Dominating the Deep Sea: A Brief Analysis of the United States’Deepsea Strategic Competition with China, by Xin Qiang, Professor and Deputy Director at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University; and Tian Weixi, Graduate Student at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University. 

With the rapid development of deep-sea exploration technologies, the competition among global maritime powers over deep-sea space is becoming increasingly fierce, and international security issues on deep-sea are also getting more and more prominent. Under the dual infl uence of its advantages in advanced deep-sea technologies and expansive sea power strategy, the United States has always sought to take advantage of its asymmetric dominant position in the deep-sea fi eld to compete for the development rights of rare seabed resources, the formulation right of rules and regulations, and the dominance of governance order. With the development of China’s deepsea technologies and its increase of deep-sea activities in recent years, China has begun to be regarded by the United States as a “destroyer” and “challenger” to its deep-sea hegemonic position. To ensure its dominant position in the global sea areas and curb the maritime development of China as a “strategic competitor”, the United States has adopted measures such as strengthening the building of deep-sea military capabilities, accelerating the research and development as well as deployment of deep-sea weapons, implementing technological blockades and industrial restrictions against China, obstructing China’s exploitation and utilization of deep-sea resources, forming a deep-sea issue coalition with allies, and competing for the dominance of deep-sea international order, to constantly escalate suppression and containment of China in the deep-sea fi eld, which not only seriously hinders the development of China’s deep-sea technologies and industry, and intensifi es the risk of China-US military confrontation on deepsea, but also impedes China’s participation in international deep-sea governance, thereby exerting a profound negative impact on the construction and maintenance of an orderly global deep-sea pattern.