China is expanding its presence in Antarctica, an area protected from military use and economic exploitation by international agreements. Recent satellite images show recent construction progress on China's new Qinling Research Station. NZZ writes about this.

With an area of \u200b\u200babout 5,300 square meters, Qinling is the second largest research station on the ice continent.. According to the Chinese government, it is used for scientific purposes.. In the West last year, other possible motives for construction were already pointed out.. In addition to interest in raw materials, geopolitical and geostrategic considerations, as well as access to sea routes, may be of particular importance for China..

Qinling is China's fifth Antarctic research station. Satellite images taken in December 2024 now show infrastructure expansion at controversial research facility. They built something resembling a landing pad there, and another large building is being built there.

It is still impossible to clearly determine what exactly China is building, but they have clearly accelerated. Since in the southern part of the site a large area has been cleared, where they are clearly going to build a pier and berth for ships.

Publicly available planning documents from the Polar Research Institute of China and Tongji University provide further insight into the planned construction project and the future overall plan for the Antarctic project.

China's presence in Antarctica is by no means new. China built its first research station? in 1985, just two years after joining the Antarctic Treaty in 1983. This treaty governs the peaceful scientific use and exploration of the continent and is intended to prevent both militarization and territorial claims. However, various states have territorial claims to parts of Antarctica, with Australia claiming the largest area. China is one of the contracting states.

All Antarctic Treaty partners are allowed to remain on the continent for research purposes, and many countries have also established research stations there - in strategic locations.

Although the Antarctic Treaty prohibits military exercises, it allows the use of military logistics and personnel for scientific research purposes. For this reason, many countries, including Australia and the United States, regularly use military transport aircraft and dual-use technologies that can be used for both civil and military purposes.. These include, for example, ground stations for satellites, where it is suspected that, in addition to communicating with their own satellites, they may also collect information for military or geopolitical purposes, making their use controversial.

It remains unclear whether China has a military goal with its long-term expansion in Antarctica, that is, whether the investment goes beyond purely scientific purposes. However, China has asserted its influence in Antarctica by building modern research centers. This opens up the possibility for the country to play an important geopolitical role in the region in the future.

Some reports said that China was preparing to explore and extract raw materials with the help of Qinling. It has long been known that Antarctica has deposits of various metals, as well as deposits of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil. However, it is too expensive to extract them, and it is also prohibited. Qinling will probably be useful, for example, for the Chinese Beidou satellite navigation system, which is being created to compete with GPS, Galileo and Glonass. Beidou requires ground stations around the world to improve system accuracy. An additional base in Antarctica would be very convenient for China.

Let us recall that earlier military experts suggested that China is seriously preparing to invade Taiwan.. The PRC is building special landing barges, the only conceivable purpose of which is to transport equipment of the People's Liberation Army to the Taiwanese coast as part of a full-scale invasion.