Shall the forthcoming Chinese Antarctic law be obligation‐oriented?

Abstract

China has established four scientific investigation stations in Antarctica and its fifth one is under construction (Chen, 2017). It has completed its 36th Antarctic scientific expedition, which set off from Shanghai in October 2019 and returned in mid-April 2020.Along with its increasing Antarctic activities, China issued a series of administrative regulations and opinions in accordance with the binding measures approved under the Antarctic Treaty System. But those regulations and opinions fall much behind the demands invoked by the increasing Antarctic activities, including Chinese Antarctic tourism in recent years. In March 2017, a member of a delegation of the National People's Congress (NPC), according to China Legislation Law 2015, advocated a proposal on formulating the Chinese Antarctic law (Zhang, 2017), simultaneously presenting the text of the draft law and its explanations and other necessary information.Then come the decisive proceedings of Chinese Antarctic legislation. On 9 March 2018, the NPC Commission on Environment and Resources Protection affirmatively released to the journalists at a press conference that the 13th NPC Standing Committee had already included Chinese Antarctic law in its legislative plan within its five-year term of office. This Commission carried out the legislative research and institutional design by appointing the China State Oceanic Administration to organise scholars and experts who are renowned in the field of polar law from universities and research institutions to make further studies, discussions and arguments on the name, topics, aims, and principles of this legislation, and on all proposed rules of the draft law as required (NPC, 2019a). This step has already been completed (NPC, 2019b). According to China Legislation Law and its legislative practices, this fully argued draft law shall be submitted to