In recent decades, Arctic countries have begun to pay attention to Arctic scientific expeditions. Researching, developing, and protecting the polar regions has also become a hot topic. In the process, the mainland, as an important stakeholder in Arctic affairs, has also made achievements that have attracted worldwide attention.
In order to commemorate China's scientific expedition and pay tribute to and praise the spirit of human exploration, the People's Bank of China is scheduled to issue a set of gold and silver commemorative coins for China's polar scientific expedition in April 2024. There are 2 gold and silver commemorative coins in this set, including 1 gold commemorative coin and 1 silver commemorative coin, both of which are legal tender of the People's Republic of China.
With regard to polar expeditions, we have always started with the first landing of the Chinese Antarctic expedition on King George Island in November 1984 and the raising of the flag.
In fact, as early as 1925, China joined the "Spitsbergen Treaty" and officially participated in Arctic affairs. The Spitsbergen archipelago was first discovered by the Dutch explorer Barents on June 17, 1596. Barents spotted an island covered almost entirely with snow and ice, with some steep peaks rising above the snow, and called the island "Spitsbergen", which means "pinnacle on the ice sheet". However, Barents did not have time to return to his homeland and died of illness on Novaya Zemlya. Although Barents wrote a report on the expedition, it did not say whether it had "claimed territorial ownership of the islands in the name of His Majesty the King". At that time, it was not possible to confirm the ownership of land that had not been declared territorial.
Ten years later, British explorer Henry Hudson reached the northern tip of the largest island in the Spitsbergen archipelago, West Spitsbergen, and spotted a large herd of whales and walruses. Since 1858, the Finnish-born Swedish explorer "Zoden Schalder" has led five expeditions to the Spitsbergen Islands, where he discovered a large number of coal mines and other minerals.
With the discovery of the geography and resources of the Spitsbergen Islands, Europeans successively crossed the sea by boat to hunt whales, hunt bears, and mine coal, apatite and other mineral resources. These European settlers gradually formed a number of towns, the most famous of which is Longyearbyen, the capital of the West Spitsbergen archipelago, which was founded by humans at the northernmost point of the planet, located at 78°14′ north latitude.
From the 17th century to the beginning of the 21st century, thanks to the continuous exploration and development of Arctic explorers, the land and most of the islands around the Arctic Ocean have become the territory of various countries, and only the Spitsbergen Islands are still wandering outside international sovereignty and have become the focus of attention of various countries. According to traditional international practice, in order to obtain territorial rights to a piece of land, two minimum conditions should be met, namely, "first discovery" and "effective administrative jurisdiction". In the case of Spitsbergen, neither of these elements exists. So, the story of the Spitsbergen Treaty is about to play out.