I'll ask Alison to talk about the specifics of the Arctic Council. I'll tell you what they're doing with the white paper, from a Chinese perspective.
As I said in my initial remarks, there's nothing extremely new that hasn't been said somewhere before, or expressed in some way, by the Chinese. This was in some ways the clearest articulation of their interests in the Arctic.
It is important to know that they're not the only non-Arctic state to have an Arctic white paper policy. I think Japan, Korea, and others have already done the same. China, Japan, and Korea have also launched trilateral discussions on the Arctic.
We have to look at this in terms of their articulation of what their goals and objectives of Arctic collaboration might be. That would be done by considering the starting point of where they're coming from. How does that figure into multilateral negotiations? At least now we have a clear idea of what the Chinese want and expect from Arctic collaboration, and I imagine this would be carried into bilateral discussions.
I'll ask Alison to comment on how that would work.