China’s biggest shipping company, COSCO, intends to launch regular services through the Arctic Ocean to Europe, a spokeswoman said yesterday, as climate change makes the route viable and Beijing steps up its northern ambitions.
The state-owned industry giant has only twice sent a vessel through the Northeast Passage, once in 2013 and again in a voyage completed this month, state media reported.
The EU is China’s biggest trading partner and sailing via the Arctic rather than the Indian Ocean would cut shipping times by as much as nine days, previous reports said.
“There is an intention to open a regular line in the future and people are discussing it,” said a spokeswoman for group subsidiary COSCO Container Lines, without giving a specific timetable.
Her comments came after a Xinhua news agency report on Monday said that Chinese experts and officials had hailed the route as a “golden waterway” for trade.
COSCO released a statement saying the company would “continue to promote normalization of operations for the Arctic’s Northeast Passage.”
Earlier this month, COSCO’s Yong Sheng merchant ship completed a 55-day round-trip voyage between China and Europe using the Northeast Passage, Xinhua said.
The same vessel carried out the firm’s maiden journey on the route two years ago.
China does not border the Arctic and has no territorial claim to any of it, but joined the Arctic Council as an observer two years ago.
Observers say Beijing recognizes the area’s potential for scientific research and its strategic value.
“With global warming and accelerated ice melting in the Arctic, summer voyages in the Northeast and Northwest passages in the Arctic have become possible, with commercial development and environmental protection issues attracting the constant attention of international society,” COSCO said.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS