With more and more heated resource and rights activities in the Antarctic and Arctic regions around the world, the polar regions have become a hot spot. China’s 14th Five-year Plan and the new national polar strategy have put forward an urgent demand for new polar equipment. In this paper, the navigation of “Xuelong” and “Xuelong 2” polar icebreakers in recent years was introduced, and the urgent need to build China's polar heavy icebreakers according to the needs of China's exploration in the Antarctic and Arctic regions is put forward. In addition, the configuration characteristics of the latest power propulsion system are analyzed based on typical heavy polar icebreakers abroad, and the capacity, cold resistance capacity and power type of heavy icebreakers in China are also discussed in the paper.