At the end of last year, a strange video was broadcast on Chinese television.

It showed a patch of concrete and steel surrounded by frozen tundra, high on the rocky coast of Inexpressible Island in the icy Ross Sea, deep inside Antarctica’s Southern Ocean.

The video zoomed in to reveal a state-of-the-art building that looked almost like an ice-covered resort, with sea views and Scandinavian-style wooden furnishings. Outside, temperatures were well below minus 40 degrees Celsius, while insulated heating systems kept the cold at bay.

The building accommodates around 80 residents all year round. One of them, Zhun He, noticed how small the rooms are.

“This is our summer dorm. It’s relatively compact,” he says dryly in the online video.

As he speaks, patriotic music plays in the background, a reminder that not everything is as it first seemed.

This is not a fancy Antarctic resort. This is Qinling Station. It is China’s fifth Antarctic base and the third that can operate 12 months a year.

China’s new “treasure trove of raw materials”

Wang Wenbin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China said at a press conference in February that China’s new station “will help promote … peace and sustainable development in Antarctica.”

But with its permanent sea, land and air capabilities, potentially allowing China to monitor Australian and New Zealand communications systems via the BeiDou navigation network, Qinling Station appears to offer more.

Not only is Qingling’s Antarctic location strategically important—it lies on the border of Australia’s back door and in close proximity to a permanent U.S. station, McMurdo—but a 2009 study by the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) called Antarctica a “global treasure trove of resources.”

China, which has been investing heavily in Antarctica since the 1980s in an effort to catch up with the West, is well aware of the importance of Antarctica as it is rich not only in fish but also in energy.

The Qinling station has access to potentially hundreds of billions of tons of natural gas and oil believed to lie beneath Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. And it has the potential to become a cornerstone of what many believe is Beijing’s increasingly strategic plan to become the world’s leading polar power.

According to a 2018 study by the University of Cambridge, there are also hundreds of shipping lanes in Antarctic waters. This underlines once again why influence in Antarctica is so closely linked to the demonstration of global power.

“There are a growing number of research stations in Antarctica. On the one hand, this is a positive development because it shows a growing interest in Antarctic research. And there are nations that want to get involved in Antarctic affairs,” says Shirley Scott, professor of international law and international relations at the Australian Defence Force Academy at UNSW.

On the other hand, says Scott, China has been transparent about its desire for no restrictions on its activities, particularly its resource activities in the Antarctic region.

“For example, people were not very enthusiastic about the development of new protected marine areas,” she says.

Australia is concerned

There are already indications that China is not only sending scientists to Antarctica, and Australian intelligence is increasingly concerned.

A source within the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) noted that China’s Antarctic bases could serve as platforms for powerful satellites and radar systems.

Australian intelligence agencies know that members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have previously participated in Beijing’s Antarctic program without their presence being reported.

This constitutes a violation of the Antarctic Treaty, a landmark legal agreement signed in 1959 that formalized the demilitarization of the continent, divided it into distinct zones and set the conditions under which nations can operate in Antarctica.

The Antarctic Treaty was originally signed by twelve countries whose scientists were active in the region in 1957 and 1958. It entered into force in 1961 and today has 57 signatories, including China.

But is China acting in the spirit of the treaty?

In 2008, six PLA personnel were sent to Zhongshan Railway Station to build a high-frequency radar station.

These radar stations are powerful enough to block US satellites flying over the southern polar regions.

The 2013 Chinese Antarctic Expedition also involved a satellite expert from the People’s Liberation Army, who installed new BeiDou-2 GPS systems based on advanced GPS technology.

Scott says that while the Antarctic Treaty system has been a robust mechanism for ensuring peace and demilitarization in Antarctica since its inception, a rush for resources by a major country could undermine its purpose.

“Antarctica is currently governed by the Antarctic Treaty system. However, the basis of this system is an agreement to disagree on sovereignty claims on the continent,” she says.

China is not alone

However, China is not the only country interested in Antarctic resources.

“It would be unhelpful to assume that only China was interested in accessing these resources,” says Scott.

The world powers have long been fighting for supremacy in Antarctica.

Within a decade of the end of World War II, the United States and the then USSR sought control of the Antarctic continent.

The British already knew that achieving this goal would not be an easy task.

Shortly after this photo was taken of British explorer Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912, all participants were dead.

Scott and his team attempted to emulate the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, whose five-man group was the first to reach the South Pole the previous year on December 14, 1911.

The deaths of Scott and his team highlighted the dangers of imperial competition in the name of science and warned of a deadly side of the peaceful continent.

In 1945, according to historian Richard Overy in his book “Blood and Ruins,” a new era of competition began between the USSR and its ideological enemy, the United States.

Declassified U.S. documents from the mid-1950s are crucial to understanding the West’s changing approach to Antarctica.

As early as 1957, the United States viewed Antarctica as a potential future battlefield. This document, simply titled “Antarctic Operations Plan,” revealed secret U.S. plans to establish permanent scientific bases on the icy continent.

The strategy was to facilitate access to Antarctica’s natural resources for the United States and its allies. The bases were considered “vital to the national interests of the United States.”

“Access of the United States to the natural resources of Antarctica by friendly powers.” Permanent US scientific bases are there “so that US rights in Antarctica are not compromised by the year-round presence of other nations.”

The US government has invested heavily in the region.

The CIA conducted extensive, detailed military geography studies that looked at oceanography, tides, water levels, coastal geography, and even human survival in Antarctic waters. The work was published in a 133-page CIA study.

It seems that the foundation has been laid for a new phase of competition between nation states in Antarctica.

The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 attempted to remove all hurdles. It stipulated that Antarctica could only be used for peaceful purposes, that freedom of scientific research would be preserved, and that all scientific observations and results would be freely exchanged.

These articles successfully prevented competition in Antarctica from escalating into conflict and preserved peace on the Antarctic continent even at the height of the Cold War from 1945 to 1991.

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“A jungle in which everyone fights against everyone else”

Yet global tensions have never left the icy continent.

Since 2000, the United States (and its allies) and China have emerged as the world’s major strategic competitors, with tensions in Taiwan and the South China Sea causing concern.

Dr. Phillip Law, former director of the Australian Antarctic Division, had already warned in the 1970s that Antarctica could become a crisis point.

Law argued that if countries in Antarctica did not follow the rules, it would become “a jungle where anyone can run rampant.”

“The big guys with the biggest resources and the biggest capital will just go there and fight for their lives,” he said.

The China Polar Research Institute (PRIC) and the Foreign Ministry were contacted for this story. Neither responded to requests for comment.