Exploring peaks, depths, seas, and poles, China notches concrete progress in natural resources technologies during 2021-2025

BEIJING, Dec. 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from China.org.cn on China's natural resources technologies:

Exploring peaks, depths, seas, and poles, China notches concrete progress in natural resources technologies during 2021-2025
https://youtu.be/TInEX6v3QqU

Traces of China's sci-tech exploration could be found on the snow-capped world's highest peaks, the underlying ecological texture of the vast land, the dark tranquility of the deep ocean, and the icy expanse of the North and South Poles. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China's natural resources sci-tech teams, with their fearless spirit of exploration, have built an all-dimensional innovation framework of "reaching for the sky, delving into the earth, scaling peaks, and venturing into the seas," laying a solid foundation for national security and high-quality development.

The world's highest peaks have always been a touchstone for surveying and mapping technology. When Chinese domestic equipment stood fully atop Mount Qomolangma for the first time, and when high-precision data was transmitted in real time via satellites, the maturity of China's independent surveying and mapping technology was proven at an altitude of 8848.86 meters. Beyond this single breakthrough at Mount Qomolangma, the national satellite navigation and positioning reference station network based on the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System has woven an integrated national surveying and mapping benchmark system covering land, sea, air, and space. Centimeter-level precise positioning, like equipping all walks of life with "intelligent eyes," ensures every voyage has a clear direction and every operation is efficient and accurate.

If outer space represents upward exploration, then deep earth exploration is a downward quest for answers. In China's Tarim Basin, an ultra-deep borehole named "Shenditake 1" has reached a vertical depth of 10,910 meters, ranking as Asia's deepest and the world's second deepest vertical well. The drill pipe has completely penetrated 13 strata of the Tarim Basin, with the drill bit ultimately reaching 500-million-year-old ancient rocks, providing precious original data for studying the evolution of the Tarim Basin and hydrocarbon accumulation.

On the vast sea surface, China's independently designed and built first ocean drilling vessel, the Meng Xiang, is riding the waves, carrying humanity's dream of drilling through the earth's crust to reach the upper mantle. This deep-sea giant boasts a marine drilling capacity of 11,000 meters and is equipped with the world's largest, most functional, and most optimized on-board laboratory. In the future, it will play a key role in the exploration of resources such as combustible ice, seabed hydrogen, rare earths, and polymetallic nodules.

In the icy polar regions, China conducted its 15th Arctic Ocean scientific expedition. Relying on China's independently designed and built world's first ice-breaking manned deep-sea submersible support vessel, Tan Suo San Hao (Exploration No. 3), which carries the "Fendouzhe" (Striver) manned submersible, the expedition team completed 43 diving operations in the Arctic Ocean. Meanwhile, under the ice-breaking guidance of the "Xuelong 2" (Snow Dragon 2), the mother ship "Shenhai 1" (Deep Sea 1) carrying the "Jiaolong" submersible also completed China's first Arctic dive, and achieved joint operations with the "Fendouzhe" in the deep Arctic Ocean, innovating the collaborative model of dual manned submersibles. Every water, sediment, rock, and biological sample brought back by the expedition team, and every set of observed data recorded, is providing Chinese solutions for revealing the laws of Arctic climate change and safeguarding polar ecological security.

The entire chain of natural resources -- including survey and exploration, development and utilization, recycling, spatial governance, and digital intelligence empowerment -- requires scientific and technological support. Exploring peaks, depths, seas, and poles, the technological breakthroughs in natural resources during the 14th Five-Year Plan period are bold attempts to explore the unknown, a responsibility to protect the motherland, and a practical answer from Chinese scientists to carry out international marine cooperation and understand, develop, and protect the Earth.

SOURCE China.org.cn