Over the past two decades its annual Antarctic spending has tripled to $55m, three times its Arctic investment.As with the Arctic, China is explicit about its polar objectives.
The west Antarctic ice sheet, however, is thinning at between 10cm and one metre a year.The satellites also show that this thinning in the west is accompanied by faster movement of the glaciers.
Over the past two decades its yearly Antarctic spending has increased from $20m to $55m, some three times the country's investment in the Arctic.
The leading court at the UN will rule on Monday on whether Japan has the right to hunt whales in the Antarctic, an emotive case that activists say is make-or-break for the mammals' future.
Paul Chamberlain is articulate, impossibly cheerful in the face of adversity and heroic – a Briton of the sort you might have thought would be seen no more after Lawrence Oates strode into the Antarctic snowstorm in an effort to save Scott and his other companions.
Some scientists say the major west Antarctic ice sheet has already started a long term collapse that could change eventually change the world's coastline.
And while you probably haven't read much about it, the outcome could see the creation of the two largest areas of protected ocean on the planet that would lock out fishing from more than 1.5 million square kilometres of ocean around the Antarctic.
The Antarctic ice sheet covering the continent's bedrock represents about 60 per cent of the world's fresh water.
There are 14: Akrotiri and Dhekelia (Cyprus); Anguilla; Bermuda; British Antarctic Territory; British Indian Ocean Territory; British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Falkland Islandsds; Gibraltar; Montserrat; Pitcairn Islands; Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; Turks and Caicos Islands.
During the 2013-14 season, Japan took just 251 minke whales in the Antarctic – a quarter of its target.
Mawson led the original Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911.
