Focus on Arts and Ecology

Earlier this month China, Russia and Norway blocked the establishment of a 3.2 million square kilometre marine reserve in the Antarctic Ocean. In an analysis piece for the Paper, senior lecturer in law at Adelaide University, Dr Liu Nengye, offers three reasons why China blocked the reserve. Firstly, he notes, China holds misgivings about the current sovereignty claims over Antarctica, which were frozen in the 1961 Antarctic Treaty, to which China was not party. Secondly, as a latecomer to Antarctica, China’s understanding of and policy on Antarctic issues is still developing. But most importantly, China is the world’s largest distant water fishing nation and the government has explicitly said it aims to “safely open up the Antarctic Ocean’s bio-resources”.