Stories from the New Silk Road: Norway
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Norwegian town of Kirkenes set on the coast and inside the Arctic Circle, is on the edge of what the Chinese refer to as the Polar Silk Road. The Northern Sea Route or Northeast Passage is an increasingly valuable shipping route for both Russia and China, hugging the Russian coastline to eastern Siberia. In 2010 a ship departed from Kirkenes bound for China with 41,500 tons of iron ore concentrate, arriving 22 days later. Via the Suez canal, the same journey would have taken over 40 days. It was the first time that a non-Russian ship had been along the Northern Sea Route, showing that this was possible and paving the way for China’s Arctic policy. Anna Holligan shines a light on China’s wider ambitions in the Arctic.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Life Less Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service, |
| 0:04.0 | bringing you extraordinary personal stories from around the globe. |
| 0:08.0 | Search for Lives Less Ordinary, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. |
| 0:15.0 | As the Earth warms, there are new frontiers to be explored and traversed. |
| 0:25.0 | The opening up of the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans, |
| 0:30.0 | is starting to make commercial and strategic sense. |
| 0:34.0 | The region has become an arena for power and for competition. |
| 0:38.0 | Picture the North Pole at the very top of our world. |
| 0:41.0 | It's not formed of land like Antarctica, but a huge mass of sea ice, |
| 0:46.7 | which gets smaller in the summer as rising temperatures cause much of the ice to melt. |
| 0:52.0 | By 2030, during the summer months it may be free of sea ice. |
| 0:58.0 | China is currently moving to take advantage of this with a series of development projects. |
| 1:05.0 | It is incumbent upon China to be their first to make a claim. |
| 1:09.0 | So is China's interest in the Arctic new? |
| 1:12.0 | China signed the Swelbar Triti in 1925. After a long gap there was science and exploration. |
| 1:19.8 | Actually in 1999 the first expedition with the Snow Dragon, you know, the research vessel took place. |
| 1:26.0 | Have you ever seen a Chinese icebreaker? |
| 1:28.0 | Yes, I had. It's called the Snow Dragon 2, which is one or two icebreakers that the China Polar Institute is operating. |
| 1:35.0 | And of course you had the Polar Silk Road that was included in the Belt and Road Initiative in 2017. |
| 1:40.0 | Which connects at least three very important regions in the world, Europe, Asia and North America. |
| 1:45.0 | And then a term for themselves. |
| 1:48.0 | Beijing claims to be a near Arctic state. |
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