China's largest official news agency, Xinhua, is experiencing some growing pains on Twitter. It started tweeting in March 2012, but has amassed only 22,942 followers since, small potatoes set against its 9.2 million fans on Weibo (Chinese Twitter). Snafus like this might help explain why Xinhua's not getting more English-language social media love.

For those who missed the “Voldemort Wars” between the Chinese and Japanese ambassadors to the UK this past week, China’s ambassador Liu Xiaoming, in a piece in The Telegraph, compared Japan’s militarism to Lord Voldemort — the same He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named from the Harry Potter series.

Chinese students from wealthy families have been pouring into American colleges in record numbers. One of their favorite American destinations is metropolitan Boston and its many elite schools—especially Harvard University, home to the progeny of Communist Party leaders like president Xi Jinping, Jiang Zemin, and the now-disgraced Bo Xilai.

Will Japan assert its own vision for East Asia, or will it continue simply to react to China? That will be the biggest question in 2014 for Tokyo as tensions with Beijing continue to mount. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s decision to beef up military spending and enhance its longer-term security is a game-changer for the region, and while there is a chance the move will strengthen bilateral relations between Japan and the United States, it is unclear how this will impact Tokyo’s relations with Beijing.

People come to New York City for all sorts of reasons: to study; to travel; to become doctors and lawyers and writers; to make it on Broadway or as stand up comedians or to toil in the kitchens of up-and-coming restaurants. Chen Guangbiao is here this week to buy the New York Times. It’s not as surprising a proposal as it might sound if you know anything about Chen, the 45-year-old Chinese billionaire philanthropist with a knack for staging over-the-top, headline-grabbing stunts in the name of politics, poverty, disaster relief and the environment.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s latest attempt to cultivate his image as a man of the people is creating some unintended consequences. Qingfeng Restaurant, an unassuming local eatery where Xi ate a meal of pork buns, fried pig liver and vegetables last month, has since become a staging ground for residents to protest against their local governments.

Are China’s leaders destined to ask each other, “Who lost Hong Kong?” It’s a question worth pondering after a holiday week that offered a stark reminder of just how restless -- if not unhappy -- a sizable percentage of the former colony’s residents are under Chinese rule, 17 years after the end of British sovereignty. Of course, nobody seriously entertains the idea of a political schism between Hong Kong and China.

Diplomats from China and Japan are invoking the evil Lord Voldemort from the bestselling "Harry Potter" series in their feud over the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo. China says the shrine, which Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited recently, glorifies Japan's militaristic past.