Pearl Divers No Longer: China's Civil-Military Fusion in Critical Mineral Deep-Sea Extraction

Jack Lindstrom

Among the abyssal plane of the world's oceans rests gold. Great riches, lain just out of reach. Clusters of these rare elements and minerals bind to one another as they tumble with the tides through the dark undercurrents, piling into small bundles. The asphodelic atmosphere of the lifeless region where sunshine dares not venture acts as a cloud of darkness.

Yet over these rolling hills of tenebrous wealth, a rover sweeps past, consuming all in its path. The Seafloor Crawler Eureka II is the name of this unique piece of machinery, which rests on the ocean floor, collecting Polymetallic Nodules1. Eureka II is the rover of only one of nine different US companies attempting to expand and extract critical minerals and nodules from the deep sea2. China, by contrast, possesses three main corporations, which in turn control twenty-nine entities, including research institutes, universities, and manufacturers3. The US is a scattered group of nine critical mineral veins; China is a cluster of nodules. The difference in the organization of the industry is largely due to state control, or a lack thereof. The US simply issues permits and leases to these companies; as such, they are highly contested, and competition to gain such contracts is fierce, as well as highly lucrative. Additionally, due to the high technicality and expenses of the endeavor, the barrier to entry is high for US companies. The result of this is only one model, the aforementioned Eureka family of design; a family tree with one branch: down. China has more diversity of design, in large part due to the complex network of research, design, and development coordinated under COMRA and its affiliated institutes4; there is a consolidation of information. The developments established by one university or institute then become part of a pool; at present, that pool of mutual technology and information supports a substantial and growing fleet of deep-sea mining research vessels and state-funded robotic crawlers5.

For thousands of years, the peoples of the Persian Gulf, Japan, and India held their breath, as waves broke over them and currents pulled them to and fro. It was a career, this pummeling by the ocean; for when they arose, with buckets tied around their necks, they held riches. Pearls, collected from the sands of the ocean. The water which seems so welcoming- a clear cerulean surface, rippling with white lining, like lace- just the same applied pressure to the heads of these divers, their lungs straining under a single breath, sixty-five feet deep. Bitter work under the beauty of the sea. Extraction of critical minerals is no different; there is risk, there is danger, but there is rich reward. The geopolitical leverage of critical minerals is best reflected not when it is present but when it is absent; China's restriction of rare earth elements and metals to the US in response to 145% tariffs, striking at the heart of the US market6. It is becoming increasingly common knowledge how vital critical minerals are, for everything from aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to items as small as a cellphone, or the microchip within it, running it. Nations are held up by pillars; for some nations it is energy or geography, for others it is technology; the US has many pillars; however, one of the strongest is technology and military- a tap which can be turned off at the whim of China.

Critical minerals serve as a direct and clear chokepoint over which China holds leverage and is aware of. Their role is prominent on the world stage to all nations; from Switzerland's Glencore in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, to the Lithium Triangle of South America7. However, nations without direct deposits of minerals, or those hesitant to extract them in the short term, seek to expand outward. Critical minerals are a zero-sum game; the more the opponent has, the less the ally is able to have. As such, the more minerals claimed for each nation, the better. In turn, the selling of these minerals to corporations is incredibly lucrative, meaning capital inflow due to extraction. The result therefore is not only an expansion into the last unclaimed spaces, the ocean, due to a lack of domestic product, but also to prevent strategic enemies from possessing the same resources.

