorities in the Xinjiang province, increased military intimidation towards Taiwan, and a brutal crackdown of democratic protests in Hong Kong all pointed towards Beijing’s increasing disregard for liberal human rights issues, thus leading Finland to re-evaluate its ties with Beijing. The decoupling agenda was further catalysed by the United States adopting a more confrontational China policy around 2018, which given the former’s strong partnership with Nordic countries, significantly influenced Helsinki’s own perception of China.
These preferential and ideational shifts were accompanied by hardening rhetoric against China within Finland, specially after a closer examination of Chinese investments in the country. Negative perceptions of China were strengthened by incidents such as Chinese attempts to acquire an airport close to the Rovajärvi firing range, making it a potential security threat to Finland, a cyber-attack on the latter’s parliament traced back to a group of hackers associated with the Chinese government, and reports of corrupt ties between Finnish government officials and Chinese businessmen, thus raising significant questions on the nature of China’s intelligence and influence activities in Finland. In 2021, the Finnish State Security Service also voiced serious concerns about alleged Chinese espionage and threats to critical Finnish infrastructure. As a result, Finnish attitude and language towards China gradually shifted to being more assertive and critical, with the Finnish media examining all aspects of Chinese involvement and investment in the country more closely, leading to considerable backlash against Chinese infrastructure investment in the country and the China-Finland relationship as a whole. Notably, Helsinki’s only Confucius Institute was shut down in 2022 on the charges of conducting espionage and attempting to promote Chinese soft power. Moreover, Finland’s application for NATO membership in May 2022 further solidified its shift towards the European Union and the United States on matters of security and human rights, bringing in, what Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian described as a “new factor to bilateral ties with China.”
What lies ahead?
To put it in a nutshell, Helsinki’s perception of China has undergone a significant shift in the past decade, particularly post 2017. Firstly, there has been a considerable effort to move away from the pre-existing discourse of harmony and cooperation towards a more stern and vigilant approach, viewing Beijing as a self-interested actor that poses serious threats to liberal democratic frameworks. Secondly, these changing perceptions about China were accompanied by simultaneous efforts to position Finland more strongly as a member of the European Union and a strategic security and economic partner of the United States and the EU, thus underpinning the need to keep Finnish foreign policy in tandem with that of the Western powers. This trend must be seen as a part of Finland’s broader engagement and cooperation with the geopolitical West which, intensified by Russia’s aggression first in Crimea and subsequently in Ukraine, has had a serious impact in undermining its trust and partnership with China. Beijing’s unrestricted alignment with Russia, its assertive foreign policy as well as its disregard for liberal human rights has thus pushed Finland closer to European and transatlantic security blocs and adopting their strategies on countering Chinese influence. Thus, despite Sino-Finnish relations being hailed as Beijing’s ‘model relationship’ in Europe, its durability and strength both seem to be increasingly under question.