Demand for critical minerals is driving China in the race to deep-sea mining, but is that the only motivator?

Scattered across the ocean floor are trillions of lumps of nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese.

Companies have long wanted to mine them: these “critical minerals” are needed in vast quantities to electrify the global economy and cut dependence on fossil fuels.

But the International Seabed Authority, a UN body, is still figuring out how mining should be regulated.

Some environmental groups want an outright ban. Supporters and critics of deep-sea mining are hashing out these issues at an ISA meeting in Jamaica between July 29 and August 2. Of the 160-odd countries participating, few have more interest in the outcome than China.

Demand for critical minerals might more than double by 2040 compared with 2020, according to the International Energy Agency, a global forecaster.

China is a big reason why. It makes most of the world’s solar panels, electric cars and batteries, all of which require the minerals in question.

Last year clean-energy industries accounted for 40 per cent of the growth of its GDP, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think-tank in Finland.

But China has to import many of the critical minerals it uses. Its manganese comes from South Africa, Gabon and Australia.

Most of its cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its nickel largely comes from the Philippines and Indonesia.

These dependencies worry China’s leaders. They fear supplies could be disrupted by political turmoil or pressure from rivals like America.

The scramble for critical minerals is “a new front for strategic competition among global powers”, according to China’s national intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security. Officials rank critical metals alongside crude oil and natural gas in their importance to China’s future.

Deep-sea mining promises a secure supply. And it would occur in international waters, beyond other countries’ sovereign authority.

In 2016 Xi Jinping, China’s president, said his country must get its hands on the “hidden treasures” of the ocean.

To that end, China has spent years building up influence at the ISA, which has authority over the seabed in international waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The ISA is largely financed by its member countries, and China gives it more money than any other donor. In 2020 it also gave the ISA a training facility in Qingdao, a port city in eastern China.

At ISA meetings last year, some countries tried to introduce a moratorium on deep-sea mining. They failed, in large part because of pressure from China.

Its goal is to create a permissive mining regime that brooks no interference from other countries, said Isaac Kardon, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank in Washington, DC.

In total, the ISA has issued 31 licences allowing the holders to explore for minerals in preparation for commercial operations.

Three Chinese miners — China Ocean Mineral R&D Association, China Minmetals and Beijing Pioneer Hi-Tech Development — hold five between them, more than any other country’s miners. They are itching to start operations.

Three of the Chinese licences cover patches of seabed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a region in the eastern Pacific Ocean that holds quantities of critical minerals roughly equivalent to all terrestrial reserves. The other two are in the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

Companies typically mine in order to make money, but China’s also have grander concerns.

Take China Minmetals, a state-run giant that has an exploration licence for about 7.3 million hectares of ocean floor (an area rather bigger than Sri Lanka or the American state of West Virginia).

In March, at an industry conference in Beijing, its chairman vowed to secure mineral supplies in order to help “rejuvenate the Chinese nation”.

Chinese companies must expand operations until they “cannot be dislodged” from global supply chains, he said.

Deep-sea mining involves sending a large robot to the seabed to hoover up lumps of metal, known as nodules. A support ship then sucks up the nodules through a pipe.

All this is tricky because of the low visibility and high pressure at the bottom of the sea.

China’s technology is not quite cutting-edge. But it is getting there.

In July a team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University sent a test robot to depths of below 4000 metres to collect 200kg of material.

The robot was largely built from Chinese-made components, “smashing international monopolies”, according to China’s state media.

If commercial mining gets going, Chinese companies might well end up leading the industry, says Cory Combs, of Trivium, a consultancy.

China can build ships and robots faster than any other country. Its officials have a history of lavishing giant subsidies on emerging industries.

And, most important, its deep-sea miners have a giant domestic market for the riches they bring to the surface.

All this worries environmental groups. The deep-ocean floor supports thousands of unique species, from microbes to worms and sponges.

Even with strict regulation and responsible operators, mining robots are likely to cause damage. They can kill the organisms they drive over, and the plumes of sediment they create can kill more.

Chinese miners, moreover, do not have a record of being responsible even on land, where their activities are much easier to monitor.

China’s rivals are uneasy too, and not just for the sake of the sponges.

One worry is that deep-sea mining could act as cover for less peaceful activities.

Surveys of the deep ocean would help China’s naval submarines navigate (they can use sonar more precisely if they have more data on temperature, saltiness and currents).

In 2021 a research vessel sent by China Minmetals took an unexplained detour from its exploration zone. It spent five days in the waters near Hawaii, where America has big military bases.

Western countries’ biggest concern, though, is about who controls the supply chains of clean-energy industries.

China already has a substantial advantage. Deep-sea mining might cement it.

America, meanwhile, is shut out of ISA discussions as it has not ratified UNCLOS.

In March a group of retired American generals and officials wrote to the Senate demanding that it ratify UNCLOS as soon as possible.

Chinese miners had “taken advantage of our absence”, they said.

Such worries are a boon, however, to the Western businesses that are pushing for deep-sea mining.

One of these is The Metals Company, a Canadian outfit that hopes to apply for a commercial-mining licence from the ISA later this year.

It gets a warm reception in Washington these days, says Gerard Barron, its founder.

“People have latched on to the fact that China is going to potentially dominate this industry,” he says. “It’s a very motivating driver.”