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
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
TOM PLATE WRITES – On one hand, let me ask you: Would you be foolish enough to persist in advocating a balanced-sensible approach to the People’s Republic of China amid this murderous coronavirus-crisis for which so many blame the PRC? At a time when global suspicion and recrimination converge on Beijing/Wuhan…
Full Article CHINA VERSUS US: MAHBUBANI’S MARKER
TOM PLATE WRITES – Adept moral leadership at the top, whether in Washington or Hong Kong, is central to any serious public-health strategy. ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed on the world,’ famously wrote the poet William Butler Yeats in 1919. One hundred years later, here…
Full Article TRUMP AND THE CORONA CRISIS: SCIENCE VERSUS UNREASON?
TOM PLATE WRITES – How bad will the global-corona epidemic get? ‘Only the future will tell.’ The problem with that lame cliché is that the future is not only with us now but – to scramble the possibilities – the future actually influences the past. Astrophysicist-author John Gribbin, whose challenging new book ‘Six…
Full Article PANDEMIC CORONA: FUTURE ENEMIES AND FUTURE SHOCKS, IN QUANTUM VISION
TOM PLATE WRITES (VIA THE KOREA TIMES OF SEOUL) — As horrible as the coronavirus spread looks right now, it may not be the worst that faces us. My worry is that even after the epidemic begins its remission, what happens is that everything returns to normal. And that’s the…
Full Article CORONAVIRUS ASIA: THE POTENTIAL PLAGUE OF COMPLACENCY
ASIAMEDIA WRITES — Whatever the actual degree of utility of the medical mask, there is no doubt in Asia of their current ubiquity. These sample shots below, in order, come from the world-famous Shanghai Ballet; a recent wedding in Seoul, South Korea; yet another anti-government protest in Hong Kong; and…
Full Article FROM ASIA: A MASK PARADE
ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL has concluded a negotiation with Marshall Cavendish International Asia to launch a joint book publishing operation, with an elite number of titles originating from the AMI West Coast operation from the campus of Loyola Marymount University. The well-known Singapore-based international publisher of a wide variety of book…
Full Article FROM LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY: BIRTH OF ASIA MEDIA PRESS
TOM PLATE WRITES — Without becoming too defensive about America at this rocky passage in its political history (well, it is difficult to defend), I nonetheless will offer something of a defense, since almost no one else wants to try, but maybe someone ought to. So we start with this: Whether…
Full Article WASHINGTON: HOW COULD A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT EVER POSSIBLY TAKE PLACE?
TOM PLATE WRITES — There’s often little more than a thin line between admirable principle and annoying stubbornness, and that line is not always easy to identify. Lost in the miasma of mutually exclusive righteousness, each side says the other is wrong or evil or both. The tragic consequence is that…
Full Article Hong Kong: WHEN THE ‘PRINCIPLE’ OF THE THING IS THE PROBLEM OF THE THING
TOM PLATE WRITES — American foreign policy rarely rises to the level of coherence recommended by its policy intellectuals and thoughtful diplomats; but without their persistence, it would be bereft of any coherence at all. When World War Two ended, for example, the American establishment came to rally around the containment…
Full Article CHINA-US RELATIONS: NO FORCE CAN CONTAIN CHINA EXCEPT BEIJING
From Asia Media International in Los Angeles — Congratulations, Hong Kong! Under conditions of the greatest stress, you have pulled off a mainly spotless and brilliant territory-wide election whose results resonate worldwide. Clean and clear elections are not that easy to pull off. (We in the U.S. are learning more…
Full Article CONGRATULATIONS HONG KONG!
TOM PLATE WRITES — The stars and stripes of the American flag, as if sliced by partisanship into bipolar bands of red and blue, never seemed more at cross-purpose. Only true haters might find pleasure in the proceedings. In the House, as if plowing through a field of empty dreams and…
Full Article Paranoia Paramount: IS IT PLAUSIBLE TO COMPARE TRUMP TO MAO?