On Jan. 1, China implemented a ban on the domestic sale and processing of ivory, following through on a plan it had announced more than a year ago. The move should effectively cut off one of the major centers of demand that has incentivized the poaching of African elephants. In an email interview, Grace Gabriel, the regional Asia director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, explains why China decided to execute the ban, the likely impact on poaching and the remaining obstacles and risks to ending the ivory trade. WPR: Why has the Chinese government decided to implement a [...]
Editor’s Note: This article was updated in December 2018. Foreign tech companies have been forced into difficult compromises and today find themselves asking whether the financial rewards and access to a massive market justify the work required to stay in Beijing’s good graces—especially given that the risk of failure is rising, illustrated by the recent blocking of WhatsApp in China. When users of WhatsApp in China started noticing technical problems with the mobile messaging application in September 2017, nothing seemed unusual at first. The slow sending speeds and inability to deliver video and audio files could have easily been due [...]
While several foreign leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, were paying their first visit to the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte in November for this year’s ASEAN Summit, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was making his second trip there in under a year. And it came just a few weeks after Duterte’s own high-profile visit to Tokyo. Japan has emerged as the Philippines’ most robust bilateral relationship under Duterte’s presidency so far—so much so that he has begun calling this a “golden age” in their strategic partnership. But even with that progress and optimism, there are still key strategic questions [...]
