Summary: A delegation of Chinese students participating in the Harvard University Model United Nations this past January caused a disturbance after they discovered that Taiwan was listed as a "country" in the program handbook. One student who attended the conference told the Global Times that "The organizer needs to apologize to Chinese participants" for the perceived slight. Several of the students were kicked out of the meeting after the organizers threatened to call the police. News of the event spread rapidly after an eyewitness account was posted on renren.com, leaving it to the reliably nationalist Global Times to weigh in on the matter.

Excerpt from the story: "Taiwan isn't a country, and does not enjoy all the rights of a country. To fly its flag and list it as a country in a public forum such as this will create problems, something that should be considered diplomatic common sense. Although there are some NGOs and companies that consider Taiwan a 'country,' under most circumstances when the Chinese point out the problem, most parties will make the necessary correction and the problem goes away. Yet there are also some unfortunate circumstances in which the other party refuses to correct their mistake. Some do this because they are stubborn or because they wish to see the Chinese unhappy, or even because they seek to provoke a problem and thus raise the profile of their event."

Source: 环球时报

Summary: For most of the past three decades, China's foreign policy has focused on managing relations with large powers, most importantly the United States. Yet under Xi Jinping, some see a shift in this formula, with China's relations with its immediate neighbors occupying an increasingly important role. Is this an attempt to shut the U.S. out of the Pacific region? Or merely an attempt to calm the jittered nerves of those smaller Pacific countries concerned over China's rise?

Excerpt from the story: "But according to Professor Wang Yiwei from Renmin University of China, China has gradually been adopting an updated version of the 'three-ring' doctrine since President Xi Jinping assumed power in 2013. If the old 'three-ring' diplomacy centered on the Sino-U.S. relationship, the new approach takes a more China-centric perspective, devoting more diplomatic resources to countries that are geographically and strategically closer to China. According to Professor Wang, at the core of this new three-ring diplomacy are China's neighbors, which he argued have been given foremost priority under China's new approach. In the middle ring is the developing world, with regions like Africa and South America receiving comparatively more attention. Meanwhile, the rest of the developed world has effectively been relegated to the outermost diplomatic ring. Wang argues that by attaching different priorities to these three rings, China is showing that it has a new set of goals regarding its relationship with these countries."

Source: 《中国新闻周刊》