| Summary: | A rising China and a changing physical environment is forever altering existing Arctic governance systems. Using China’s emergence as a self-described “Near Arctic” state as a guide, this thesis advances a theory that exclusionary practices by states and international organizations towards emerging actors in regions experiencing rapid globalization results in the unintended construction of peripheral influence systems led by the excluded. This concept is summarized as exclusion-peripheralization. In the process of highlighting the spectrum of China’s developing Arctic ascendancy, several sub-themes inherent to contemporary Arctic geopolitics are also examined. 1) How science or knowledge-based ‘territory’ supplants traditional concepts of territorial-based legitimacy in international governance systems like the Arctic Council. 2) The role political anthropology plays as both contextual foundation and strategic tool in the interactions between established and emerging states. 3) The cyclic process whereby a ‘new’ region become increasingly international, how globalization in turn acts upon that space, and how state policy creation systems are themselves altered. Each of these factor into an enduring Arctic motif as a region of complex and oft-conflicting interests, specifically of exploitation versus sustainability and competition versus cooperation. Exclusion- peripheralization theory and these sub-themes are approached via the presentation of case studies on Sino-Nordic, Inuit, and Russian collaboration, in addition to commentary on the larger strategic backdrop, including United States policy and the influence of transnational knowledge networks. This thesis concludes China’s Arctic activities, exemplified by its investment in polar science, infrastructure and trade development agreements with individual Arctic states, as well as other forms of norm-construction, are designed to establish a lasting, albeit non-territorial Chinese Arctic presence. This work concludes with policy recommendations, including ...
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