Deep Sea Mining: China’s Key to World Domination

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The world’s next theatre of global resource competition is turning out to be an unlikely and remote place: the ocean floor — and China, ahead of even the United States, is positioning itself to be the dominant deep sea miner amongst nations. Currently, it is not precisely known the extent of mineral deposits that lie embedded on the floor of the ocean. That said valuable minerals such as copper, zinc, nickel, gold, silver, zinc, manganese and phosphorus are known to be present at levels that are several times what present beneath land.

These rare metals are essential for almost all of today’s electronics, clean-energy products and advanced computer chips, especially the kind of batteries that power phones, laptops, and even electric vehicles. They are also critical to defence and aerospace applications. As nations around the world endeavour to cut greenhouse gas emissions, especially in concert with increasingly ambitious global targets, the demand for these minerals is expected to escalate markedly.

There are still no international rules for the nascent deep-sea mining industry, which is only now forming to exploit the untold wealth of the international seabed, comprising of an immense area beyond national jurisdiction.

China has been aggressively positioning itself to take on the role of central rule-maker in this realm. According to the caragieendowment.org,  “as a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), China has worked for decades to shape the broader law of the sea from within the treaty regime. From its position within the UNCLOS framework, China’s leaders have subsequently placed major betson the strategic and economic value of the deep seabed. Meanwhile, America is not an UNCLOS member. On the deep seabed, as on so many other vital maritime issues, the United States sits on sidelines of the “rules-based international order” it professes to lead.”

Indeed, China is the only heavyweight in multilateral negotiations to set new rules for extraction of deep-seabed minerals. Beijing’s strength is especially clear at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UNCLOS body based in Kingston, Jamaica, charged with regulating the establishment and conduct of deep-seabed mining activities.

When deep-sea mining gets well underway, China — which already controls 95 percent of the world’s supply of rare-earth metals and produces three-quarters of  all lithium-ion batteries — will extend its stranglehold over emerging industries like clean energy.  Mining will also give Beijing a potent new tool in its escalating rivalry with the United States. As a sign of how these resources could be weaponized, China in August started restricting exports of two metals that are key to U.S. defence systems.

As told to the Washington Post, “If China can take the lead in seabed mining, it really has the lock on access to all the key minerals for the 21st-century green economy,” said Carla Freeman, senior expert for China at the United States Institute of Peace.

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In its quest to dominate this industry, China has focused its efforts on the Kingston-based ISA, housed in a weathered limestone building overlooking the Caribbean Sea. By wielding influence at an organization where it is by far the most powerful player — the United States is not a member of the ISA — Beijing has a chance to shape international rules to its advantage.

This approach is key to Xi Jinping’s bid for global preeminence. China’s strongest leader in decades, Xi is set on transforming China into a global power that is no longer beholden to the West, including by becoming a maritime power able to compete militarily with the United States.

“If you want to become a global power, you have to maintain the security of your sea lanes and interests. So becoming a maritime power is inevitable,” said Zhu Feng, executive director of the China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University.

The United States has done little to respond to China’s moves in the deep sea. It is only an observer at the ISA, meaning it’s at risk of being sidelined as the rules for this future industry are being made. Unlike China, U.S. companies do not have any exploration contracts with the ISA, and critics say Washington lacks a clear plan on how to compete in this new industry.

“The logic is that if we don’t make the rules, they will,” said Isaac Kardon, the author of “China’s Law of the Sea” and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“These are frontier areas of international law where there’s not an obvious regime, and it’s especially appealing because the U.S. isn’t there,” he said. “It’s an obvious front in whatever this great-power competition is.”

The think tank, The Carnegie Endowment for Peace writes:

At its annual meetings in 2023, the ISA failed to agree on licensing and technical rules for exploitation of seabed minerals, missing the two-year window triggered by a bold application by Nauru and a Canada-based mining conglomerate, the Metals Company. Chinese delegates nonetheless managed to single-handedly prevent the ISA from initiating proceedings to consider a precautionary pause on mining licenses, as advocated by many developing countries and some key voices from Europe. This controversy will return to the fore when the ISA assembles in Kingston in July 2024, where China will mount yet another campaign to remove obstacles and quickly promulgate new deep-sea mining rules.

Chinese officials and technical experts have already been taking proactive steps to address “the problem of the shortage of rules” for deep-sea activities, seeking to bring them quickly into existence on terms that advantage Beijing. Chinese officials’ comments on draft regulations for exploitation of the deep seabed have tended to neglect environmental and technical concerns and support the full utilization of the international seabed area “as soon as possible.” A permissive, first-come, first-served regime along the lines of what Beijing advocates would allow Chinese state and commercial entities to rapidly deploy huge scale advantages in marine science and technology, mining capacity, and autonomous vehicles and sensors with direct military applications. China’s relative “dominance in critical minerals and mineral supply chains” on land gives it another big leg up as these sea-based resources come online.

Indeed, these far-ranging issues, that will fundamentally affect the balance of geo-political influence and power in the 21^st Century is being completely ignored in the United States election.

While lawmakers focus on the war in between Russia and the Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, China’s moves are going unheralded in Washington. The potential impact of this inaction would be to relegate the United States as a secondary power, existing at the acquiescence of China, which will become the dominant global superpower.

It is time for America to take notice of the real issues facing the world, and move to intercede in the coming change in geopolitical control.