Cold reality: China’s Arctic push stalls in Finland

In January 2026, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where the two sides signed a range of agreements and memoranda, along with commercial deals between Finnish and Chinese firms, across areas including science and technology, trade, energy and tourism. The visit reflects Finland’s intent to maintain economic and technological cooperation with China despite the significant shift in Northern Europe’s strategic landscape.

De-risked engagement captures the current trajectory of Finland-China relations, marking a move away from the potential for more comprehensive engagement in the 2010s, towards a post-2022 narrowing of interaction to selected, lower-risk domains that are more politically and strategically manageable.

In the 2010s, Finland appeared to be a particularly promising partner for China in the European Arctic. Finland was a technologically advanced and militarily non-aligned state with strong expertise in Arctic engineering, telecommunications and environmental science. As China’s Polar Silk Road agenda took shape in 2017-2018, Finland emerged as a potential gateway linking Arctic sea routes to European markets. Ambitious proposals included an Arctic railway from Kirkenes in Norway to Rovaniemi in Finland, satellite ground stations in Lapland, and aviation infrastructure for polar research.

Compared with core Arctic states and major European powers, Finland, which remained outside NATO at the time, appeared to be a relatively uncontroversial partner as China sought to expand towards the Arctic region and establish itself as a “polar great power”.

Sino-Finnish relations were framed in terms of pragmatic cooperation and mutual benefit, and Finland was increasingly envisioned as an “Arctic bridgehead” linking China and Europe. High-level visits, including Xi Jinping’s 2017 trip to Helsinki, reinforced this trajectory. Arctic cooperation was explicitly embedded in bilateral agreements, and several initiatives were proposed and explored.

However, these initiatives struggled to materialise even before the 2022 geopolitical rupture. Commercial hurdles and rising security concerns led to major initiatives being delayed or abandoned. The Arctic railway faced criticism on economic grounds, as well as opposition over environmental concerns and Sámi land rights, while proposed satellite and aviation infrastructure raised concerns about dual-use capabilities. 

These decisions were not framed as a wholesale rejection of China, but they collectively marked the end of Finland as a viable Western node in the Polar Silk Road. In this sense, the post-2022 shift did not so much halt a successful trajectory as consolidate an emerging pattern of stalled and unrealised ambitions.

The decisive reorientation followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Finland’s subsequent decision to join NATO fundamentally altered the strategic context in which its relationship with China had been operating. 

This shift redefined how Finnish policymakers assess risk, particularly in sectors where civilian and military applications overlap. Infrastructure, data, telecommunications and logistics in the Arctic are no longer treated as neutral domains of economic cooperation but are instead understood as integral to national and alliance security.

At the same time, China’s Arctic strategy has pivoted towards Russia. The Sino-Russian alignment in the Arctic, already visible before 2022, has deepened under conditions of Western sanctions, geopolitical isolation and narrowing options in the Nordic region. This shift comes with its own constraints, as Russia’s war against Ukraine has made Arctic cooperation with Moscow more costly, more visible and more tightly entangled in broader geopolitical competition.

Finnish territory is now part of a wider NATO strategic space. Finland’s longstanding expertise in icebreaker design and Arctic maritime technology has also acquired new strategic significance, with Western partners increasingly looking to the Finnish industry to support the development of Arctic-capable fleets. Consequently, projects once assessed in purely economic terms are now scrutinised through a security lens that extends across the North Atlantic and the High North.

Despite this westward security turn, Finland remains committed to a functional relationship with China, as evidenced by Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s 2024 state visit and Orpo’s 2026 trip. However, the nature of that relationship has changed.

The 2025-2029 Finland-China Joint Action Plan is narrower than its predecessor, the 2019-2023 framework. Notably, it omits any reference to the Arctic. Instead, it focuses on low-carbon development, health, food, education, tourism, and selected forms of scientific and technological cooperation. The agreements reached during Orpo’s 2026 visit follow the same pattern. They centre on trade, clean energy, digitalisation, and industrial collaboration in sectors such as mining machinery and green construction. 

Helsinki is not seeking alignment with Beijing in any strategic sense, nor is it pursuing decoupling. It is instead attempting to recalibrate the relationship by narrowing its scope and restricting cooperation in sensitive sectors. The emphasis is on maintaining economic ties while reducing vulnerabilities, particularly those that could be exploited in a context of geopolitical rivalry.

The broader international environment reinforces this approach. US President Donald Trump’s 2025 return to the White House has strained NATO coordination. His renewed focus on Greenland reflects a more aggressive and openly transactional approach to Arctic strategy, heightening tensions with European allies. The Arctic is no longer a peripheral space of scientific cooperation, but an increasingly contested arena shaped by great power rivalry and intra-alliance strain.

This environment further constrains the scope for engagement with China in Arctic-related domains. Even if Finland were inclined to revisit past project proposals, the combination of US pressure, NATO integration, and a more openly competitive Arctic landscape renders such a move untenable.

Trump’s approach also introduces significant unpredictability into Western security coordination. European states, including Finland, are navigating a landscape in which security ties with the US remain central, but not straightforward. 

In the Arctic, Finland’s position is anchored in alliance commitments and regional stability, rather than shifting in response to changes in US foreign and security policy. From Helsinki’s perspective, maintaining cooperation with Beijing is not only about trade, but also about preserving strategic flexibility in a more fragmented and increasingly multipolar international system. This is consistent with what Stubb has described as “values-based realism”, a formulation that captures the combination of Western security commitments with pragmatic engagement beyond like-minded partners.

Finland has moved away from substantive cooperation with China in Arctic and security-related domains, where risks are now assessed through the lens of NATO integration and great power competition. Hence, Sino-Finnish relations are now centred on trade, climate and energy, and selected forms of technological collaboration.

De-risked engagement acknowledges that economic interdependence and geopolitical competition now coexist in ways that cannot be neatly separated. Finland’s approach does not fully resolve this tension, but it does offer an illustration of how a small, open liberal democracy is attempting to manage it in an era of renewed great power politics.

Related: Finland and Sweden today, Southeast Asia tomorrow? | [Big read] When the Arctic opens, what happens to Singapore?