TOM PLATE WRITES – It is a commonplace that China’s system disdains consequential elections. But in a sense this is only strictly true in national practice. Whether leaders and peoples accept it or hate it, this is the age of continuous globalization. It is not a matter of choice –…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Over the decades, China’s leaders have been known to greatly respect the tell-it-like-it-is political instincts of Malaysian maestro Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad. But now you have to wonder how much love may have been lost of late. No one in Beijing or anywhere else doubts even…
TOM PLATE WRITES – How best to make beautiful music? Loud or soft? Fast or slow? How best to compose a new world order – loud or soft? Fast or slow? In orchestral history, in 1962, superstar tensions surfaced at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The egos of rising pianist-powerhouse Glenn…
ASIA MEDIA WRITES – Another Vietnamese language edition of ‘Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew’ is now available in Vietnam. The paperback edition (pictures) comes from the respected presses of Tre. Tre Publishing House (In Vietnamese: Nhà Xuất Bản Trẻ) is a one of the most popular book and magazine publishers…
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…
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…
ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL WRITES — Fudan University Press just published, in simplified Chinese translation, the text of the 2nd Edition of ‘Confessions of an American Media Man’. The new volume is picture above (to the right of the English language original first published in 2007 – then reprinted twice, then…
WRITES TOM PLATE – In the pantheon of American movies, the 1985 flick ‘Back to the Future’ does not rank at the top of temple Hollywood, as do canonical masterpieces such as ‘Casablanca’, ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘Lawrence of Arabia” and others. Yet the movie title alone enriched American argot,…
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Years ago, Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew would needle me, in all seriousness, about the time and effort we silly journalists invest in seeking to lay out a leader’s personal traits. This dynamic man dubbed our penchant for such detail “the Western journalist’s exaggeration of…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Recent U.S. presidents, at least in public, would speak of China only after the vetting of practically every word, as if an errant one might prove seriously chancy. The bilateral was too complex, the stakes too high, the relationship freighted with too many tensions to have…
[contact-form][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Website” type=”url” /][contact-field label=”Message” type=”textarea” /][/contact-form]S PROF TOM PLATE WRITES — Despite not having before his all-seeing eyes the example of Donald J. Trump, the 17th century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal came to the conclusion: “All human evil comes from…
TOM PLATE WRITES – It’s so easy to imagine that in some officers’ club, perhaps at Yulin naval headquarters on Hainan Island, where China’s brass (vice admiral, rear, lower-rank whatever) gather and after a few belts of Baijiu recycle submarine stories and second-guess their masters in Beijing – it’s easy…
Asia Media International, based at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, is happy to announce that Ms. Jay Seo LMU ’17 has been promoted to Executive Editor after serving six months as assistant executive editor. She was a political science major at LMU and aims to get her law degree…
COLUMNIST TOM PLATE WRITES — Recall Shakespeare’s Falstaff – that boastful cowardly knight – and imagine him cavorting at golf resorts on the dime of a dodgy career driven by money borrowed from wherever. Yes, imagine President Donald J Trump as a Falstaff rather than as, say, an unhinged King…
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Winston Churchill is said to have said: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” Sure, but what if too much of the wrong sort of jaw-jaw were to convert the idea of war-war to less of a no-no? Here is what is meant. No…
