Mr Wei revealed his scientists had already drilled hundreds of metres into what will be a 1000-metre-deep ice core sample - which will shed light on a million years of climate history and help with global warming projections - before drilling deeper for rock samples.
"If possible we would also like to extract rocks under the ice," he said.
A new paper by Anne-Marie Brady, of the University of Canterbury, details how China's scholarly papers and state-controlled media discuss Antarctica in terms that are "virtually taboo" in the West.
"Chinese-language polar social science discussions are dominated by debates about resources and how China might gain its share," says the paper, China's Rise in Antarctica, in the forthcoming Asian Survey journal.
