Numerous Chinese cities go through what is now dubbed an “airpocalypse” mainly due to the explosion of coal plants and transport by cars.
In the meantime, Russia is renewing and expanding its network of oil and gas pipelines toward China.
Meanwhile, the Arctic and subarctic region is going through a major atmospheric warming of more than 4° in less than a century, which makes it increasingly more attractive to industrial investment, especially because the Arctic could contain more than 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of the undiscovered gas reserves, as well as other important mineral deposits and fishing potential (Arthur Guschin, “Understanding China’s Arctic policy“, The Diplomat, November 14, 2013).
The warming and melting of the region could turn these deposits into extractable resources (“The Arctic Death Spiral”, Arctic News, July 2013).
These three situations are interconnected and are affecting basic international strategic equilibria.
As we saw in “Arctic Fusion: Russia and China convergent strategies” (Valantin, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, June 23, 2014), the two Eurasian giants are elaborating common industrial, energy and shipping strategy in order to develop the Arctic region. However, this “great convergence” goes beyond their “simple” economic development: the stake is also the Chinese energy transition.
For the complete article, please see Red Team Analysis.
