| Summary/Abstract |
As climate change continues to melt Arctic sea-ice, the Northwest Passage will likely see more international cargo shipments in the future. Since China is the world’s largest trading and shipping state, a significant portion of that traffic can be expected to involve Chinese companies. For this reason, it is widely assumed that China will eventually side with the United States in its longstanding dispute with Canada about the legal status of the Northwest Passage and assert that the waterway constitutes an “international strait”. This assumption may prove to be incorrect as China has practical and legally strategic reasons to side with Canada, especially because of similarities between the Northwest Passage and the Qiongzhou Strait. This article thus suggests it may be mutually beneficial for both Canada and China to recognize each other’s “internal waters” positions in these two waterways.
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