China’s activities and interests in the Arctic are often set against the backdrop of broader trends in the global political economy, and often implicitly framed through particular assumptions about what China’s growing economic might and international assertiveness mean generally. This chapter attempts to lay these assumptions bare and give scrutiny to their foundations by holding China’s purported interests in the Arctic against its observed foreign policy tradition. Although much has been made of China’s Arctic interests in recent years, it is worth considering that the Arctic does not factor very highly on China’s national agenda. Indeed, this chapter illustrates the disconnect between the common assumption that China’s behaviour towards its own neighbours is, in any way, a bellwether for its behaviour towards Arctic countries. In 2013, an economic survey by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicated that China’s staggering growth will almost certainly continue. China’s GDP is $13.39 trillion (USD) although that represents a modest $9,800 per capita (its population in 2013 was 1.355 billion). The country weathered the post-2008 global economic crisis well compared to other OECD countries. The National Intelligence Council (senior experts in the US intelligence community who provide ad vice to the Director of National Intelligence) noted in Global Trends 2030 that “China’s contribution to global investment growth is now one and a half times the size of the US contribution.” In the World Bank’s baseline model ing of future economic multipolarity, China – despite a likely slowing of its economic growth will contribute about one-third of global growth by 2025, far more than any other economy.