China’s Domestic Discourse on Status-Building in the Arctic

An extensive body of international relations literature demonstrates that a state’s status influences how other states perceive its intentions and evaluate its policies and actions on an international level. For China, which the West has often viewed through the threat theory lens, status-seeking has been especially important to legitimize its position as a rising power in international society. In the Arctic context, where China does not fulfil the territorial definition of a regional state, speculations about potential risks related to the party-state's growing regional presence have been widespread. To alleviate these “China threat” perceptions among regional players, the Chinese leadership has paid particular attention to status-building and legitimization in the Arctic. Over the past decade, for example, it has invested in Arctic research and resource exploitation and increasingly participated in both official and unofficial forums discussing Arctic governance. This chapter analyses the discursive construction of China’s status in the Arctic and the party-state’s efforts to win acceptance for this status in regional politics and economics. Within social identity theory, social creativity allows a change of the criteria by which status is built, through reframing the system of values and including new criteria. Arctic scientific research and the transboundary nature of climate change effects affecting China’s climate and social and economic life are investigated through domestic official and academic debates aimed at enhancing status among Arctic stakeholders.