China is now planning on constructing an airfield in the Australian Antarctic Territory to service its four research stations there, with the country's one and only icebreaker ship leaving Shanghai yesterday to make her 31st trip to the South Pole, tasked with building of a base station for the Beidou navigation satellite system and selecting a site for the new airstrip.
Situated near Zhongshan Station on the Larsemann Hills in East Antarctica's Pyrdz Bay, the fixed-wing airport will be a first for the Polar Research Institute of China.
Despite the country operating four bases in the Antarctic (with a fifth planned on the Ross Sea coast), researchers at Kunlun Station, Taishan Station, Great Wall Station and Zhongshan Station have hitherto been supplied by annual visits of the Chinese Antarctic support vessel MV Xue Long ("Snow Dragon").
Xue Long remains the only Chinese icebreaking research ship in service. The Ukrainian-built Arctic cargo ship completed in 1993 and acquired by China in the same year, before being onverted into a polar research and re-supply vessel in 1994 in her home port of Shanghai, then extensively upgraded in 2007 and 2013 to extend her seaworthy days.
A new Finnish-built RMB 1.3 billion icebreaker, smaller but more capable than Xue Long, is currently in the design phase and is expected to enter service in 2016.
Although used primarily to support China's annual expeditions to Antarctica, Xue Long has made five voyages to the Arctic via the Bering Strait in 1999, 2003, 2008, 2010 and 2012.
During her 1999 arctic voyage, Xue Long arrived unannounced in the coastal Canadian village of Tuktoyaktuk, much to the surprise of local residents. Canada's inability to track the ship continues to be cited as evidence that Ottawa is unprepared to defend its northern sovereignty.
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