China Decoded: It takes two poles to tango

Depending on your idea of fun (and your tolerance of extreme cold) you might like to know that there are people who travel to Antarctica just to paddleboard—0.073 percent of all vessels operating in a recent tourist season were there for paddleboarders.

It’s a fraction of those who visit the icy continent, where tourist numbers hit more than 100,000 for the first time in 2022 and have stayed above that since, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators. “Polar plunging” is also something people go for. “Extended walking.” Citizen science.

I thought we could look at Antarctica today to balance what seems like an almost unfair focus on the Arctic when it comes to polar affairs.

Perhaps the lopsidedness is because about four million people live in the High North, whereas no-one lives in Antarctica, except for visiting scientists. Or because powerful and, yes, bossy nations such as the U.S., Russia, and European ones border the Artic, with China also getting its oar in.

We have explored polar issues, principally China, research and security, at Newsweek for some years now, but we are just as guilty of focusing on the north rather than the south.

There’s plenty going on in the frozen continent.

Consider, for example, that China's 16th Arctic expedition is now underway but its 42nd Antarctic expedition was completed in June, when the Xuelong 2 icebreaker research vessel returned to its home port of Shanghai, according to People’s Daily (sister ship Xuelong was on that journey too).

That’s a lot more expeditions headed south than north. Why?

Antarctica. Who wouldn't want to go:

Well, China has a far bigger research enterprise in Antarctica than in the Arctic. John shows where its five bases are located. Chinese media have said it is planning a sixth, status unclear.

I’ve heard from German polar scientists that there’s a curious difference between cooperation with their Chinese counterparts in the Arctic and the Antarctic: in the north they’re friendly, willing to cooperate; in the south they’re not.

Perhaps because they feel they don’t need it with all those stations. In the Arctic they have only two, one in Norway’s Svalbard and one in Iceland. They’d like a lot more research and other kinds of cooperation with Russia and that may slowly be underway, as I wrote about in Wednesday’s newsletter, but we have little visibility into it, including what might also be happening inside Russia. China wants access to the Russian Arctic territory to research, a senior Chinese polar scientist told me.

The U.S. operates a big outpost in Antarctica: the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, situated at the geographic heart of the South Pole. At 90 degrees south and 0 degrees east, it's bang in the middle and close to 3,000 meters above sea level. That’s remote. And high. Pretty dominant. 

Undoubtedly, the U.S. is getting nervous about China’s expansion. In January, we reported on a rare inspection trip by the Americans of several countries’ stations, including China’s Zhongshan Station, the first such inspection in six years. All countries are allowed to do them, according to international agreements. 

At the time, a senior former White House national security official, Alexander Gray, told me that the administration believes there are bases in Antarctica that China is militarizing and where they have undeclared People’s Liberation Army and probably Ministry of State Security personnel. He didn't offer evidence.

At the time too, the U.S. State Department told me that the inspection aimed to check if all parties to the Antarctic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1959, were adhering to provisions prohibiting military use and economic activity such as mining.

An American all-women team reached the South Pole in 1993, making Ann Bancroft the first woman to travel over the ice to both poles:

People are also concerned about overfishing in Antarctic waters, particularly of krill, those tiny creatures that underpin the maritime food chain.

The Oceanographic magazine reported yesterday that the annual permitted krill catch hit the upper limit of 620,000 tons for 2026 and is now shut for the second year in a row. People want more protection for krill and China is, globally, the main culprit when it comes to overfishing, say organizations that track IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing. Chinese fleets are active in the Southern Ocean.

Then there’s all the security issues flaring as China increasingly challenges its neighbors, such as Japan and the Philippines, and the U.S., for dominance in Asia. Antarctica is not immune.

In last Wednesday’s newsletter about the Arctic, I looked—briefly—at joint U.S.-Finland icebreaker construction. The U.S. has only about two or three ice ships that are operational at any one time, needs more, and, truly worrying for it, can’t build them alone. 

The ICE Pact, as it’s called, is mostly about the Arctic (the ships are literally called Arctic security cutters, and by the way, where is Canada in all this?), but they clearly would be useful in Antarctica too.

