Maritime Issues Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. For the second time since coming to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping visited Guangdong province in southern China this week, completing a three-day tour of the manufacturing hub. Timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the beginning of China’s “reform and opening up” process, his itinerary essentially re-traced the steps of Deng Xiaoping’s legendary 1992 Southern Tour, in which the reformist leader, then 88 and retired from politics, publicly reiterated the importance […]

On Oct. 1, the International Court of Justice announced its long-anticipated verdict in a case brought by landlocked Bolivia, which argued that neighboring Chile was obliged to negotiate Bolivia’s territorial access to the Pacific Ocean. The ICJ ruled in Chile’s favor, dealing a major blow to Bolivian hopes for a route to the Pacific Ocean more than a century after its current boundaries were decided. Bolivian President Evo Morales, who rose to prominence in part due to his outspokenness on this issue, said after the ruling that “Bolivia will never give up.” In an interview with WPR, Christopher Sabatini, a […]

Editor’s note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. Much of China is on a weeklong holiday to mark the 69th anniversary of the country’s founding. But while the so-called Golden Week, which kicked off with China’s National Day on Monday, could offer a welcome respite from an especially tumultuous period for U.S.-China relations, there were few signs that tensions might ease in sensitive areas like security and trade. Last Wednesday, U.S. B-52 bombers flew over the South China Sea in what Pentagon […]