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China Condemns U.S. Rhetoric on Greenland
One justification U.S. President Donald Trump has offered for taking over Greenland is that “if we don’t do it, Russia or China will.” On Monday, China condemned the United States for using supposed Chinese actions as a “pretext” for threatening Greenland—and it’s hard to argue with Beijing on this one.
The idea that China is ready to seize Greenland at any moment is absurd, and Trump’s claims that Chinese destroyers and submarines are circling the island are blatantly false. As the crow flies, China is roughly 4,800 miles from Greenland and considerably farther by any viable sea route. Unlike the United States, China lacks a global network of military bases capable of supporting an operation at that distance; its only overseas naval bases, in Djibouti and Cambodia, are even farther from Greenland.
From Taiwan to the Himalayas, China is rather explicit about its territorial ambitions and border disputes. I have literally never seen a Chinese argument for acquiring Greenland, whether in a strategic paper or in online nationalist fantasy.
Some argue that Trump’s rhetoric here is merely a crude _expression_ of genuine concern about Chinese influence in Greenland. That’s an even weaker argument, and it risks diverting attention from genuinely troubling Chinese influence activities elsewhere in regions that matter far more to Beijing.
It’s true that China has interests in Greenland and the Arctic, particularly in rare-earth deposits. But Greenland’s critical mineral potential is largely hypothetical at this point. There is currently no rare-earths mining in the country, in large part because the deposits lie in extremely remote and inhospitable Arctic territory. Practical obstacles, not government directives, have constrained Chinese exploration, though some firms have invested in prospective sites.
Chinese companies have also invested—or tried to invest—in Greenlandic infrastructure, with some bids reportedly blocked by the Danish government. But not every Chinese commercial venture is part of a grand strategic plan. Like firms everywhere, Chinese companies invest because they want to make money.
This raises a broader question for honest analysts about how to determine what constitutes a threat versus a legitimate interest when it comes to China’s global activities. When China conducts Arctic research missions, is it contributing to global scientific knowledge, or laying the groundwork for power projection? When it seeks to place stations to support its BeiDou satellite navigation system, is that inherently more threatening than comparable U.S. efforts?
U.S. rhetoric about China’s supposed threat to Greenland rarely specifies what China would actually do there, or why. This stands in sharp contrast to China’s sustained influence campaign in the Pacific islands, a region that genuinely matters for Chinese military logistics and the ability to disrupt U.S. supply chains.
The political environment there is also entirely different. Greenland, a stable, semi-autonomous Danish territory, lacks anything resembling the security pacts, political volatility, and patterns of coercion and bribery that have characterized China’s engagement in parts of the Pacific.
It’s telling that the surge in commentary about a Chinese threat to Greenland came after Trump started talking about it. Much of this discourse appears less concerned with U.S. interests or Chinese behavior than retrofitting strategic logic onto Trump’s naked militarism and his assault on U.S. alliances.