HMCS Regina, left, and HMCS Vancouver are docked as part of Fleet Week, in North Vancouver, B.C., on May 3.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
A Canadian warship travelled to the Bering Strait in July to shadow China’s most advanced polar icebreaker as the Xue Long 2 transited the passageway between Russia and Alaska as part of Beijing’s effort to reinforce its Arctic ambitions.
The Canadian government did not make public this part of HMCS Regina’s trip to the Arctic Ocean until it faced media requests about the frigate’s itinerary this week. The Department of National Defence did not explain why it omitted this monitoring of the Chinese ship from its news release accounts of the trip, which it had described as an “Arctic awareness and sovereignty mission.”
HMCS Regina’s tracking of China’s Xue Long 2 (Snow Dragon 2) research vessel came at a potentially fragile moment in Canada-China relations. Open-source vessel tracking websites suggest this took place July 13 to 17. The same ship-tracking websites show HMCS Regina turned off its transponder July 13 in the Bering Sea. Four days later the Canadian vessel reappeared in Arctic waters.
This monitoring of China’s transit occurred just as Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly was preparing for a historic visit to Beijing to reopen communication channels with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) amid a deep freeze in Canada-China relations brought on by the 2018 imprisonment of two Canadian citizens. Ms. Joly’s visit on July 19 was the first time a Canadian foreign minister had visited China in nearly seven years.
Department of National Defence spokesperson Frédérica Dupuis said in a statement that as climate change warms the Arctic, Canada is seeing more foreign actors with regional military ambitions in the area who seek natural resources, energy and transportation routes. China does not possess territory in the Arctic but has taken to calling itself a “near-Arctic state” with hopes of legitimizing its presence in the region.
Ms. Dupuis said China’s Snow Dragon 2 vessel has dual purposes when it enters Arctic waters. Competitor nations “are exploring Arctic waters and the sea floor, probing our infrastructure and collecting intelligence,” she said. On July 24, North American Aerospace Defense Command said it monitored two Chinese H-6 bombers and two Russian TU-95 strategic bombers flying in Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone, a defined band of international airspace that requires the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security.
“We are seeing more Russian activity in our air approaches, and a growing number of Chinese dual-purpose research vessels and surveillance platforms collecting data about the Canadian North that is, by Chinese law, made available to China’s military,” Ms. Dupuis said.
She said HMCS Regina and its helicopter “interacted safely and professionally with the Chinese research vessel Xue Long 2 throughout its transit through the Bering Strait.”
The Canadian frigate’s trip also coincided with a visit to the Bering Sea by four Chinese military ships including a destroyer, two guided-missile destroyers and a replenishment ship. The government of Japan identified these vessels through postings on X and the U.S Coast Guard reported encountering the Chinese warships.
Ms. Dupuis said HMCS Regina did not interact with the Chinese naval flotilla.
“The Canadian Armed Forces was also aware of the presence of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval task group, which remained in international waters at all times. The Chinese naval task group had no encounters with HMCS Regina,” she said.
“To maintain the security of our missions and personnel, we will not disclose further specific operational details.”
Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based consultant who tracks aircraft and ships, said he’s still confused why the Canadian military took steps to reduce its visibility during the Bering Strait passage.
“Why did they turn off their transponder, specifically hiding their location, for the transit of the strait and until they had broken off from monitoring the research vessel?” he said.
“If this is just an innocent friendly passage, why turn off the transponder?”
Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, said he’s proud of how far north HMCS Regina ventured. “It’s extremely rare for a frigate to operate at such high latitudes and it is definitely the record for a Halifax-class north of the Bering Strait.”
The Xue Long 2 is an improvement on China’s original Xue Long research vessel, one that Arctic defence experts say has been used to legitimatize China’s growing interest in region, despite holding no territory there.
“Over the last decade, in addition to its overt scientific goals, Xue Long was, and is, intentionally employed under the cover of science and scientific collaboration to intentionally normalize, for skittish Arctic nations, China’s presence in the region and the CCP’s revisionist self-assertion as a near-Arctic nation,” authors Bryan J.R. Millard and P. Whitney Lackenbauer wrote in a 2021 paper for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Canada sailed a warship through international waters in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday in what Defence Minister Bill Blair called a reaffirmation of Canada’s commitment to a “free, open and inclusive” Indo-Pacific.
China regularly condemns Canada and its allies for using the Taiwan Strait, accusing them of threatening peace in the region. Beijing considers the self-governed island of Taiwan to be a renegade province and has not ruled out the use of force to annex it. It also claims sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait.
The Chinese military accused Canada of undermining peace and stability, according to a statement.
With files from Reuters