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.

Judging by 2014's crowded election calendar, this will be a landmark year for democracy. The Economist estimates that an unprecedented 40 percent of the world’s population will have a chance to vote in national polls in 2014. We'll see races in populous countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, the United States, and, most notably, India, where 700 million people are expected to cast ballots in what Fareed Zakaria has called the “largest democratic process in human history.”

China is preparing to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy, in purchasing power parity terms. Already its economy is 80 percent the size of ours, and if current growth rate differentials persist, it will take China only about four more years to surpass us. At market exchange rates, China’s GDP is smaller, and is expected to remain less than ours until 2028. This is hardly surprising.

While developing countries once struggled with famine, they now struggle with obesity. China and Mexico are seeing dramatic increases in the problem, thanks to an abundance of processed food and sugary drinks, more sedentary lifestyles, and ignorance of what makes a good diet. "Future Diets" report author Steven Wiggins believes South Korea has the answer. Dominic Kane reports.

Vision First, an NGO dealing with refugee issues, presents daunting statistics: of the 12,409 people who sought asylum in Hong Kong in the past 21 years, just four succeeded. Despite such enormous odds, about 800 people still flock to the city seeking refuge each year - and that's excluding 1,200 others who claim to have been tortured in their home countries.

Have I been wrong all along? Some critics suggest my newspaper columns since 1995 on the politics and economics of the Mainland have been — oh — overly sympathetic toward China. I just don’t know. But no one can afford to be complacent. And so the worry popped up again, for several reasons.