FROM THE SHORENSTEIN ASIA-PACIFIC RESEARCH CENTER IN PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA – Ian Johnson, a veteran journalist with a focus on Chinese society, religion and history, is the 2016 recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award, given annually by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, is conferred to a…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Begin with the unpretentious wisdom of the late Yogi Berra, a notably inarticulate Hall of Fame baseball player celebrated for memorable ‘Yogi-isms’: “It’s tough to make predictions,” one went, “especially about the future.” But the wish for the better can parent premature thoughts; the caring media…
ASIA MEDIA WRITES – Orville Schell has been writing about China for decades and is not viewed in the West as a China-basher by any means. But in the current New York Review of Books, the former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism offers a rigorous recounting…
Bill Hayton, THE SOUTH CHINA SEA (Yale University Press) – astonishing reportage, deep and thorough and convincing … Orville Schell and John DeLury, WEALTH AND POWER (Random House) – understanding China’s mentality via beautifully written portraits of leading figures through history … Sheila A.Smith, INTIMATE RIVALS (Columbia University Press) –…
TOM PLATE WRITES: The biggest question about China at the moment is the buoyancy of its economy. Suddenly there are serious worries. In China, people might believe Americans wish for their economic collapse. This is not true. If only because of the intimate interdependence and indeed inter-reliance of our two…
Los Angeles – (a syndicated column by Tom Plate) It’s uncertain whether Asia will come to entertain many Western journalists that tried harder to understand their region, their ways and their history than Barry Wain, who has died at 69. The former editor of the once Hong Kong-based Asian Wall…
