TOM PLATE WRITES – How sad is the ongoing family quarrel in otherwise brilliant Singapore? On my first trip to Singapore, as a Los Angeles Times columnist, which featured my first interview with Lee Kuan Yew, then titled senior minister, I returned home feeling I had seen something special and…
TOM PLATE WRITES – The rude acidity of the Trump administration’s slap-down of the largely symbolic Paris Climate Accord has stung eyes and optimisms around the world. We move from having a U.S. president known for “leading from behind,” as the Obama hyper-caution was termed, to a successor who proposes…
Marshall Cavendish Asia International has announced 14 July as the official publication date, in Asia, for ‘Yo-Yo Diplomacy: American Columnist Tom Plate Tracks the Ups-and-Downs of the China-U.S. Relationship.” Author Plate is Loyola Marymount University’s Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies and is founder and editor in chief of…
COLUMNIST TOM PLATE WRITES — There is a famously funny but technically accurate saying to the effect that even a broken clock is right twice a day. For some reason – don’t know why … – this adage comes to mind in looking at Donald J. Trump’s emerging foreign policy.…
TOM PLATE WRITES – There is not the slightest doubt that the emotional mentality of the West Coast versus the East Coast of the U.S. on a vital East-West issue such as the China relationship is different. The reason for bringing this up has to do with our currently besieged…
AMI EDITOR IN CHIEF TOM PLATE WRITES – Mutual trust offers priceless value. In the second term of the Clinton presidency, during the reign of Jiang Zemin/Zhu Rongji, when both sides privileged economic engagement over geopolitical jiu-jitsu, the level of trust between the governments appeared on an uptick. When China…
Pictured above – in triplicate no less!- is well-known Prof. Hans Schattle of the Political Science Dept. of Yonsei University, one of South Korea’s best and always one of Asia’s top-rated universities. The picture was snapped during a recent Wednesday night class in the Life Science Building on the gorgeous…
Asia Media International Founder Tom Plate was interviewed Friday Nov, 4 by the Associated Press of Australia about the coming U.S. national elections Tuesday. The key question was, obviously, the probable effect of a Trump victory as compared to a Clinton victory. Said Plate, a columnist for the South China…
Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991-1996, pictured right) offers a crystal-clear vision of China’s rise in Asia in a deeply thought-provoking interview with Kerry O’Brien, one of Australia’s most respected journalists. The hour-long radio session with the highly informed, forward-thinking Keating, now 72, covers a valuable range of topics,…
The following summary (or ‘Abstract’) of an invaluable study titled “…China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign” arises from exemplary research by Xi Lu and Peter L. Lorentzen of the University of California, Berkeley. Their study comes at an especially helpful time: Scholars (not to mention journalists and Western government officials) have been endlessly…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong suffered a scary spell during his deliverance of the annual National Day speech, but after fast work by an emergency team and a brief rest, returned to the microphone to soldier on. And this is very good news indeed. Lee,…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Win some – lose some. The Obama administration was shocked and rocked: “We recommend that the United States bring its [raised tariffs against China] into conformity with its obligations.” That, just two years ago, was the sharply worded ruling from an international body whose judgment Beijing…
I don’t know about you, but when I travel to Asia and lodge in one of its great cities, such as Tokyo, probably the first print item I reach for after the magnificent Japan Times newspaper is TIME OUT TOKYO. This worldwide chain of urban guides offers the traveler unbelievably…
TOM PLATE WRITES: A long time ago, it seems like a thousand years now, I worked in the State Department, however briefly, with the honor of a formal security clearance. In that role, as a backup speechwriter (I was quite young, but loved the experience, totally respected the careerists there),…
The Brexit outcome was a complete surprise only to those well insulated in the corridors of power and the economic and political elite. And our summer of discontent is anything but played out yet. Great Britain has voted (52-48%) to disengage from the European Union, and while the U.S. had…
The following are remarks from the Honorable Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nationa, upon receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles 06 April 2016 “Thank you so much for your warm welcome. It is a pleasure to be here at Loyola…
