China will be a responsible stakeholder in Arctic affairs

At a recent discussion on China's first official Arctic policy paper, Lawson Brigham, a professor of Arctic policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said, "I did find it very interesting that the word 'military' is not mentioned once throughout the document, and that's maybe positive."

The English version of the Arctic white paper issued on Jan 26 mentions "cooperation" 46 times, "research" 41 times, but "the word 'military' is not mentioned at all," Atle Staalesen, director of the Norwegian publication Independent Barents Observer, said in a Jan 30 analysis.

These days, Beijing is getting used to having any of the major policies it rolls out analyzed and scrutinized between the lines by global academics and analysts, and most likely they have misgivings over the country's ambitions.