A remote corner of China wants access to the sea. The obstacle is North Korea. - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/top/a-remote-corner-of-china-wants-access-to-the-sea-the-obstacle-is-north-korea/2015/10/15/45b7b5e4-3c40-11e5-a312-1a6452ac77d2_story.html
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FANGCHUAN, CHINA — You can almost smell the sea air from here, at the point where China, Russia and North Korea meet, where slogans pronounce “One eye, three countries” and tourists pose for photos against a green landscape in which the borders are imperceptible.
But for the Chinese, smelling the sea air is all they can do. Their border lies 10 miles inland, because of the Russian annexation of the area in 1860. That means China’s landlocked northern provinces are dependent for sea access on Russia, whose efforts to develop eastern ports haven’t amounted to much, and North Korea — which has some reliability issues, to say the least.