TOM PLATE WRITES — It’s embarrassing. Like some televangelist preacher caught with his pants down at an out-of-town house-of-pleasure, America has been caught with its democracy down. Point one: a scary but also confused and confusing coup d’etat – another to come? Point two: A Republican president who should never…
Full Article US-CHINA RELATIONS: HOW BEIJING CAN LEAD AFTER THE CAPITOL CHAOS
TOM PLATE WRITES — You have to wonder how well (if at all) General Secretary Xi Jinping and President Joseph Biden are going to get along. Imagine such a splendid scene as this! With TV cameras broadcasting live around the world you see the leader of the Peoples Republic of…
Full Article TENSE CHINA-US RELATIONS: DO BIDEN AND XI HAVE THE ANSWER?
TOM PLATE WRITES — The filling of key policy positions in the incoming Biden administration proceeds apace. But so far, none of the announced or expected top-level appointees proffer particular savvy or expertise about Beijing. The designated Biden secretary of state is Antony Blinken, whose dedicated career competence and sensible style…
Full Article US-CHINA RELATIONS: BIDEN’S AMERICA & XI’S CHINA MUST EVOLVE BEYOND MUTUAL DEMONISATION
TOM PLATE WRITES — The truth about the swelling importance of the People’s Republic of China in the Asia-Pacific is that without America’s corresponding help, unintended as it was of course, the reversal of position would not have happened as quickly. Perhaps it all began in 1997, with the collapse…
Full Article US-CHINA RELATIONS: BEIJING CAN BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO PEACE AND PROSPERITY
KISHORE MAHBUBANI WRITES (courtesy of The Straits Times) — The first American president to enter my personal consciousness was John F. Kennedy. It wasn’t his stirring rhetoric that reached me as a child in Singapore. It was the news of his assassination. The sense of loss was globally palpable. History…
Full Article CHINA-US TENSIONS: BIDEN SHOULD PRESS THE ‘PAUSE BUTTON’
TOM PLATE WRITES — There was always something of the Goliath versus David, if you framed such a thesis/antithesis picture: of Ruth Bader Ginsburg up against Donald J. Trump – the diminutive versus the hulk, the thinker versus the non-thinker, the caring versus the uncaring. But someone of stature had…
Full Article US: CAN JUDGE RUTH BADER GINSBURG’S PASSING PUSH FOR A FINAL CHANGE?
TOM PLATE WRITES – This column seeks to contrast and compare Richard Falk, Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump with the outlook of young people we teach at universities. Don’t think that’s so easy to do! Our young students get plenty of lectures. Consider nuclear apocalypse. Princeton University emeritus professor Richard…
Full Article US-CHINA RELATIONS: HOW TO TEACH CHINA-US RELATIONS AS TENSIONS BETWEEN THE TWO SUPERPOWERS SOAR
TOM PLATE WRITES — The way it is going now, I might have been wrong. The professor had written a good book but (in my mind) smudged it with an ethically snarky title: Destined for War. A few critics (okay, mainly me) pointed out that the addition of a simple question mark (Destined for…
Full Article INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS: DUMPED BY TRUMP?
TOM PLATE WRITES – I wouldn’t mind being 20-Something again. It was the only time in my life that I had not yet made blunders of which I was aware, and – as best as I can recall – it was the only time I felt sure I knew just…
Full Article HONG KONG: YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
TOM PLATE WRITES — Lockdown. Many of us have just been through it; others of us are still stuck in it. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the term usually meant the kind of harsh confinement that befall inmates of a penal institution in the wake of a prison riot. Slight…
Full Article TRUMP AND XI: THE ERA OF NON-MAGICAL THINKING
COLUMNIST TOM PLATE WRITES – The decline of the coherence and acumen of American foreign policy would appear to present Beijing with the potential for a century of anything and everything but humiliation. To be sure, historically, the U.S. has demonstrated Olympian bounce-back ability from near-death experiences (from bad economies…
Full Article DEAR BEIJING: IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO?
From News Service Reports — No sooner had after China signaled it would impose new national-security laws on Hong Kong than markets throughout the world trembled. By early afternoon Friday in Hong Kong (22 May), the Hang Seng Index had lost 5.6%, with property, financial and infrastructure stocks retreating between…
Full Article HONG-KONG-WATCH: SHAKEN MARKETS
Project Bridge was established in 1993 after the Los Angeles Riots (SAIGU) took place by the Los Angeles based Pacific Century Institute in conjunction with New York based the Korea Society. The cross-cultural program selects 16 students (eight from Los Angeles and eight from New York) each year to participate…
Full Article REFLECTIONS ON BEING KOREAN-AMERICAN: A MASTERCLASS
THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THIS COLUMN BY TOM PLATE WAS PUBLISHED EARLIER THIS WEEK BY THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST – No time to be polite: the most disgraceful and unnecessary deterioration amid the global health and economic crisis is the China-U.S. relationship that continues to sour. Casualties from a…
Full Article CHINA-US RELATIONS: THE MADNESS OF THE BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP
While spring semester study abroad and global immersion trips have been canceled due to the ongoing pandemic, Tom Plate, clinical professor and Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific studies, is continuing to facilitate cross-cultural learning experiences for Loyola Marymount University students. From opposite sides of the Pacific, LMU students collaborate with Yonsei University students…
Full Article NO ZOOM GLOOM: FROM LOS ANGELES TO SEOUL