Towards Polycentric Regionalism: Sino-Russian Geo-Economic Relations and the Formation of the Pacific Arctic Region

• Main Author: Reilly, Timothy Bernard Thomas
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cambridge 2022
• Subjects: Arctic; LNG; Space; Governance; Pacific; Pacific Arctic
• Online Access: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/337014; https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.84435

The post-Cold War unipolar world order is being challenged in both North East Asia and the broader Eurasian Arctic not by the emergence of multilateral political institutions, but rather by what I conceptualise as a geo-economic process of Polycentric Regionalism. The rising great power ambitions of Russia and China - with substantial economic spheres of overlapping regional interests (i.e. their neighbouring Dongbei / Russian Far East and Arctic territories), has led to their adoption of a geo-economic strategy to begin to alter the present international system by creating two new physical and geopolitically relevant, regional "spaces" in the Arctic: the terrestrial Pacific Arctic, and via the instrumentalization of technology, the fourth dimension of (celestial) Space. Both activities (the Pacific Arctic/Space) now strategically link North East Asia with Europe, physically and virtually, via combination of Russia’s North East Arctic corridor maritime access, Sino-Russian joint Space /cyberspace activities, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative platform. Through original case studies of the natural gas/ Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry, situated in Russia’s Arctic, as well as joint Sino-Russian technology Research and Development initiatives, I argue that the gas/LNG industry's geo-economic power - transmitted through capital, infrastructure build-out capabilities, and economic influence over institutions - is the key determinant in facilitating the physical connectivity and virtual linkage aspects of Polycentric Regionalism. By generating new economic dynamism in the shared space(s) and thereby building trust for bilateral commitments, Russia and China can create the Pacific Arctic region as an experimental step in establishing a viable alternative to the economic and security order in Asia, shaped largely to date by the U.S. The significant Sino-Russian trust gained via the Sino-Russian gas play acts as a strategic Confidence Building Measure for more sensitive collaboration in dual-use technologies, that ...