How Greenland could become China's Arctic base

China is flexing its muscles. As the second richest economy inthe world, its businessmen and politicians are involved just about everywherein Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Now, though, China is taking a big interest in a very differentpart of the world: the Arctic.

It has started calling itself a "near-Arctic" power,even though Beijing is almost 3,000km (1,800 miles) from the Arctic Circle. Ithas bought or commissioned several ice-breakers - including nuclear-poweredones - to carve out new routes for its goods through the Arctic ice.

And it is eyeing Greenland as a particularly useful way-stationon its polar silk road.

It is important strategically for the United States, which maintains a vast military base at Thule, in the far north. Both the Danes and the Americans are deeply worried that China should be showing such an interest in Greenland.

Least denselypopulated place on Earth

You've got to gothere to get an idea of how enormous Greenland is.

It's the12th-largest territory in the world, 10 times bigger than the United Kingdom:two million square kilometres of rock and ice.

Yet its population is miniscule at 56,000 – roughly the size of a town in England.

As a result, Greenland is the least densely populated territory on Earth. About 88% of the people are Inuit; most of the rest are ethnically Danish, many of whose ancestors started colonising it 1,000 years ago. The Inuit arrived several centuries later.

Over the years neither the Americans nor the Danes have put allthat much money into Greenland, and Nuuk, the capital, feels pretty poor.

Every day, small numbers of people gather in the centre to sellthings that will generate a bit of cash: cast-off clothes, children'sschoolbooks, cakes they've made, dried fish, reindeer-horn carvings. Somepeople also sell the bloody carcases of the big King Eider ducks, which Inuitsare allowed to hunt but aren't supposed to sell for profit.

China's airpower

At present you can only fly to Nuuk in small propeller-drivenplanes. In four years, though, that will change spectacularly.

The Greenlandic government has decided to build three biginternational airports capable of taking large passenger jets.

China is bidding for the contracts.

There'll bepressure from the Danes and Americans to ensure the Chinese bid doesn'tsucceed, but that won't stop China's involvement in Greenland.

Interestingly, I found that opinion about the Chinese tended todivide along ethnic lines.

Danish people were worried about it, while Inuits thought it wasa good idea.

The Greenlandic prime minister and foreign minister refused tospeak to us about their government's attitude to China, but a former primeminister, Kuupik Kleist, told us he thought it would be good for Greenland.

But the foreign affairs spokesman of the main Venstre party inthe Danish coalition government, Michael Aastrup Jensen, was forthright aboutChinese involvement in Greenland.

"We don't want a communist dictatorship in our ownbackyard," he said.

Much-neededwealth

China's salestechnique in other countries where its companies operate is to offer the kindof infrastructure they badly need: airports, roads, clean water.

The Westernpowers that once colonised many of them haven't usually stepped in to help, andmost of these governments are only too grateful for Chinese aid.

But it comes at a price.

China gets access to each country's raw materials - minerals, metals, wood, fuel,foodstuffs. Still, this doesn't usually mean long-term jobs for local people.Large numbers of Chinese are usually brought in to do the work.

Country after country has discovered that Chinese investmenthelps China's economy a great deal more than it helps them. And in some places- South Africa is one of them - there are complaints that China's involvementtends to bring greater corruption.

But in Nuuk it's hard to get people to focus on arguments likethese.

What counts in this vast, empty, impoverished territory is thethought that big money could be on its way. Kuupik Kleist put the argument atits simplest.

"We need it, you see," he said.