A Dragon in Antarctica – Part One

It has been 40 years since China inaugurated its first Antarctic research station, Chángchéng (Great Wall) on King George Island. This anniversary presents an opportunity to look back at the origins and ambitions of the Chinese Antarctic Programme (CHINARE).

This is a two-part article by guest author and polar history expert Jean de Pomereu. We present part 1 today. Part two will follow on Friday, March 14, 2025.

At the end of June 2024, with temperatures soaring across Beijing, the National Museum of China opened an exhibition to commemorate the 40th anniversary of China’s Antarctic research programme. The exhibition featured large and detailed models of China’s icebreakers, research stations, helicopters, and of the Snow Eagle 601, a ski-equipped Basler DC3 that has been operated by CHINARE since 2015.

Other highlights included scientific instruments, geological and biological specimens, meteorites collected in Antarctica, letters, diaries, and documents relating to China’s Consultative Party membership of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and wider conventions and protocols. There was even one section devoted to China’s krill harvesting operations in the Southern Ocean, as regulated by the consensus-driven yet currently fractious Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Among the many historical documents on display, was a photograph dated 20th of February 1985. It showed some 200 men – a third of the members of the First Chinese Antarctic Expedition – assembled for a flag raising ceremony marking the inauguration of China’s first Antarctic research station, Great Wall (Chángchéng). The location where it was taken is King George Island, in the South Shetlands, at the northern extremity of the Antarctic Peninsula, where many other states also have research stations.

Behind the men stood the station’s two new buildings. Each was composed of eight red containers raised on stilts and designed to accommodate sixty expeditioners during the summer season, and about eight during the winter. Although not visible in the photograph, mounted on one of the two buildings was a plaque with a quote by Deng Xiaoping, China’s leader at the time. In asserting that China’s Antarctic activities were intended to “contribute to mankind’s peaceful use of Antarctica”, the phrase echoed the Preamble to the Antarctic Treaty, which states that “it is in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue for ever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.”

In its assembly of models, objects and documents, the message of the Beijing exhibition was clear: Since the inauguration of Chángchéng station, China has become a leading, modern Antarctic Treaty nation – one whose logistical deployment and influence now extends right across the continent and its surrounding ocean.

Accession to the Antarctic Treaty

The construction of Chángchéng station took place at a key moment in Chinese history. Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China had recently begun a process of economic and industrial reform, including the modernisation of its agriculture, military, science, and technology. As part of its reconnection with the global community, China had also normalized ties with the United States in 1979 and joined international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1980.

In line with this agenda, China signed the Antarctic Treaty in June 1983, launched its first national Antarctic expedition tasked with establishing Chángchéng station in 1984, and became the fourteenth Consultative Member to the Antarctic Treaty in October 1985. This was rapidly followed by its accession to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), and its membership of SCAR in 1986. China’s commitment to the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) reached something of a milestone in 2017, when it hosted the 40th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in Beijing.

China’s integration into Antarctica’s governing and scientific community followed two years after that of India and Brazil, at a time when the Consultative Parties to the Treaty, wary of being labelled a ‘rich man’s club’, sought to open-up the ATS to the Global South. The 1980s were also a period of intense debate around ratification of the Wellington Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA) that proposed to allow and regulate the mineral exploitation of Antarctica. Thanks to last-minute opposition by Australia, France, environmental groups, and the Global South, the convention was replaced by the Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1991, through which China and the other Consultative Members agreed to an open-ended ban on mining in the region.

This same period was also particularly productive for science, with the discovery of the ozone hole and the extraction of the Vostok ice core, providing crucial evidence about the historic link between global temperatures, CO2, and methane concentrations.

Science and Logistics

Despite the efforts and advances that were made in the 1980s, China’s Antarctic research activities and infrastructure remained modest compared to those of most of the twelve original signatories of the Antarctic Treaty. Building on the legacy of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58 – during which they had invested heavily in Antarctic research – many of the original signatories continued to operate multiple research stations, as well as the ships and aircraft required to support them.

With its economy and place in the world growing, and with Chángchéng now fully operational and producing scientific results in the fields of meteorology and biology, China set its sights on expanding its Antarctic capacity. This would be achieved through the construction of a second Antarctic station, the acquisition of a certified icebreaker, and the creation of the Polar Research Institute of China, responsible for managing all of China’s infrastructure in Antarctica.

Named Zhongshan, China’s second station was inaugurated in February 1989. Established in the Larsemann Hills along the coast of East Antarctica, it was located within the Australian territorial claim and facilitated by longstanding cooperation between the two nations in Antarctica. The station was particularly well positioned for carrying out space physics, geophysics, aurora and upper atmospheric research, as well as serving as a platform for marine and glaciological studies. Like the United States’ McMurdo station – albeit much more modest in scale – it also functioned as a logistical hub from which to explore Antarctica’s interior and, eventually, establish and maintain two inland stations.

For its part, China’s first icebreaker, the Xue Long (Snow Dragon), measuring 167 meters, was purchased from Ukraine in 1993 and modified for CHINARE’s research and logistical needs. These comprised oceanography and the resupplying of both Chángchéng and Zhongshan stations – two missions which it continues to fulfil today.

China’s first expeditions from Zhongshan station into Antarctica’s forbidding interior took place in 1996-1997. It covered 1,200 kilometers and opened the way for many more inland expeditions. Most of these took the direction of Dome A (Dome Argus), the culminating point of the East Antarctic ice sheet, beneath which lies the sub-glacial Gamburtsev mountain range. They also visited the Grove Mountains, whose blue ice fields proved ideal for finding meteorites.

CHINARE scientists first reached Dome A in 2005. There, at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters, scientists carried out seismic and radio-echo sounding surveys to better understand the plasticity of the East-Antarctic ice sheet and to locate the best possible locations for ice coring. This work was continued as part of China’s PANDA programme during the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08 and has so far resulted in the extraction of ten shallow ice cores ranging from 50 to 130 meters, and of one deeper 800-metre ice core in collaboration with Russian scientists.

CHINARE’s familiarisation with the terrain and extreme conditions of Antarctica’s interior during the IPY led to the construction of China’s third station, Kunlun, at Dome A in 2009. Although still only operational during the summer months, Kunlun placed China within an exclusive group of Antarctic nations with the necessary resources to operate stations this far inland – in some of the harshest and coldest environments on Earth. China aims to turn Kunlun into a year-round station within the next five years, but this is a complex undertaking given the extreme altitude. Kunlun sits significantly higher than other year-round inland stations: 1,200 meters above the United States’s South Pole station, 800 meters above the Franco-Italian Concordia station at Dome C, and 500 meters above Russia’s Vostok station.

Even as a summer station, however, Kunlun has already enabled Chinese astronomers to deploy and operate an increasingly large and sophisticated array of optical telescopes to take advantage of what many astrophysicists consider to be the best location on Earth for astronomical observations. This is due to Dome A’s high altitude, the exceptional clarity of its atmosphere, and the absence of light pollution during the winter months, when the telescopes operated autonomously.

End of Part One

Notes by the author:
I would like to acknowledge Professor Alan Hemmings for his constructive feedback and suggestions, which played an important role in refining certain aspects of this article. Responsibility for all positions, assertions and any errors reside with the author.
This article was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) under the ICEglobe project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2014-2020 research and innovation programme.

Jean de Pomereu is a research associate at the Scott Polar Reseach Institute, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the scientific history of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and on the visual and material culture of Antarctica. During the 4th International Polar Year 2007-08, he was the first foreign reporter to accompany a Chinese Antarctic research expedition.