AMANI ALAWWAD WRITES – After the recent summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Xi made a surprising move by calling a meeting of Central Asian countries March 22. Was this an audacious power play aimed at expanding its influence in the region? The meeting, held…
Tag: Xi Jinping
CHINA: A DARING DIPLOMATIC DEEP DIVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
ANYA CHINAPPI WRITES – On Friday, Mar. 10, after seven years of tension, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by China. The agreement was reached in Beijing after four days of previously undisclosed talks between the rival countries. With the current strain in…
CHINA AND THE CIA: INCISIVE NEW BOOK MAKES YOU WONDER
CLINICAL PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES — Maybe the lady intel officer who sought to recruit me for a CIA operation involving PRC espionage on the U.S. West Coast didn’t look the part – though, then again, perhaps she did. Modest in dress, controlled in comportment, she sat with me in…
RUSSIA: THE LESSON MIKHAIL GORBACHEV’S LEGACY HOLDS FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN AND XI JINPING
This column originally appeared on September 7, 2022, in the South China Morning Post. CLINICAL PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Last week, the last president of the Soviet Union at 91 had to leave us (his wife Raisa had departed in 1999), so it must be said now that a true…
UKRAINE: CRISIS CALLS FOR CHINA TO TAKE PART IN A DARING DIPLOMATIC INTERVENTION
TOM PLATE WRITES – It is imperative that the government of Xi Jinping of China continue to edge away from the bleak dark shadow of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine and re-settle itself geopolitically into a better moral place. While it would be presumptuous to offer instructions on how in…
ENDING THE WAR: BUT IS BEIJING UP TO THE HISTORIC CHALLENGE?
ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL FOUNDER TOM PLATE WRITES — In global diplomatic circles, what is not uttered publicly can reveal more than that which is out in the open. Perhaps no one captured this with more spice and sauce than Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Périgord, the acknowledged French maestro of European diplomacy…
UKRAINE CRISIS: IS CHINA’S TILT TOWARDS RUSSIA IN BEIJING’S BEST LONG-TERM INTEREST?
TOM PLATE WRITES — The Chinese tilt towards Russia is understandable enough. It is immensely satisfying to be able to tell American leaders that China will do what it wants to do, whether the arrogant West likes it or not. China is the big deal now – or so goes…
POWER GAME: UKRAINE’S FATE WILL BE SHAPED BY DECISIONS FROM RUSSIA, CHINA AND AMERICA
TOM PLATE WRITES — Power is not always angelic. When the power to do something exists, it often gathers like a storm, ready to be unleashed. Power is also agnostic; it can be used for evil as well as for good. One thing is for certain. Without concentrations of power, not…
DIRE STRAITS: JAPAN, THE U.S. AND THE FUTURE OF TAIWAN
AIDAN SMITH-FAGAN WRITES — Japan’s Defense and Deputy Prime Ministers have both recently affirmed their government’s willingness to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the Chinese mainland. Those statements also coincided with a recent report from the Financial Times detailing joint US-Japanese military exercises in the hotly…
US-CHINA RELATIONS: POINTILLISM IS THE WAY TO GO
TOM PLATE WRITES — The late George Kennan became a diplomatic legend for advocating, while stationed in Moscow, a singular foreign policy idea that famously worked. It was called “containment”. Its steadfast observance by the US and its allies undoubtedly helped lead to the welcome collapse of the Soviet Union.…
TENSE CHINA-US RELATIONS: DO BIDEN AND XI HAVE THE ANSWER?
TOM PLATE WRITES — You have to wonder how well (if at all) General Secretary Xi Jinping and President Joseph Biden are going to get along. Imagine such a splendid scene as this! With TV cameras broadcasting live around the world you see the leader of the Peoples Republic of…
US-CHINA RELATIONS: A SUCCESSFUL BIDEN PRESIDENCY NEEDS TO HEAL BILATERAL TIES AND RESPECT ALLIES
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…
PHILIPPINES: PRESIDENT DUTERTE SCORES HIGH MARKS FROM FILIPINO FANS DESPITE LOW REGARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
LULU ALKHALIDI WRITES – In polls conducted by Pulse Asian between September 14 and September 20, the rating for Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s performance was 91%. The poll was of course conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, with 5% of the population giving a negative response while 4% were undecided. In…
BIDEN AND CHINA: ‘SLEEPY’ … OR POSITIVELY RESTLESS?
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.…
INDIA: WHY IT HAS BECOME SO IMPORTANT TO THE UNITED STATES
ZANE KRPAN WRITES — On the 16th of June, 2020, Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in a conflict over their disputed border for the first time since 1975. India reported twenty of its soldiers dead, but China did not release any information about casualties. The tension between China’s western border…
TRUMP AND XI: THE ERA OF NON-MAGICAL THINKING
TOM PLATE WRITES — Lockdown. Many of us have just been through it; others of us are still stuck in it. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the term usually meant the kind of harsh confinement that befall inmates of a penal institution in the wake of a prison riot. Slight…