Opinion - The Korea Times

Is strong Chinese leader bad for world?

By Tom plateLOS ANGELES ― As Hong Kongers can testify, political parades in the public square or citizen protests occupying a thoroughfare can hide as much as they reveal. Last week, Beijing put together for all the world to see a titanic military show, the first such lavish one in years, designed to knock people’s eyes out ― perhaps especially on the mainland. Yet just before that, in Central Tokyo, worried citizens ginned up a vastly smaller but still potent peace appeal that caught the eye of a world more familiar with Japan’s former militarism than widespread pacifism. The Beijing celebration was an official government showing; the Tokyo protest was anything but. Both events raise pressing questions for East Asia and the West.Japan, once Asia’s leading military power, held the region in fear until the cataclysmic end of the Second World War. Its abject surrender was what the bombastic Beijing display was cheering; but the Japanese need no help from anyone to recall that the end of their military era was punctuated with the atomic leveling of two cities.  Wo

Sep 11, 2015By Tom plate

Tom Plate

US, China as odd bedfellows

By Tom PlateChina, it seems, cannot win for losing. Exports-predator China is always “beating us,” bombastic billionaire businessman Donald Trump declaimed yet again on the campaign trail. But his timing on this point could have been better as it was not exactly the best possible moment to hold up China’s economy as any world-beater. What with the mainland’s growth rate slowing and its stock markets roiling, the panda seemed headed in a direction more lumbering bearish than takeover bullish.It would have been more far perversely astute to point out that even when the panda is hurting, the U.S. somehow still takes a “beating.” As  China slipped, the Dow Jones followed in step, falling to its lowest level since 2011. This was not due to Greece! Suddenly, our Federal Reserve has to rethink its plan to push abnormally low U.S. interest rates onto a higher shelf. So we conclude that, no matter what China does (shine or slump) its “beating” of America proceeds apace.Let us not replace irrational exuberance with irrational pessimism. How

Sep 6, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

China debate in US

By Tom Plate The first stop of many on the American presidential debate trail produced smashing TV ratings. Like much of the world, Americans are worried about where the U.S. is headed and what quality of person should lead it. In not much more than a year (and how time will fly!) our new White House decision will be foisted on the world, and everyone will have to live with it.One direction to which our early-on debate has not yet turned is to the China-relations question. The only candidate who seemed to make much it the other night last week was bombastic billionaire businessman Donald Trump. He muttered about how “we lose to China … we don’t beat China in trade,” whatever that might mean (U.S. should manufacture more cheap toys - what?).But what is sure to surface over the long campaign is that many Americans worry about the Sino-U.S. relationship, are either puzzled or troubled about China, or are convinced they know all the answers. (The notable exception is American businessmen: Though quite knowledgeable, their focus is on economics more than poli

Aug 14, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Japan's diplomatic privacy

BY Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― So what’s in a phrase? Sometimes, it seems, a great deal, but not always what the glib phrasemaker intended. History, we learn, often gets the last laugh. Our story begins years ago, you see, with a highly esteemed lady of the Washington establishment  (in fact, back then, she was our secretary of state  ― and no, not the former first lady now running for the presidency and, no, not the one from the Republican side of the aisle, but a lady who shall go nonetheless nameless). She once described the U.S., via national TV no less, as the “indispensible nation.” It was a phrase that made you catch your breath in the extraordinary foolish width of its hubris ― especially as it came out of the mouth of someone then America’s First Diplomat. I was on a reporting trip to Washington at the time, and when Singapore’s then ambassador ― the charismatic and popular Chan Heng Chee ― bluntly asked me my opinion of the remark, I was so embarrassed by our country and the undiplomatic hubris of its secretary of

Aug 9, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Problem between China, Japan

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― For all its problems, Japan requires no one’s sympathy. It remains a proud and successful nation, a unique and rewarding culture, and an economy not by any remote stretch of exaggeration or bizarre imagination an Asian Greece (suddenly the most turbulent modern economy). On the contrary, its per-capita income still dwarfs that of China’s, and for a population of 127 million ― only a touch more than Mexico’s and well short of Russia’s ― the fact is that its economy usually gets ranked as number three worldwide, even above powerhouse Germany. But Japan, the second largest financial contributor to the United Nations and a major global player in many other respects, does not always get respect. In part that’s because, these days, the land of the rising sun is dwarfed by the shadow of China.And now the Japanese people, among the most pacifist and anti-nuclear on earth, have become unsettled, somewhat on edge and perhaps feeling (wrongly or rightly) a little double-crossed. According to many opinion polls, they have begun t

Jul 13, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Gradual change for conservatives in HK

