TOM PLATE WRITES — Australia has a China problem, and it’s not clear that anyone can help it out of the box it’s in. Yes, it’s a China box: The ground underneath the Asia-Pacific is starting to shake, and the incipient foreign-policy shakeout ‘Down Under’ may well tell those of…
ANTONIA HORLICK WRITES — Zilingo is a Singapore-based e-commerce beauty and lifestyle marketplace that enables merchants from Southeast Asia without an online presence to sell products directly to consumers. The private company was founded in 2015 by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor, who saw a unique opportunity to help small…
Asia Media International’s Senior Advisory Andrea Plate celebrated a pre-launch party for her book “Madness: In the Trenches of America’s Troubled Department of Veterans Affairs,” which was produced by Asia Media International and published by Marshall Cavendish Asia, at the Del Rey Yacht Club in Marina Del Rey. The four…
THE STRAITS TIMES, THE LEADING NEWSPAPER OF SINGAPORE, WRITES – Prominent Singaporean academic Kishore Mahbubani has been elected a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining the ranks of luminaries such as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin and Barack Obama. The former diplomat, who is currently senior…
Chantal Nong talks about her experiences with Crazy Rich Asians and the movie’s impact on film awards. Nong is an executive producer at Warner Brothers. She recently oversaw the production of Crazy Rich Asians. She has now moved over to DC to be the VP of Production. She attended USC…
Singapore lags behind many countries in its protection and support of the LGBTQ community. On September 10, 2018, 43-year-old Singaporean resident Johnson Ong filed to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes any sexual behavior between two consenting adult males. Ong’s petition has since received support from international…
MICHELLE DOR WRITES — An unemployed 45-year old man in Singapore by the name of Joseph Murugan allegedly attempted to steal free roti, a native Indian dish, by knifing a store clerk. Assisted by two others, Murugan slashed the chef with a knife after he was turned down, leaving a…
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.” – Charlemagne ANAS ALZAHRANI WRITES — When non-native English speakers decide to learn English in a different country, the first locations that come to mind are the U.S and England, where English is the first language. Command over the English…
Courtesy of the East West Center: From Singapore, 30 June 2018—From the Himalayas to the Korean DMZ to the South China Sea, the balance of power in Asia appears to be shifting. But beneath the rhetoric, have the fundamentals really changed? At this past week’s 2018 East-West Center International Media…
ELIZABETH SOELISTIO WRITES FROM INDONESIA – Prof Tom Plate, author of the Asia bestseller “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” visited Singapore in May with a new book that delves into U.S.-China diplomacy. The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) invited Plate, from the faculty of Loyola Marymount University…
(FROM THE EDITORS OF ASIA MEDIA: THIS COLUMN APPEARED ONE WEEK BEFORE THE SINGAPORE SUMMIT, IN THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)– BY TOM PLATE: Next week, it now seems, the American President will be in Singapore, along with the North Korean leader. Both are famously quirky. Is Lee worried? We…
For the rest of the world, Singapore has often been a point of intrigue. It is a small country, so small in fact that traveling from one end to another would take you less than an hour. Yet currently, this country has one of the highest GDP per capita in…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Next week, it now seems, the American President will be in Singapore, along with the North Korean leader. Both are famously quirky. Is Lee worried? We pay a call on the city-state’s prime minister, host of a monster summit that – on the off-chance all goes…
TOKYO — Asia’s universities are continuing to rise in prominence relative to established Western counterparts, according to a global survey of over 10,000 academics. Twenty-one Asian universities made it into a list of the world’s top 100 universities by reputation. Of those, six are in mainland China, with five in…
ASIA MEDIA REPORTS – The Temasek Dialogue ‘breakfast club’ invited Asia Media International editor-in-chief Tom Plate to discuss and defend his perspectives on the roiling U.S.-China relationship. Temasek Holdings is one of Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds, and is a major shareholder in the city-state’s biggest firms, including Singapore Airlines…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Exquisite food was only the half of it, but what a fabulous half it was. A multi-course lunch at Hermitage in Jakarta (www.hermitagejakarta.com/dining) set the table for Asia Media International’s first mini-reunion in Jakarta, Indonesia, where Loyola Marymount University has a lively and loyal alumni contingent…
