"The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the Chinese government to allocate more resources to Arctic research,"
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are already at odds over how to divvy up the Arctic riches
90 billion untapped barrels of oil -- and wrangling over who should control the still frozen shipping routes
the famed Northwest Passage
could become ice-free in the summer months any time between 2013 and 2060, would cut travel distance by 40 percent.
She points out that the country has one of the world's strongest polar scientific research capabilities and already owns the world's largest non-nuclear icebreaker.
Last year Beijing approved the building of a new high-tech polar expedition research icebreaker, to set sail in 2013.
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