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November 22, 2024
 

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Tom Plate

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Tom Plate
Tom Plate, a veteran American columnist and career journalist, is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His many books include the "Giants of Asia" series, of which book four, "Conversations with Ban Ki-Moon: The View from the Top," is the latest.
COMMENTARY
Apr 22, 2011
Latest word from Mahathir
Before the prime ministry of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, not that many people had ever heard of Malaysia, outside of adjacent Singapore, which shared a common border as well as an intense mutual antipathy that entertained the rest of Southeast Asia for decades.
COMMENTARY
Apr 17, 2011
U.S. need more advice from a good friend
Know thy enemy? That's a good idea, especially for us Americans when we set out to police the world. Another good idea is to know who our real friends are. Confusion, in this age of a so-called "clash of civilizations" - where the enemy is said to be Islam - is definitely a bad idea.
COMMENTARY
Mar 21, 2011
U.S. gesture would reduce risks posed by weak Kan government
LOS ANGELES — It was a perfect (if quiet) storm in the tense triangular relationship among Beijing, Tokyo and Washington, but with all the noise coming from North Africa and the Middle East, hardly anyone noticed three developments.
COMMENTARY
Feb 2, 2011
Beijing should take a leaf out of Li Na's book
LOS ANGELES — A metaphor for our dramatic world geopolitical change occurred in Melbourne at the prestigious Australian Open. There, even as time-honored warriors Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal were eliminated, a Chinese woman slammed her way into history. The relentless Li Na became the first Asian...
COMMENTARY
Jan 9, 2011
A unifying method to Kim Jong Il's 'genius'
LOS ANGELES — You have to be dumber than a brick to believe that the North Korea problem can be solved by anything other than diplomacy and negotiation. Even the Macho Man of South Korea seems to have been hit with a bout of annoying but inescapable reason.
COMMENTARY
Dec 26, 2010
Growing a world-class university in Arabia
DUBAI — From the Malay Peninsula to the Arabian Peninsula, it is the wise ruler who knows two of the most basic rules of modern economic development.
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2010
Always expect the unexpected in politics
LOS ANGELES — Sometimes truly strange things happen in life. For those of us on America's West Coast, who would have thought that Jerry Brown would become governor of California again? His first time out as our chief state executive (in his 30s, and full of rather unconventional ideas), they called...
COMMENTARY
Nov 7, 2010
The life and times of an American 'mentor'
LOS ANGELES — As far as I know, Nebraska-born Theodore "Ted" Sorensen, who died last week at 82, disagreed with me only twice. He was right both times.
COMMENTARY
Oct 22, 2010
Are China and Japan on a collision course?
LOS ANGELES — The people of China and Japan deserve better leadership at the top than they have been getting. But better leadership is not immediately in prospect for either ancient nation. That means relations between the two giant economies will probably get worse, when improvement is urgently needed...
COMMENTARY
Aug 22, 2010
Flying the humanitarian flag among Muslims
NEW YORK — What's the one major issue the West absolutely and totally must get right in the years ahead? If the obvious answer is not peaceful international relations with an increasingly assertive China, then it has to be the West's ever-more complicated relationship with the world's Muslims.
COMMENTARY
Aug 8, 2010
Interesting times on Asia's south-east seas
LOS ANGELES — The Obama administration is raising the U.S. profile in the South China Sea and in the newly troubled seas around the Korean Peninsula. Its decisions are sound enough, and they have been put forth carefully and with proportionality, but they do entail risks and may test the China-U.S....
COMMENTARY
Jun 11, 2010
Who to credit for Asia's extraordinary rise?
LOS ANGELES — The extraordinary rise of Asia in recent decades cannot be understood or appreciated without some reference to outstanding leadership. Consider the experience of other regions of the world.
COMMENTARY
Jun 6, 2010
Another political circus act flops in Tokyo
LOS ANGELES — The prime minister of Japan has just resigned. Big deal.
COMMENTARY
May 1, 2010
President Lee demonstrates cool in crisis
LOS ANGELES — It is true that there is not much that Lee Myung Bak could reasonably do, one way or the other, in response to the sinking of a South Korean naval patrol vessel in the Korean seas. But what little the president of that country has done, he has done near perfectly. This needs to be noted....
COMMENTARY
Apr 26, 2010
China's true supporters versus the hackers
Caring about China can be hard to do. Many Chinese, for starters, resent it when others express concern, viewing it as an intrusion, especially when the other party disagrees with something China has done.
COMMENTARY
Apr 15, 2010
Thailand's bloodshed is unbefitting of a king
Even viewing the spectacle from afar, it is utterly brutal on the emotions to observe an otherwise wondrous people and culture tearing itself in two. No one who has ever been treated to the endless charm and hospitality of the Thai people could be blamed for practically breaking into tears over the sight...
COMMENTARY
Apr 7, 2010
How Google got too hot for China's kitchen
It is one of the positives of my largely happy life that I never found myself in the field of public relations with a client like Beijing. It's not that there aren't many wondrously good stories about China — hundreds of millions of otherwise dirt-poor people moving up into a better economic life,...
COMMENTARY
Mar 31, 2010
Why China kills a chicken to scare monkeys
It may be that Zhu Rongji is the most important Chinese political figure since the death of Mao Zedong's relatively enlightened successor Deng Xiaoping, I don't know. As China's previous premier (number two of the whole place) he was certainly the key technical engineer of China's audacious and epochal...
COMMENTARY
Mar 17, 2010
China's diplomacy suffering an identity crisis
Chinese diplomacy generally comes in all sizes and shapes, but until relatively recently the size was small and the shape a question mark.
COMMENTARY
Mar 11, 2010
The U.S. media badly needs a wakeup call
Different societies allow their news media different roles. In most countries the media is subordinated to power, whether of the government or the ruling class. Surprisingly or not, the American model is not widely emulated globally.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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