China Wants to Run the Ocean

The country that has blocked the creation of Antarctic marine protected areas for six years wants to run the body that creates them.

Last week in New York, as negotiators gathered for the final preparatory meeting before the first Conference of the Parties to the High Seas Treaty, China arrived with a pitch. According to the Financial Times, which cited three people present at private meetings, China offered more than $70 million in funding for ocean protection, promised to be flexible on visas, and offered immunity to diplomats and assurances of access for campaigners attending future meetings in Xiamen. China’s foreign minister delivered a video message. Its UN ambassador told the room: “In a world of growing uncertainty, China will remain a steadfast pillar of multilateralism.”

The bid is for Xiamen to host the secretariat of the BBNJ (Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement). This treaty entered into force in January 2026 after nearly two decades of negotiation. The secretariat is the institutional engine of the whole effort. It services the first marine protected areas on the high seas, houses the scientific body, and runs the clearing-house, a central database where countries submit information, through which they share data on marine genetic resources.

Marine genetic resources are biological materials found in ocean species, including deep-sea organisms such as microbes, sponges, and invertebrates, that can be used to develop pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and industrial compounds. They are potentially worth billions, and until this treaty, entirely unregulated. The high seas are the ocean beyond any country’s exclusive economic zone, the area of ocean where it has sovereign rights over resources, roughly the outer 200 nautical miles from any coastline, covering about two-thirds of the world’s ocean surface. Until January this year, there was no legal framework to create protected areas there, no requirement for environmental impact assessments, and no rules on who profits from genetic resources found in the deep. The BBNJ Agreement changes that.

Whoever hosts the secretariat will shape how the treaty functions in practice. The vote between Xiamen, Chile’s Valparaiso, and Belgium’s Brussels will be taken by the 85 countries that have ratified the treaty as of April 2026, no later than January 2027.

China’s financial offer, if confirmed, is serious. Its institutional capacity is real. The argument about American retreat is not wrong. China co-chaired the COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity, where the Kunming-Montreal framework, the global biodiversity agreement reached in Canada in 2022, which set the 30 by 30 target, was agreed. It has ratified the BBNJ agreement. It joined the Port State Measures Agreement, the principal international instrument targeting illegal fishing, in 2023, seven years after the agreement entered into force.

The fishing question

Between 2022 and 2024, vessels flagged to China conducted 44 per cent of the world’s visible fishing activity, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch satellite data. Chinese vessels accounted for 30 per cent of all fishing activity on the high seas specifically. The figures count apparent fishing effort based on vessel tracking signals and exclude vessels that switch off their tracking signals. The figures represent a lower bound on China’s true high seas presence. Independent analysts who have examined satellite tracking data have reached similar conclusions about the scale of China’s high seas presence. Oceana is an advocacy organisation, and these numbers deserve independent scrutiny.

China’s fleet has a larger documented stake in how those high seas zones are drawn than any other single flag state. It is now asking to draw them.

The Antarctic precedent

For six consecutive years, the CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources), the international body responsible for protecting the Southern Ocean, failed to agree on new marine protected areas. Just two nations declined to support the proposals: China and Russia. Three protected areas, covering the East Antarctic, the Weddell Sea, and the Antarctic Peninsula, have been on the table for years, supported by the other commission members and described by independent scientists as grounded in the best available evidence.

The commission operates by consensus. There is no formal veto: any member declining to agree is enough to prevent adoption. Six consecutive years of declining, against the wishes of the other commission members, is the record.