Chinese research submarines for the first time traveled thousands of feet beneath the Arctic ice the summer of 2025, a technical feat with chilling military and commercial implications for America and its allies. Beijing views future sea routes through the High North as a shortcut for global commerce, a so-called Polar Silk Road. China sent a cargo ship, in the summer of 2025, to the Polish port of Gdansk by skirting the North Pole, a route twice as fast as travel times using the Suez Canal..

Chinese and Russian military planes in 2025 flew patrols near Alaska for the first time, with Chinese long-range bombers operating from a Russian air base. Such cooperation not only gives China new abilities to strike North America but raises the prospect of a joint attack by America’s most powerful adversaries….In the Arctic, the U.S. and NATO worry most about subsea warfare. Submarine navigation relies on detailed knowledge of ocean-floor topography and undersea conditions. China is cataloging the world’s oceans to build computer models to guide submarines and help them evade detection, military experts say…U.S. analysts say data China gathered from its Arctic dives north of Alaska and Greenland isn’t just about studying climate change, but also to educate the Chinese navy, which operates relatively noisy submarines that are easily tracked by U.S. forces. ..

China’s ultimate aim, said Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, is to end “American undersea dominance,” he told a conference in Canada in 2024.

Both Beijing and the U.S. are short of vessels capable of navigating thick Arctic ice compared with Russia, which has more than 40. China in 2025 commissioned its fifth icebreaker. The U.S. has only two such vessels in operation, and Trump is buying more. After years of development, China launched its first domestically built icebreaker in 2019 with Finnish help. In 2025, it built and deployed its first domestically designed icebreaker in 10 months, a swift accomplishment noted with worry in Arctic countries.

Excerpt from Daniel Michaels, China’s Push to Master the Arctic Opens an Alarming Shortcut to U.S., WSJ