"Why China, Not the United States, Is Making the Rules for Deep-Sea Mining" - by CWP alum Isaac Kardon

There are still no international rules for the nascent deep-sea mining industry, which is only now gearing up to exploit the untold wealth of the international seabed. This immense area beyond national jurisdiction contains abundant critical minerals—among them huge concentrations of cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, and manganese, which are essential to green and renewable energy technologies and many defense and aerospace applications. But only in the past few years has the practical possibility of industrial scale seabed mining been within reach.

China has been positioning itself to be the central rulemaker in the international deep-seabed area. 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 bets on 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.

ISAAC KARDON,  SARAH CAMACHO - DECEMBER 19, 2023 - https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/12/19/why-china-not-united-states-is-making-rules-for-deep-sea-mining-pub-91298

Isaac B. Kardon, Ph.D., (孔适海博士) is a senior fellow for China studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is concurrently adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and was formerly assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC), where he served as a research faculty member in the China Maritime Studies Institute.

Isaac’s research centers on the People’s Republic of China’s maritime power, with specialization in maritime disputes and the international law of the sea, PRC global port development, PLA overseas basing, and China-Pakistan relations. His writing appears in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, the Naval War College Review, as well as other scholarly and policy publications. Isaac’s book, China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order (Yale, 2023) analyzes whether and how China is “making the rules” of regional and global order.

Photo Credit: By James St. John - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/14953810507/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101861185