By Tom PlateLOS ANGELES ― At least in the first phase of the 21st century, widely viewed as the Asian Century, all major engagements with China will be highly significant. And the integrating experience of Hong Kong ― now part of China ― might just possibly prove more significant than any other. For if the integration process, which began in 1997 when the curtain officially and finally came down on British colonialism in Asia, proceeds apace, with goodwill and common sense on all sides, a most helpful precedent will have been established for all to observe. But should Hong Kong’s re-integration go off the rails of reason, the shock effect will be felt worldwide. The stakes, really, are no less than this.The latest controversy in the unfolding political-integration saga revolves around proposed revised procedures governing the 2017 election of the Chief Executive ― who, in effect, is the governor of a territory where 7 million people live. Issued by the local government, with Beijing’s involvement and approval, the revisions lay out a blueprint for a direct, one-perso

May 12, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Where will history place Lee Kuan-yew?

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― My differences of opinion with Lee Kuan Yew (which included views about the future role of China’s Community Party and other matters, but no matter here) included one about the character of his political genius. For that, as any fair-minded observer of the founding father of bustling modern Singapore knew, was what he was.But what was its nature?Lee and his followers, which much of the time included most of the people of Singapore, showed the world that economic self-improvement had to have public policies grounded in best-practice pragmatisms rather than in ideological schematics. It also required hard-working citizens sharing the vision to get off the ground.  Whether your political system was argumentative-parliamentarian, messy-democracy or shut-up authoritarian, the people had to be brought along and had to believe in the leader’s way of moving forward if they were to give it their best.“LKY” (as he used to sign his private notes) convinced people that his way – hard work, scientific public policy, poli

Mar 23, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

In Asia, all triangles may not prove eternal

BY Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Our intellectual (and tall) U.S. president is a well-known connoisseur of the sport of basketball. One of the game’s famous offensive strategies is called “the triangle.”  And so with the very welcome announcement by Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice of separate state-visit invitations to the leaders of China and Japan, the much-discussed but so far amorphous U.S. “pivot to Asia” looks to be taking on the shape of a triangle. But triangles, a common plot device of romantic novelists, can make for stormy and unstable relationships. Both Japan and China now field strong leaders with strong wills. America’s conduct in Asia has not always been consistent and is sometimes indifferent. Each might wish for the U.S. to choose between them, but with a long-abiding security treaty with Tokyo and economic ties to Beijing that are historically unprecedented, they both figure America will try to play both sides of the street. And despite the tension and everything, China’s Xi Jinping a

Feb 10, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Why the Bangkok Post spoke out

BY Tom Plate LOS ANGELES – A really good newspaper shows its true colors in a time of a great crisis.  Such a time has befallen Thailand, an otherwise gorgeous country ruled by an ugly military-junta. As I have written before, the decline of Thailand is just about the saddest political story in Asia; and the low, feckless profile of the Obama administration in Washington is almost beyond comprehension. The good newspaper is the Bangkok Post, the lead-circulation English language newspaper of this deeply confused Southeast Asian country so often thought of in the West (when thought of at all) mainly for its expansive open beaches and expansive open sex.  It is not easy being a good newspaper in Bangkok, especially now, where a paranoid coup-government sees enemies of the state under every other palm tree.  One such state enemy is a lady – a very nice lady who has never launched a mean-spirited campaign against anyone, much less organized a terrorist attack; and who tried her best to run the national government after her party’s landslide

Jan 26, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Why cartoonists are the 'mad men' of journalism

By Tom PlateLOS ANGELES ― As the editor in charge of the opinion pages of newspapers in New York and Los Angeles, what was the hardest part of my job? Dealing with annoying, demanding bosses? Calming down angry readers? Smoothing the enormous egos of neurotic writers? No, that was the easy part.The hard part was supervising the truly creative artist ― the crazy mind that could twist a lance into your brain to make a point that you knew in your heart was true but mere writers somehow found impossible to capture quite so deftly.Yes, I am talking about newspaper and magazine editorial cartoonists ― truly the “mad men” of journalism.In various positions at different U.S. newspapers, my job was to “supervise” them, an almost impossible task.Make no mistake about it: at their lampooning best, which is when they are at their meanest, they hardly ever show any mercy ― only respect for the truth … even if it is the truth as they see it. They don't care how you see it. There are no soft edges to their work. And they know how to hurt. Sorry to say, but most of the

Jan 13, 2015By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Read more

Is strong Chinese leader bad for world?

US, China as odd bedfellows

China debate in US

Japan's diplomatic privacy

Problem between China, Japan

Gradual change for conservatives in HK

Where will history place Lee Kuan-yew?

In Asia, all triangles may not prove eternal

Why the Bangkok Post spoke out

Why cartoonists are the 'mad men' of journalism

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