Ivanka Trump’s brand was bruised when China detained several worker activists investigating her shoe brand. The specter of an independent labor movement both drives and constrains every facet of China's labor policy, both its reforms and its use of repression. Can China’s leaders get past the current period of rising – yet localized and non-political – labor unrest without going down the time-tested road of collective bargaining through independent trade unions?

On the first of July, Hong Kong will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its return to China. HKSAR's first chief executive reflects on how far the city has come, where it is today, and what the future may bring.

In the past, analysis of the evolution of humanity’s worldview has tended to focus on the West. Now, however, this narrative is being revised. The global economic crisis that originated in the United States in 2007 exposed the fragility of the advanced-country model, giving rise to a new, more multipolar worldview, in which the emerging economies, led by China, India, and Russia, have increasingly challenged the status quo.

In the West, we’ve seen the triumph of U.S. President Donald Trump and the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union transform the old political world. But Asia’s transformation is much different and unlikely to follow the same populist pattern. Asia and the West operate and respond to these changes differently. China, for instance, it would be viewed as a threat to political order.

The Chinese government aims to resolve the south-north divide in an efficient, forceful and rapid manner with the establishment of the Xiongan New Area. This will allow Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei to shake off the longstanding fetters of bureaucratic red tape, and be integrated into an organic whole.

The Chinese government’s recent decision to issue “Foreign Permanent Residence Identity Cards” to foreign nationals working in China is a great step forward in facilitating the introduction of overseas talents. The change is not just in name, from the previous “residence permit” to the present “residence ID”.

Xi Jinping’s administration has emphasized the promotion of leaders who have worked in China’s poorest and most remote provinces, or “hardship” regions. But not all emerging heavyweights with experience in hardship regions are Xi Jinping’s protégés. In fact, some have strong personal ties to Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) and Li Keqiang (李克强).

Though the Chinese leadership has labored over the past three decades to instill rules and norms into its elite selection process, concerns have persisted over the effectiveness and durability of these nascent institutional mechanisms. What institutional limitations and political barriers stand in the way? The selection of ethnic minority leaders provides a good case study that sheds valuable light on these questions.

Asian leaders have an incentive to twist Confucius and, in all likelihood, many Western commentators don’t trouble to read his texts before taking conventional pronouncements at face value. But defining him by the hierarchical part of his teachings makes as much sense as defining Socrates by his totalitarian vision of a Republic. It is to ignore the balance that is the essence of his philosophy.

Contrary to some commentary, the American political system has not been swept away by a wave of populism, and no one should underestimate US institutions.