Early Details of CCP, Cook Islands Partnership Suggests Push for Undersea Critical Mineral Research

The Northern side of the Island of Rarotonga, the largest island in the Cook Islands, on Aug. 30, 2012. The Cook Islands are one of the places that offshore companies have been established and used by Chinese elite to shield their wealth, much of it ill-gotten, according to a journalism group. Marty Melville/AFP/Getty Images

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown is in China, meeting with senior CCP officials and is dropping hints about the impending “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.”

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters has called for more details. The Cook Island’s are part of the “realm of New Zealand”—countries which are, in theory, independent but whose citizens carry New Zealand passports.

On Feb. 13, Brown posted a picture to Facebook taken during a visit to Beijing’s National Deep Sea Centre in Qingdao, 700 kilometres north of Shanghai.

In the text accompanying the picture, he confirmed that the Centre, together with the China Ocean Sample Repository, will help the Cooks expand its marine research capabilities.

Despite the seemingly benign nature of that pact, the National Deep Sea Centre aligns with ongoing efforts by Beijing to exploit critical minerals found beneath the world’s oceans.

Qingdao is also home to the International Seabed (Mining) Authority’s joint training centre, which has offered internships to young Cook Islands scientists.

The Cook Islands have one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones (EEZ), covering two million square kilometres.

A visual representation of the seabed areas in the Cook Islands EEZ with more than 20kg/m² and more than 10kg/m². Six 20-year mines (or three of 40-years) would remove the nodules (minerals) from about 35% of the 20kg/m² area, or from 10% of the area with more than 10kg/m². Courtesy of the Cook Islands Government Seabed Mining Authority.

Undersea Critical Mineral Resources

Within that lies much of the Penrhyn Basin, which is believed to contain one of the largest deposits of cobalt, titanium, tellurium, niobium, and rare earth elements like yttrium.

Only four marine regions are believed to contain these resources, and the U.S. Congress is backing American undersea mining companies to find and extract them (pdf) in the hope that they'll eventually harvest enough battery metals to end America’s reliance on China.

The three other regions—the Central Indian Ocean Basin, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, and the Peru Basin, both in the Pacific Ocean—are in international waters and administered by the International Seabed Authority. CCP-controlled corporations hold five of the 30 licences granted to mine these areas, the most of any country.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Stephen Brown delivers a statement during the high level segment on day three of the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference at Baku, Azerbaijan on Nov. 13, 2024. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

So the Penrhyn Basin—lying mainly beneath the waters of the Cook Islands, but also those of Kiribati and French Polynesia—is of considerable importance to the United States and its Pacific allies Australia and New Zealand.

The Cook Islands has so far issued three exploration licences for the Basin: to a consortium of firms from America and the Netherlands firms, a joint between a government-owned investment company and a Belgian firm, and an American mining company.

That has left the CCP without a stake in the one valuable undersea mining zone in which it doesn’t already have an interest, hence the offer of a partnership to Brown, which he seems eager to accept.

What the Cooks will have to offer in return for Beijing’s money won’t be known until the deal is released, assuming Brown sticks to his promise to do so.

Even if it does not go as far as those the CCP has signed with the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, there will no doubt be security implications, as there always are when dealing with Beijing.

For the small Pacific state, with a population of less than 15,000 and a relatively tiny GDP of just US$0.26 billion—most of that from tourism, supplemented by seafood sales (mainly tuna)—the CCP’s open-chequebook approach to Pacific diplomacy may be irresistible.

Its exports are worth only $0.03 billion, so selling what lies beneath its oceans—particularly at a time when the world can’t get enough of those commodities—is not only an easy way for Brown’s government to address the country’s $18.5 million trade deficit, it may be the only way.

Meanwhile, the opposition has just filed a formal motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Brown, while his Cabinet has pledged to back the deal while admitting they don’t know what they’re signing up for, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Tingika Elikana.

Opposition Leader Tina Browne told Pacific Media Network that residents were angry, and ordinary people are increasingly convinced that Brown should step down.