I asked the State Department for comment and they obliged.

Will the new Finnish-built ships be used in Antarctica? 

“The 2025 U.S.-Finland MOU is focused on the production of Arctic icebreakers, but ICE Pact's efforts can be applied to Antarctic icebreaker production,” a spokesperson told me.

What does the U.S. want in Antarctica?

“The United States is a leader in maintaining the Antarctic region for peaceful and scientific purposes, has a range of economic interests including fisheries and tourism, and maintains the continent's largest presence through the U.S. Antarctic Program. The United States uses all tools available to safeguard American economic and national security in Antarctica, including maintaining our unmatched footprint, superior logistical capability, and economic dominance, and conducting inspections of foreign facilities under the Antarctic Treaty.”

Will it carry out more inspections of Chinese (and other countries’) stations, as I have heard from others? Here the answer was vague but, reading between the lines, yes:

“The United States remains committed to using all available tools, including inspections under the Antarctic Treaty, to safeguard our national security interests and help verify all parties remain in full compliance with the Antarctic Treaty system,” the State Department said.

A final point: in 2020, President Donald Trump, who sources say has had the poles on his mind since at least 2018, signed a memorandum that the U.S. would open four new bases there to grow America's presence in the strategically sensitive spots. Exact locations, TBD.  

"At least two optimal United States basing locations and at least two international basing locations," the Memorandum on Safeguarding United States National Interests in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions promised.

Six years later, there's no news on that, I’m told.

Only the Antarctic has penguins (and only the Arctic has polar bears):

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Didi Kirsten Tatlow is Senior Correspondent, International Affairs/Investigations at Newsweek. She is based in Berlin, Germany. You can get in touch by email here.

Seafaring nations have made claims on Antarctica for centuries. Britain was the first modern nation to lodge a formal legal claim to parts of the icy continent, in 1908, but Chile and Argentina argue that their colonial rights go back hundreds more years, to the 1500s.

The only continent on Earth without native human inhabitants was nominally carved up by seven nations—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom—but their sovereignty claims were frozen by the Antarctic Treaty of 1959.

The first arms control agreement of the Cold War turned Antarctica into a place for scientific pursuits, rather than for overt strategic competition and base building. The treaty suspends the various overlapping assertions and doesn’t permit new territorial claims while it remains in force.

Interested parties have built research stations all over Antarctica and not only in the areas they claim.

China sent its first scientists to Antarctica in 1980, in a trip sponsored by the Australian government. It became a signatory of the Antarctic Treaty in 1983.

Although the treaty ensured that strategic pursuits would not be permitted, Beijing, like other rising powers, wanted a say in future Antarctic affairs. 

In 1985, after its first research station, Great Wall, opened on the Antarctic Peninsula, China officially gained consultative status, guaranteeing its voting rights under the multinational Antarctic Treaty System.

Today there are 114 research stations on Antarctica, including 44 year-round bases and 70 seasonal outposts that only operate during the austral summer (that’s from October through April), according to a database maintained by the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs, or COMNAP.

China has five research stations, among them three year-round sites, and a summer-only airfield opened in 2022 to provide logistical support to Zhongshan, its easternmost base.

Our map shows China’s presence on nearly every corner of the continent. 

The newest Qinling Station on Inexpressible Island, in Victoria Land, officially opened in 2024 and is its newest and largest, at over 56,000 square feet. 

The Polar Research Institute of China, or PRIC, says the base can accommodate up to 80 researchers in the summer and 30 in the winter.

As Kirsten mentioned, plans for a sixth station—summer only—are underway. It could open as early as next year in Marie Byrd Land in the unclaimed parts of West Antarctica.

Research suggests Antarctica is home to untapped natural resources including fossil fuels and, more pertinently, critical minerals, but mining is prohibited under the Antarctic Treaty’s Madrid Protocol of 1991.

In 2048—50 years after the protocol entered into force—the rules could be changed through a formal review process, but any modifications would require the assent of all 29 original states parties. 

China is among them, its rights ensured by a long track record of permanent research programs in Antarctica.

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