And because it's not clear that those waters are covered by the international law of the sea, which allows all countries the right to exploit international waters, issues like delineating territory and establishing fishing rights in large part falls to the Arctic Council. Indeed, that's something the council will be discussing in the upcoming meeting. Here's a look at how waters have been and are expected to continue receding:

United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal, Maps and Graphics Library

Why is this so important to China? One reason is access to the Arctic Ocean's fishing supply. The "new fishing grounds" will become "the world's largest storehouse of biological protein," wrote Tang Guoqiang, China's former ambassador to Norway, in a recent paper.

As we recently discussed, fishing is a big business for China, so much so that it's raiding the territorial waters of other countries. Arctic nations are currently mulling an accord to prevent fishing in the open water above the Bering Strait until scientists can assess fish stocks. The objective would be to manage commercial fishing, not to protect the fish habitat, noted the New York Times. Here's what the territory currently looks like:

Pew Charitable Trusts

The other reason is that the "Northwest Passage " and "Northeast Passage," as they're sometimes called, connect China to Europe, reducing travel from around 15,000 miles to 8,000 miles. That would save ships time and fuel. Here's what that looks like now, on the left, and how that's set to change:



Smith and Stephenson, PNAS, Early Edition

China's attempts to join the Arctic Council have evolved over the years. It once took more of a bullying tone. "The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it," said a retired Chinese navy rear admiral at a governmental meeting in 2010, adding that China should have a right to Arctic resources.

That tone has since softened in both official statements and the state-owned press. Sure, a little menace seeps in now and again, but for now the government mainly emphasizes its respect for the Arctic Council and that China's foreign policy interests are strictly limited to research. "As a non-Arctic state, China must rely on diplomatic cooperation and the positive impact of scientiﬁc engagement and investments to promote its interests in the Arctic," write Arctic geopolitics experts Linda Jakobson and Peng Jingchao.

In the last few years, China has stepped up its funding of Arctic research to investigate the effects of climate change on water levels, shipping routes and various other things. It now has a Polar Research Institute in Shanghai to train scientists in Arctic research, as well as the Xue Long ("snow dragon"), a (550 ft) research icebreaker . In 2015, China will launch three research expeditions to the Arctic. Though some of this seems based on plans for exploiting the new sea route, so far these projects have been launched under the aegis of environmental science.