In December 2023, the State Department published the outer limits of the US Extended Continental Shelf, one twice the size of California8. Roughly a million square kilometers, across seven offshore regions from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, a two-decade campaign of cartography came to a close9. Of that claim, one specific region is particularly valuable. The Chukchi Borderland, with roughly 96% of this area falling on the US extended shelf, as well as 74% of the Canada Basin10. Three years later, in January of 2026, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) moved from mapping to strategic action, publishing a Federal Register request for information toward a lease sale covering over 113 million acres of Alaska's outer continental shelf, with explicit naming of the Canada Basin and Chukchi Borderland among target areas11. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has a smaller provision within it, a clause to implement the Law of the Sea practically with clear borders. The solution was continental shelves, thus creating the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS); the CLCS is utilized at present by Russia and Canada to uncover and negotiate regions of the Arctic the nations contest12. Correspondingly, the United States, with its newfound claim, is able to assert rights over the extended continental shelf off Alaska, without having submitted that claim to the CLCS, since it is not an UNCLOS party.

Dawn rises above ice floes, drifting among the deep blue waters of the Bering Strait. The warmth within the Fairweather provides a retreat from the harsh and bitter cold of the exposed deck; the crew gathers around particleboard tables on steel chairs, jackets thrown over the backs and seats for insulation from the cold metal. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s vessel rests in these waters, white-capped not with waves but ice, with its frost-caked machinery, to run bathymetric transects through pack ice13. For over a decade, the Fairweather has returned to these waters, mapping a seafloor which belongs to no one. There are no pearls in these waters, just the pale ice, bobbing up and down in the waves and the wake of the ship. Nearly a decade later, however, such a map would be of critical importance, as then came the 2023 announcement which granted the US relief from a critical mineral chokepoint, without a single treaty signature needed. Although the US never ratified UNCLOS, it was a member state of the Arctic Five, a coastal denomination of the Arctic Council including only states with an Arctic coastline, which, in 2008's Ilulissat conference, signed a declaration acknowledging UNCLOS as the appropriate legal framework for the Arctic Ocean, forestalling any need for a new comprehensive regime14. As such, the US exists in a legal limbo: never formally signing onto UNCLOS, but signing onto a declaration premised on UNCLOS15.

The extended continental shelf (ECS) claim is not weak due to any geological fault or flaw; it is instead contested precisely because the US asserts it as a non-party to UNCLOS. Russia in particular objected to the US expansion for that very reason16; this is despite the fact that Russia has on numerous occasions been accused of violating UNCLOS obligations elsewhere, including in its conduct during the Kerch Strait Bridge project and the Russo-Ukrainian War17. Additionally, Russia has been accused of violating UNCLOS in the construction of gas and oil pipelines, as well as power cables. Ukraine also has accused Russia of violating UNCLOS by seizing Ukrainian offshore gas-extraction drilling rigs, the “Boyko Towers”, as well as resources within Ukraine's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) near Crimea. Within International Seabed Authority (ISA) sessions, Russia has directly accused the US of undermining UNCLOS through the extension of the continental shelf for deep-sea mineral extraction18.

Russia is not alone in these claims, however, as Beijing has made similar arguments within the ISA in Kingston, where Chinese state media has cast UNCLOS as a bulwark against “maritime hegemony,” language directed implicitly at Washington's unilateral approach to its ECS claim19. China in turn has established institutional standing within the ISA, holding five of the ISA's thirty-one exploration contract areas, the most of any state, while also serving among the Authority's largest financial contributors20,21. As such, China acts with legitimacy and influence within an organization the US has never joined; the US, however, cannot simply ignore the ISA, the Arctic Council, or UNCLOS; institutional legitimacy remains part of the price of leadership.

Since 2022, Russia and China have conducted joint naval patrols and operations in the Bering Sea with increasing regularity22, and in 2024 conducted a joint aerial strategic patrol that entered the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone. The US Coast Guard (USCG) has observed the course of these patrols and their slow, steady creep northbound; in late September 2024, a Kodiak-based HC-130J tracked two Russian Border Guard vessels and two Chinese Coast Guard ships approximately 440 miles southwest of St. Lawrence Island, transiting roughly five miles inside Russia's Exclusive Economic Zone23. This marked the northernmost position at which Chinese Coast Guard vessels had been observed by the USCG. Rear Admiral Megan Dean, commander of the 17th Coast Guard District, observed that the encounter “demonstrates the increased interest in the Arctic by our strategic competitors"24. In the months that followed, further encounters between Chinese and Russian vessels and the USCG continued along the Aleutians and in the Bering Sea25. The region is volatile; the US claim to its extended continental shelf is contested, and the waters are slowly filling with more ships and less ice.

