As relatively muted reactions to the Philippines v. China arbitral tribunal award come in from ASEAN and EU, it appears likely that the PRC at the highest level traded an undertaking to finally abandon the nine-dash-line in return for international forbearance on declaration of China as an international outlaw for ignoring the ruling. I suspect... Read More

As I predicted a while back, the United States has quietly ditched its old, underperforming pretext for confrontation in the South China Sea and is sidestepping into a new justification. I do not care deeply about America’s stake in the South China Sea. So I have little interest in slogging through recent US & PRC... Read More

In the context of the PRC charm offensive at ASEAN (leavened by a sharp slap at Philippine's President Aquino), the Beijing Review has published a detailed explanation of "core interests" that also provides some pretty significant looking and novel interpretations of China's South China Sea claims. In the article, dated August 26, China's declaration of... Read More