beijing as the icecovered parts of the arctic ocean melt due to climate change china has flagged its interest to take part in building polar silk road raising prospects for the emergence of a new sea routechina will participate in the pragmatic cooperation on the arctic and the building of a polar silk road the staterun xinhua news agency quoted the draft outline of the 14th fiveyear plan 20212025 for national economic and social development and the longrange objectives to the year 2035both the plans were submitted to chinas national peoples congress npc the countrys parliament which began its annual session here on fridayconnecting the atlantic and pacific oceans the transpolar sea route tsr will cut across the centre of the arctic ocean passing close to the north polewhile it could significantly reduce distances for global trade it remains frozen over for most of the year making it much harder to traverse than the two arctic shipping routes currently available the northern sea route and the northwest passage the hong kongbased south china morning post quoted a research paper earlierto the best of our knowledge china is the only country to have led official expeditions of all three arctic shipping passages including the tsr the research team led by dr mia bennett from the university of hong kong wrote in the paperchina has made clear its intention to expand in the arctic region and published a white paper on this in early 2018 calling for its transformation into a polar silk road and highlighting its plans to integrate with its multibilliondollar belt and road initiative brichina unveiled the bri in 2013 with an aim to link southeast asia central asia the gulf region africa and europe with a network of land and sea routesindia has been severely critical of the bri the pet project of chinese president xi jinping as the usd 60 billion china pakistan economic corridor cpec which is part of the bri passes through pakistanoccupied kashmir pok