In an article published in National Interest on December 1, 2016, assessing China's neighbourhood environment, Liu Xuejun and Liu Jun, both Associate Professors at the Institute of International Studies of Yunnan University based in Kunming, Yunnan, in brief wrote: the DPRK, once China’s closest ally, is quickly becoming a “negative asset” for China, with new faces in the top brass believed to be less China-friendly. To date, Chinese president Xi Jinping has not met with his North Korean counterpart; for well over a century since the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895, China-Japan relations have seen structural contradictions. Despite tensions, however, China chooses to refrain from escalating tensions, trying to minimize hostility to Japan at this crucial moment of its development; Taiwan is internationally recognized as part of China, but the United States’ continuous intervention in cross-Strait relations has made the Taiwan issue highly internationalized. With the ruling DPP moving faster toward de facto independence, China is now preparing for a final solution by non-peaceful means, which is the last resort China would prefer to turn to; Pakistan is a godsend to China, enjoying the All-Weather Strategic Partnership, the highest-level partnership China has ever established with a foreign government thus far. In contrast, India’s strategic partnership with China is haunted by long-standing mistrust and suspicion stemming from its territorial disputes with China and its policy toward Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s exile government. Besides, India is now a strong competitor against China in the international arena, ruling out the likelihood of the two countries becoming too close. Nepal is traditionally India’s sphere of influence, but because of India’s ferocious appetite for controlling Nepal, the Himalayan kingdom seems to be swinging to China. To sum up, China’s strategy toward its Central Asian and South Asian neighbors has been one that seeks to maintain the status quo.; Vietnam, once China’s comrade and brother, continues to be China’s comrade ideologically, but no longer looks like much of a brother in practice, as a result of the 1979 border war and long-standing disputes over the Paracel Islands. President Obama’s historic visit to Hanoi in May 2016 eventually led to the lifting of arms embargoes on Vietnam, galvanizing more leverage in Vietnam’s advantage over China; China claims 80 percent of the South China Sea, which is contested by its four maritime neighbors. Given the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean’s importance to its steady rise to global-power status, China is least likely to back away from its territorial claims in the South China Sea. It follows, therefore, that China’s policy toward its southern neighbors is an aggressive one and it will remain so in the foreseeable future.