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…
TOM PLATE WRITES — A re-released photo of Joe Biden, then U.S. vice-president, on the North-South Korean border, is being touted by some as evidence of embedded American imperial complacency. Yet it’s almost a required photo stop for American politicians who, as if some mountain-climbing Edmund Hilary, can never be happy…
TOM PLATE WRITES — Change will come, it has to. But America’s hyper-confident commentariat has convinced itself that China-U.S. policy Democrat Joseph Biden, on track to become the 46th president of the United States, will be stuck in the cement of the New Coldness and would differ little from Trump’s.…
Dr. Jonathan Pollack is to host an LMU webinar “The Crisis in US-China Relations: Politics, Economics, and the Threats to Regional Stability” this Tuesday, 15 September AT 5pm. All are welcome: click here to register for the webinar. This prestigious virtual event comes courtesy of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for…
ROBERT SONG WRITES (courtesy the Korea Times, Seoul) — As the world grapples with the virus originated in China, an ominous dark cloud of worsening U.S.-China relations looms over the global arena. From human rights abuses, to unfair trade practices, to unlawful militarization of the South China Sea to thousands of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
