Op-Ed: Chinese Antarctic Rescue A Positive Signal

My latest op-ed in The Globalist:

Last week, a Chinese helicopter crew rescued 52 people trapped on a Russian icebreaker stuck in Antarctic pack ice.

A difficult mission like this would, in the past, usually have fallen to the United States – and indeed, a U.S. ship is in turn now rescuing the Chinese crew from their own trapped vessel. But China has now joined the small ranks of those nations with the capacity to help in such a situation.

This situation – a Chinese air transfer of an international team on a Russian ship to a waiting Australian icebreaker, accompanied by a U.S. follow-up mission – is symbolic of international cooperation in Antarctica as a whole.

 

Read the full text here.