It has been nearly five years since China was granted permanent observer status on the Arctic Council, an international organization set up in the 1990s to protect the Arctic region from the destabilizing exploitation of its resources.

The council has eight permanent members made up of the five coastal Arctic countries, Norway, Russia, Canada, US and Denmark, and three non coastal members, Finland, Iceland and Sweden.

The Arctic

Membership won't help China exploit the Arctic's oil deposits and other natural resources - to do that, it must negotiate extraction concessions on a country-by-country basis.

But it will allow China to have a say when countries try to lay claim to sections of the Arctic, a process that is accelerating as warming temperatures have caused the ice to break apart, opening the region to exploration.