Expansão da China em direção ao Ártico: a nova rota da seda polar e seus impactos

Abstract

This work’s proposal is to analyze growing interest of People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the northest portion of our planet. Increase of relevance to China regarding the area near to the North Pole can be noticed on political speeches, academic studies and chinese corporate employees’, wich was unlikely a few years ago. As one of the greatest world's powers and with a remarkable economic growth year after year, any change of stance or new interests of the asian evokes, at least, curiosity on every country of the globe, specially on those that are closest to region which becomes chinese’s new focus. Thus, this work will be focused on geopolitical analysis of the Arctic Region, as well as on motivations that are driven China towards a greater influence and a bigger usability of characteristics offered by the Arctic to raise the potential that the country is demonstrating on last decades. Furthermore, the legendary Silk Road, which has revolutionized mankind on the early centuries of our history, will be compared with the new chinese endeavor Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is employing massive public and private resources in order to establish new trade and data routes throughout asian and European continents. Could new connections between Far East and Europe impact our civilization in such significant way as the one that occurred in antiquity? Answer tends to be positive, specially if these new routes are faster, cheaper, safer then the previous ones or if they can provide a new perspective about one of the least explored regions of our world so far. Therefore, the main focus of this work will be understanding of how Arctic Ocean can be approached inside BRI context, challenges that will have to be overcomed to permit its exploration as well as impacts this influence will cause on the region and in the world in a near future.