The Chinese Interest in Greenland and How It Impacts the Relationship
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Friend or Foe: The Chinese Interest in Greenland and how it Impacts the Relationship Between Greenland and Denmark Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Master of Social Sciences in International Security and Law By Charlotte Glavind Bülow Date of Birth: November 28, 1988 Thesis Supervisor: Danita Catherine Burke Department of Political Science and Public Management University of Southern Denmark Submission Date: September 03, 2018 Number of Characters: 161.455 Abstract This thesis investigates how the increased Chinese interest in investing in Greenland is impacting on the relationship between Denmark and Greenland. While the Chinese interest in Greenland is still deemed to be purely economic, there is a latent fear among Danish government officials and politicians that in time it will also be political, and that Greenlandic institutions do not hold the capacity to deal with a potential political pressure from China. In Greenland this fear is not shared. On top of the Greenlandic wish list is independence. The main obstacle to achieving this goal is that Greenland does not have the national economy to sustain their desired level of welfare on their own. The prospect of massive Chinese investments thus serves as a promise of an independent future. This thesis employs the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory and looks into how Greenland and Denmark are constantly balancing on a knife’s edge in a securitization game. In securitization theory, an actor can take an issue and move it from being normal politics to being a security issue by using a specific securitizing rhetoric. The thesis shows how Denmark often presents Greenland for a latent threat to securitize the Chinese interest in investing in Greenland. Greenland is not interested in the investments being securitized, as they want to appear a safe haven for investments. At the same time Denmark cannot make a full securitization because that would be perceived as a colonizing act by Greenland and the rest of the world. The thesis applies content analysis and discourse analysis as it investigates the Greenlandic and Danish governments’ perspectives on the Chinese interests, respectively. The official government perspectives are held up against two cases. The first case is concerns a naval base that was up for sale, but then withdrawn from the market when a Chinese company made a bid for it. The second case concerns the Greenlandic minerals and Chinese investors. Both cases illustrate how the Danish-Greenlandic lack of cooperation is rooted in an unresolved dispute on how China should be perceived - as a security issue or as an economic saviour. 2 List of Abbreviations • BRI – Belt and road initiative • DDIS – Danish Defence Intelligence Service • FMMDA – The Future Missions of the Danish Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the Arctic • GDP – Gross Domestic Product • GME – Greenland Minerals and Energy • IA – Inuit AtaQatiigit • IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency • MoD – Ministry of Defence • PRC – Peoples Republic of China • REE – Rare Earth Minerals • UNCLOS – United Nations Law of the Sea 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Danita Catherine Burke for her thorough supervision. Your guidance definitely benefitted the thesis. I would also like to thank the three interviewees Nils Wang, AleQa Hammond and Camilla T. N. Sørensen for taking their time to share insights with me. The insights provided were not to be found in the existing literature on the subject and the interviews enabled me to go deeper with my analysis than I would otherwise have been able to. 4 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 2 List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 4 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7 Road Map ............................................................................................................................. 11 Chapter One – Setting the Frame ......................................................................... 12 Securitization Theory and the Copenhagen School ............................................... 12 A Widened Security Concept ......................................................................................... 12 The Political Sectors ......................................................................................................... 13 The Speech Act ................................................................................................................... 14 Securitization ..................................................................................................................... 17 Security as Silence ............................................................................................................ 18 Social Constructivism ...................................................................................................... 19 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 20 Chapter Two - Methods and Data Collection ................................................... 22 Discourse Analysis ............................................................................................................ 23 Operationalization ......................................................................................................................... 23 Content Analysis ................................................................................................................ 25 Operationalization ......................................................................................................................... 27 Data Collection ................................................................................................................... 28 Methods and Data Triangulation ............................................................................................ 30 Concluding Notes on the Methodological Considerations ................................... 31 Chapter Three – The Danish-Greenlandic History and Relationship ...... 33 Danish-Greenlandic Relations: A Brief History ...................................................... 33 Greenland’s road from Colony to Self Government ............................................... 36 Tension Points in the Bilateral Relationship ........................................................... 38 Chapter Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 42 Chapter Four: Chinese Diplomacy in Greenland and the Arctic ............... 43 The Development of the Chinese Arctic Interest .................................................... 43 Chinese Arctic Diplomacy ............................................................................................... 44 The First Chinese White Paper on Arctic Policy ..................................................... 46 The Wide Span of the Chinese Interest in the Region ........................................... 47 5 China and its Relations with the Kingdom of Denmark ....................................... 48 Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................................... 50 Chapter Five – Official Government Perspectives ......................................... 51 The Official Danish Perspective: Chinese Investments as a Security Issue ... 51 The Future Missions of MoD in the Arctic ........................................................................... 52 The DDIS Risk Assessments ...................................................................................................... 55 Concluding remarks on the official Danish perspective ...................................... 61 The official Greenlandic Perspective: China as the Key to Independence ..... 62 Greenland’s Perspective as Reflected in Government Reports .................................. 62 Greenland’s Perspective as Reflected on the Government Website ........................ 66 Concluding Remarks on the Greenlandic Perspective ......................................... 67 Chapter Six - Empirical Cases ............................................................................... 68 Grønnedal – a Military Symbol ..................................................................................... 68 The Danish Perspective: Security as Silence ...................................................................... 70 The Greenlandic perspective: Greenland should have been informed .................. 72 Case Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 75 Mining, Minerals and the Gateway to Independence ............................................ 77 The Chinese Interest in the Greenlandic Minerals .......................................................... 77 The Balancing on a Knife’s Edge of Securitization .......................................................... 78 Case Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 81 Chapter Seven - Conclusion ..................................................................................