Chokepoints, Corridors, and Concessions — China's Structural Statecraft Across Eurasia, the Americas, and the Indo-Pacific
Independent research on critical mineral supply chains, Arctic governance, and the structural leverage great powers build through infrastructure, resource access, and technology standards.
Arctic Ledger is an independent research journal covering critical minerals, supply chain security, Arctic and maritime governance, and great power competition. We publish original analysis from researchers, graduate students, and practitioners working across these fields, with contributors drawn from institutions worldwide. Arctic Ledger accepts no state or corporate funding. Read our editorial standards →
Volume I gathers seven essays that span disconnected geographies and domains — a nickel supply chain in Indonesia, an economic doctrine in Beijing, an AI standards body in Geneva, the Clarion-Clipperton seabed, the Arctic, Latin America, and Balochistan. What tethers them is a single argument: China's approach to great power competition is built less on direct conquest than on architecture — the mines, ports, cables, processing facilities, and technical standards through which commercial access becomes strategic leverage.
Deep-sea mining, competing jurisdictions, and China's structural head start in processing the minerals the seabed will eventually yield.
Read essay →Reading China's dual circulation policy not as macroeconomics but as civil-military fusion applied to the elimination of chokepoints.
Read essay →How Chinese AI standard-setting, from Ecuador's surveillance network to Singapore's model choices, builds durable, asymmetric dependence.
Read essay →A tactical partnership bounded by sanctions and mistrust — and a new axis of dependence forming around Russian rare earths.
Read essay →Dependency architecture in Latin America, from Chancay to Panama, set against a field report from rural Nicaragua.
Read essay →Mineral wealth, insurgency, and the asymmetry between state-backed Chinese capital and shareholder-accountable Western firms in Balochistan.
Read essay →Spatial concentration, not shortage, is the real vulnerability in the nickel supply chain feeding the world's EV batteries.
Read essay →Arctic Ledger draws its contributors from across the globe — researchers and writers based on nearly every continent, spanning doctoral and master's candidates, working professionals, and on-the-ground field researchers. That range gives the journal a genuinely wide base of expertise: technology policy, mineral economics, regional security studies, infrastructure engineering, and area-specific language and fieldwork experience all feed into what we publish.
For submissions, institutional partnerships, and editorial inquiries. Arctic Ledger welcomes manuscript submissions from researchers, graduate students, and practitioners working on critical minerals, Arctic governance, supply chain security, and great power competition. Co-authorship and cross-institutional collaboration are welcomed.
Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.