Why China is diving for treasure in the Mariana Trench

It's a race to earth's rare elements.

China just sent a manned submersible approximately 10,909 meters deep into the Mariana Trench. This breaks their national record by over 800 meters but just comes shy of America's Victor Vescovo's 10,927-meter dive and world record.

This news comes from China's state-run news agency, as the country announces its plans to explore the "treasure map" of the deep sea.

Ye Cong, the chief designer of the diving vessel, shared that the goal of the dive is to further map out the location of rare earth elements.

According to the People's Daily, an official newspaper of the Chinese Communist's Party, said that dive is key to understanding the "international strategic landscape."

Further explaining the reason for the mission, the People's Daily shared, "Japan recently discovered rare earth resources in the Pacific Ocean, where the recoverable reserves are said to be 1,000 times more than on land. The ocean floor is a whole new world. If we don't explore this world, others will explore it."

It all comes down to "rare earths," a term for the 17 rare-earth elements.

Photo credit: The National Energy Technology Laboratory

These chemical elements on the periodic table are rare because they have not been found in concentrated areas. Some of these elements are a key component in tech products, like phones, missile systems, and radar.

Currently, China dominates the rare earths space, and increased their quota to mine as high as 140,000 tonnes of these elements to keep this international lead.

However, Japan and India are investing to compete for these resources. In 2018, Japan discovered extremely valuable elements in deep-sea mud off Minamitori, a small island in the Pacific Ocean.

India has committed more than $1 billion to a decade-long exploration of the seafloor, in hopes to find areas where they can extract rare elements.

The International Seabed Authority was supposed to finalize a mining code this year, but nothing has been signed yet. As of now, China is leading the world in seabed mineral mining.

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