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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. A new chapter in the trade war between the United States and China begins today as officials from both sides meet in Washington, though analysts have low expectations for the talks. In light of President Donald Trump’s relentless tariff threats and reported grumblings in China over how Beijing has responded, where does the situation stand 48 days into the trade war? Press reports indicate that Chinese leaders have reframed their outlook on Trump’s tariffs, […]

Approximately 29,000 public school teachers in New Zealand went on a full-day strike on Aug. 15, demanding higher wages and improved working conditions. An estimated 400,000 schoolchildren were affected by the strike, which follows a similarly disruptive strike by nurses last month. These large-scale labor actions are a serious challenge for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s center-left coalition government, which was elected last year with union support. In an email interview, Grant Duncan, associate professor of politics at Massey University in New Zealand, discusses the political significance of the strikes. WPR: What are the main issues driving the recent teachers’ and […]

Thousands of women and girls from Nepal are trafficked into India each year, and many are forced into sex work. The government is well aware of the problem of human trafficking, but interventions have been too minor to be effective. The most obvious solution may be the hardest: creating opportunities at home so people don’t want to go abroad. BELAHIYA, Nepal–Chanda Basnet, an aid worker with the Nepalese NGO Maiti Nepal, stands beside a blue tin shack that functions as her organization’s field office in this border town. A few dozen meters behind her, an enormous stone gate marks the […]

In just four decades, China has become a major global economic power. In recent years, it has surpassed Germany as the world’s largest exporter of merchandise. It is the world’s second-largest source of foreign investment, and third-largest recipient. Using an exchange rate that takes into account the lower cost of living in China, it has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest economy, though still a much poorer one. And under its “Made in China 2025” industrial plan, the government wants to become an innovation hub and move up the manufacturing value chain to become largely self-sufficient in […]

A day before Nicolas Maduro accused Juan Manuel Santos and the “Bogota oligarchy” of orchestrating an audacious attempt on his life with explosive-equipped drones earlier this month, Colombia’s outgoing president reminded his Venezuelan counterpart of the reality that divides their two nations. “Eight years ago we agreed with Chavez and Maduro that history would judge which economic system was better,” Santos wrote on Twitter. Inflation in Colombia, he noted, was 3.12 percent. In Venezuela, it was a stunning 1 million percent. “The verdict is clear.” Reining in inflation is one of a number of economic achievements from Santos’ eight years […]

On July 26, President Rodrigo Duterte signed a law paving the way for the long-awaited creation of a new self-governing region encompassing Muslim-majority areas on the Philippines’ conflict-wracked southern island of Mindanao. Known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law, it had been fiercely debated by lawmakers and rebel leaders amid political wrangling and ongoing violence. It aims to end a bloody separatist conflict that began in the early 1970s and has claimed thousands of civilian lives. The bill’s passage is the culmination of four years of talks between the government and the 30,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been fighting […]

Kofi Annan’s career was inextricably entangled with power politics. The former United Nations secretary-general, who died on Saturday, spent decades grappling with tensions between the organization’s members over crises from the Balkans to Syria. At times, he managed the turbulence masterfully. At others, he had little or no control over events. Win or lose, Annan occupied a very rare place in the international political firmament as a mediator able to parlay with the biggest powers. There have already been many tributes to Annan, emphasizing his commitment to a better world and his personal charisma. He will almost certainly rank as […]

In recent months, veterans of China’s armed forces have staged large-scale demonstrations to demand financial compensation and other benefits they say they have not been given. The government responded in March by creating a new Ministry for Veterans’ Affairs, but many veterans remain dissatisfied. While the demonstrations have so far not broadly threatened the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy, they pose a unique challenge to President Xi Jinping’s government. To learn more about the historical context and broader significance of the veterans’ protests, WPR spoke via email with Jieren Hu, an associate professor at Tongji University’s School of Law in Shanghai. […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Since being elected to Uganda’s parliament last year, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssenatamu has become a major thorn in the side of President Yoweri Museveni. Instantly recognizable in his red beret, Kyagulanyi, an independent politician who first gained fame as a pop star and refers to himself as the “ghetto president,” emerged as the leader of a protest movement in late 2017 against a constitutional amendment to lift Uganda’s presidential age limit. The amendment was apparently designed to enable Museveni, who’s […]

