China will send its largest research team to Antarctica in more than two decades and expand its facilities there in a major reassertion of its presence on the icy continent, state media said Wednesday.
A team of 188 scientists and support personnel will leave next Monday for Antarctica, China's biggest single contingent since it first established a research base in 1985, the China Daily newspaper said, quoting state polar research officials.
The team will join 189 construction workers who left on Tuesday to carry out comprehensive expansion projects at China's Changcheng and Zhongshan bases on the southern landmass.
The researchers will fix a location for China's third Antarctic station, expected to be completed within two to three years on the highest point of the polar ice cap, an area near the south pole known as Dome A where temperatures plunge to minus 90 degrees Centigrade (minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit).
Dome A rises 4,300 meters (14,100 feet) above sea level and the base there will be China's first inland Antarctic station. The existing two stations are near the more hospitable coast.
Those two will be expanded by more than one-third, allowing Chinese scientists to increase their research activities.
The work will also make the stations more environmentally friendly through use of advanced lighting and heating systems, new thermal insulation, and high-tech waste-disposal systems.
Changcheng was founded in 1985 and Zhongshan in 1989 when eco-friendly building materials were not yet available, the paper quoted Wei Wenliang, head of the state Polar Research Office, saying.
The report did not detail the cost of the plans.
Since its economic emergence China has moved aggressively to invigorate scientific projects, including pouring money into a space programme that put the country's first astronaut in orbit in 2003 and led to the launch last month of its first lunar orbiting satellite.