A line on a freshly drawn map, announced in 2023, watched by three of the most influential nations in the world. A line marked only by daring Chinese and Russian vessels, observed from the cockpit of a Coast Guard aircrew. Ships floating miles inside a boundary disputed in international forums by both nations. There is no clearer indication that conflict is brewing, nor of the volatility of the region; the pressure is mounting, like the pearl diver's lungs as they swim deeper into the dark blue, scraping for pearls and oysters. The US strives to insulate its economy from chokepoints such as critical minerals, particularly after their use against it and its allies, namely Japan, by China. The US is, of course, a free market, with freedom of competition, as opposed to cooperation, among firms. The creation of a supply chain independent of China's extraction and processing of critical minerals depends upon the organic creation of it, albeit with government subsidies. China also seeks to insulate its economy from such chokepoints by establishing a dual circulation doctrine, first enacted in 202026; the doctrine functions by establishing a second economy within China's international economy, a closed-loop domestic supply chain insulated from external pressures such as the withholding of resources or blockades. It is, in part, a response to US economic policy aimed at China. In effect, the two nations seek independence from one another despite their mutual dependence through the globalized world market. Whereas the US model of insulation is by nature fragmented, competitive, and capital intensive, China's model encourages coordination under state control to secure possession of critical minerals. State-owned entities under the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association, along with university and research partners, function as the aforementioned pool of research and technology. Beijing has been explicit that the payoff is not near-term tonnage but geopolitical leverage and insulation from chokepoints, and power over other nations' chokepoints in turn. China may not need immediate seabed minerals, but it desires the geopolitical leverage of controlling the commodities market, now and later alike; as such, it is deliberately not pushing for a finalized ISA mining code until its strategy is fully crystallized.

The Eureka II works on a single branch permit off the coast of Alaska, under Impossible Metals, a US company, under a US-issued permit. The work is slow and gradual, but the competition is steep, and costs are high. Across the waters rests a vessel, the Xiang Yang Hong 01, which chops the waves and sends seaspray into the air. Since entering service in 2016, this vessel has run repeated deep-sea mining research expeditions throughout the Northwest Pacific27, its data folding into a shared pool the moment it is verified, immediately accessible to corporations and researchers with vested interests. The competition of the free market has resulted in a competition of nations, with distinct styles of organizing labor; perhaps nations now work more like companies, with their supply chains and interests, and their coordination of labor to outcompete their competition. The US as a corporation, against China as a corporation. Nonetheless, the free market of the US decides the shifting of labor, the whim of the economy, and the long-term extraction plan of deep-sea resources, while China focuses on a state-controlled approach.

28; it is the harnessing of the nation's economy as potential energy for war, while it remains kinetic in its domestic purposes. Dual circulation and critical minerals are only the latest development of such a policy; the mining infrastructure China utilizes overlaps with the anti-submarine infrastructure China establishes. China's build-out includes a deep-sea communication lattice of acoustic modems, seafloor docking stations, and relay networks which enable autonomous underwater vehicles to navigate and redeploy without surfacing29. In the domestic interest, this serves as an effective way of gathering data on the seabed; it also serves as a fleet of autonomous vehicles able to remain underwater for extended periods, potentially recording data on submarines and their activities through acoustic detection systems and sensors, not unlike the sensing capability built into the Far North Fiber cable and other undersea cables around Alaska30. The USCG has specifically created a strategic robotics program for autonomous underwater vehicles31, which underscores a new domain of competition between the US and China should conflict ever become kinetic: the domain of stealth, intelligent systems, and autonomous vehicles. The difference between the US and Chinese approaches to such an undersea fleet lies in the peacetime role; Chinese peacetime material is spent researching resources to insulate the domestic economy and bolster the international one, while also serving as a strategic chokepoint. The USCG's fleet, by contrast, is primarily a fighting and enforcement force.