The billboards that greet people crossing the border from neighboring Lebanon now read: “Welcome to victorious Syria.” It’s unclear if they’ve replaced the old signs inviting you into “Assad’s Syria,” which have adorned highways near Syria’s land borders and the Damascus airport for years. A decade ago, one of the many other pieces of pro-Assad propaganda lining roads and the sides of buildings across the country was a huge, backlit sign that guarded an entrance to Damascus’ Old City, abutting the medieval Citadel: “I Believe in Syria,” it read, next to a beaming, waving President Bashar al-Assad. The Associated Press […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the current tensions in U.S.-Turkey ties. For the Report, Amr Al-Azm and Katie A. Paul talk with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about how looters and traffickers of Middle Eastern antiquities are using Facebook to improve and expand their illicit trade in the digital age. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview […]

Venezuela’s flailing oil industry has helped prop up global energy prices even as Saudi Arabia and Russia open the spigots and global oil demand remains robust. Though oil prices have recovered from their lows during the price collapse in 2015, Venezuelan output has since seen an incredible decline of 1 million barrels per day. The drop in oil production is further squeezing the Venezuelan economy, which faces critical shortages of goods and ballooning inflation that is expected to reach an astounding 1 million percent this year. But could Venezuela’s oil production decline even more steeply? Three evolving developments will largely […]

The security environment in the Middle East may be the most complex on earth, with an intricate, volatile and sometimes shifting mixture of destabilizing forces and hostilities. There are deadly power struggles within and between nations. And behind it all is the Middle East’s massive oil production, on which the global economy depends. The United States first ventured into the Middle East early in the Cold War and has remained heavily involved, particularly since the 1970s. Over the decades, America’s policies and partnerships in the region have evolved, but the basic elements of U.S. strategy and its central rationale remained […]

In the immediate aftermath of Cote d’Ivoire’s 2011 post-election conflict, as soldiers were still trying to impose order and Red Cross workers were clearing dead bodies from the streets of Abidjan, President Alassane Ouattara vowed to hold those responsible for the violence to account. “There can be no reconciliation without justice,” he said. “All Ivorians are equal before the law. We will fight impunity.” It was a message he would return to again and again—including four years later, when he was preparing to run for a second term. “Everyone responsible for atrocities will be tried,” he said in April 2015. […]

Pakistan’s new government, which takes office on Aug. 18, will confront a raft of pressing challenges at home. They include a looming economic crisis; an unhappy political opposition, led by the previously ruling PMLN party, which could seek to obstruct the government’s legislative measures; and the omnipresent threat of extremism. Foreign policy won’t be the initial focus of presumptive Prime Minister Imran Khan’s administration in Islamabad. Still, Khan faces five major foreign policy tests requiring immediate attention. How he responds to them will offer an early read on his government’s thinking on foreign policy. His actions will also help determine […]

AMSTERDAM—Just as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fulminates against the United States again, blaming Washington for his country’s worsening economic troubles, a small controversy has erupted in the Netherlands over Turkish influence in the country. It came to light earlier this week that Turkey is planning to fund special Dutch schools to teach residents of Turkish origin about their heritage. The idea has sparked alarm among some Dutch politicians and their followers on both the left and the right, who worry about what, exactly, Erdogan’s government intends to teach in these schools, which would operate on weekends across the Netherlands. […]

The ongoing crackdown by security forces in Nicaragua against anti-government demonstrators has left hundreds dead and thousands wounded, causing many Nicaraguans to flee to neighboring Costa Rica. According to the Costa Rican government, around 17,000 Nicaraguans have presented asylum applications or have appointments to do so in the coming weeks, taxing the resources of a small country that has historically been friendly to migrants from Central America and beyond. In an email interview, Caitlin Fouratt, an anthropologist and professor at California State University, Long Beach who conducts research among migrants and refugees in Costa Rica, discusses the political, budgetary and […]