Details of the deal are still unknown, but even cooking the island lawmakers, social media posts from the country’s prime minister suggest some of its content.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown is in China and has met with senior CCP officials, dropping tips on the impending “comprehensive strategic partnership.”
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters is seeking details. The island of Cook is part of the “region of New Zealand.” It is a country that is theoretically independent, but its citizens hold New Zealand passports.
In text accompanying the photo, he confirmed that the Centre, along with a sample repository for China Marine, will help cooks expand their marine research capabilities.
Despite the seemingly benign nature of the agreement, the National Deep Sea Centre is continuing to work by Beijing to utilize key minerals beneath the world’s oceans.
Qingdao also has a joint training centre from the International Undersea (Mining) Bureau, which offers internships to scientists in the Young Cook Islands.
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The Cook Islands are one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones (EEZs), covering 2 million square kilometers.
Visual representation of the submarine regions of the Cook Islands is greater than 20kg/m² and greater than 10kg/m². Six 20-year mines (or three out of 40 years) remove nodules (minerals) from about 35% of the 20kg/m² area, or 10% of the area exceeding 10kg/m². Courtesy of the Cook Islands Government’s Undersea Mining Bureau.
Important mineral resources on the seabed
Among them are many of the Penrin Basin, which is thought to contain one of the largest deposits of rare earth elements such as cobalt, titanium, tellurium, niobium, and yttrium.
Three other regions – the Central Indian Ocean Basin, the Clarion Clipperton Zone, and the Peru Basin are both located in the Pacific Ocean, in international waters and managed by international submarine authorities. CCP-controlled companies hold five of the 30 licenses granted to mines in these regions in most countries.
Cook Island Prime Minister Mark Steven Brown will make a statement at the high-level segment on the third day of the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 13, 2024. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
So, not only the Penryn Basin, mainly under the waters of the Cook Islands, but also the Kiliberty and French Polynesian Basin is quite important to the United States and its Pacific Allies Australia and New Zealand.
The Cook Islands have issued three exploration licenses for the basin so far. It is a consortium of American and Dutch companies, a joint venture between a government-owned investment company, a Belgian company and an American mining company.
This forces CCP to wager on valuable undersea mining zones that are not yet interested. Therefore, it appears he wants to accept the offer of partnership with Brown.
Assuming that brown sticks to its promise to do so, there is no known thing that must be offered in return for Beijing’s money until the contract is released.
Even if the CCP doesn’t go as far as it has signed with the Solomon Islands and Kiliberty, there is no doubt that there will always be a security impact when dealing with Beijing.
In a small Pacific state, there is a population of less than 15,000 and a relatively small GDP of just USD 0.26 billion. Most of it is supplemented by seafood sales (mainly tuna). It’s attractive.
Because its exports are worth just $0.030 million, it is that it is sold under the ocean, especially when the world is not able to acquire enough of those goods, and that Brown’s government will be able to trade $18.5 million. It’s not just an easy way to deal with deficits. That might be the only way.
Meanwhile, the opposition has just filed a formal complaint with Prime Minister Brown that he is not confident in, but his cabinet has said it would support the deal while acknowledging that he doesn’t know what they are signing up for. I promised.
Opposition leader Tina Brown told the Pacific Media Network that residents are angry, and ordinary people are increasingly convinced that Brown should resign.