Bathymetric data from a 2026 Chinese deep-sea atlas holds the same duality reflected in other parts of China's strategy; seabed composition data shapes sonar propagation, bearing direct utility for both submarine stealth and anti-submarine detection32. Given the propensity for China to use domestic technology and infrastructure for military purposes under its civil-military fusion doctrine, it is reasonable to treat this as something other than coincidental. Chinese research vessels have mapped waters around Guam and the Marianas, areas which could also support strategic positioning relative to Taiwan33. Guam, for instance, is a critical submarine hub for the US Navy, as well as a mineral-rich region containing nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and zinc34. The submarine base at Guam hosts Submarine Squadron 15, which includes the Virginia-class USS Minnesota (SSN-783), the Navy's first forward-deployed submarine of its class, built for littoral operations and enhanced stealth35. It is not surprising, then, that such a region has been closely surveyed by Chinese research vessels; the value of that analysis is not merely economic but also military. Russia lacks China's technological reach in the deep sea, but it holds regional jurisdiction and institutional authority in the Arctic. As such, Russia and China depend on a symbiotic relationship to resist US expansion of its extended continental shelf claims in the Chukchi deposits36. Russia requires Chinese capital and engineering to function under the sanctions imposed on it since 2022 and the Russo-Ukrainian war; nonetheless, it is working to build its own extraction and refining capacity so that it is not captured by Chinese processing dominance, the way, for example, cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo has been37.

The dynamic between Russia and China functions not only in the Arctic, where the US has expanded its claim, but throughout the oceans; nonetheless, it is more prominent there than anywhere else, as both nations hold a vested interest in preventing US expansion and in retaining influence and leverage. For Russia, such leverage rests on institutional authority over the Arctic, which, despite its exclusion from the Arctic Council, remains imperative to retaining a powerful role in the Arctic Circle, preventing the expansion of Western powers, and pressing its own claims. For China, the cooperation functions as a path to retaining influence over rare earth minerals, one which is fading as nations throughout the world seek to insulate themselves from Chinese leverage.

The US has achieved the unique position of a power still discovering land to which it has some claim on its extended continental shelf. Such resources would provide the US insulation from Chinese market pressure, as well as expanding US presence into an increasingly important region as the ice melts and tensions rise. Competition between the US, China, and Russia in the Arctic is significant for the security and strategic position of each nation. The pearls of the deep have been exchanged for critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel, and polymetallic nodules, and the divers have been replaced with machines; nonetheless, the principles of pressure, of the power of the tides and the ebb and flow of the ocean, still remain. The shift of power from one nation to another, established by resource control in chokepoint competition, domestic and international strategy to retain and increase influence, and the drive to insulate oneself from pressure, is as consequential as the minerals that power the world. And so the divers resurface with baskets of pearls and oysters, gasping for air; the cold depths of the ocean unwelcoming for long. The Eureka II is called to its homeport and resurfaces with its bounty; but the Chinese counterparts never surface; they remain docked, waiting, watching, listening for submarine acoustics, for leverage. Chinese civil-military strategy in critical mineral chokepoints is more prominent than ever, as the nation works in conjunction with Russia to claim the last unclaimed land in the world, the deep seas and the Arctic. The balance of legitimacy and power lies at the heart of such contention, as institutions are set aside by the US when it needs them most for legitimate claims to exploration and extraction, while China and Russia seek to undermine international legitimacy through those very channels. The power of economic leverage steers the course of Chinese AUVs and of the US Fairweather alike. Nonetheless, pearls sit on the ocean floor, and as always, divers will seek to claim them.

Notes & References