Opinion - The Korea Times

Is China really the bad guy?

By Tom PlateLOS ANGELES ― Hong Kong is one of the world’s great metropolises, most travelers concur, and China sports the world’s largest overall economy, most estimates agree. And so, if anything, when the two got re-connected years ago, it should have been a marriage made in political heaven ― David meets Goliath and they get hitched. Until recently, in fact, the relationship seemed to be bobbing along rather swimmingly. In 1997 Beijing, after long negotiations, took back Hong Kong from London, which had bossed the place since the mid-19th century. The territory’s economy then soared; not a whole lot of people there seemed to miss the British rule too terribly much and, on the whole, the iconic “one country/two systems” policy out of Beijing was playing well enough. But recently anti-Beijing anger began swirling around the world’s most spectacular harbor like a gathering typhoon. The agitation was over the specifics of the rules by which the territory’s 2017 general election would be run. Very briefly: Beijing would permit un

Sep 16, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Three people who never give up

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Life can make for strange but true comparisons. Here are three public figures for whom I have great admiration. On the surface they have very little in common except that they just never give up, and if you put them in a room together they would almost surely hit it off famously. They are very outspoken, direct, and on the whole sure of themselves. And they are great company. The first is the career comedienne and prominent TV show host Joan Rivers, 81. At this writing she was being treated in hospital after a serious heart attack. She had been in New York City to promote her new book (the aptly titled “Diary of a Mad Diva”), and then was scheduled to do a one-woman standup show at a nightclub in nearby New Jersey. Remember, now, she is 81. Her hit show “Fashion Police’’ is aired weekly. It rates celebrities’ fashion sense from a critical perspective, with all the reverence of a steak knife. The show is hilarious, assuming you can bear her notoriously bawdy excesses. Retirement, whether via golf o

Sep 4, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Tragedy in Thailand proceeds apace

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― More than almost any political crisis on the face of the earth today ― more than in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea; even more, in a way, than in dreadfully miserable Syria ― it is the crisis in Thailand that seems so sad. Because this tragedy need not have happened ― not at all.Very many people live in the shadow of unelected governments that they dislike, or even under elected governments for which they did not vote and perhaps even despise. But in this world (and quite possibly even in the next) rarely does one get everything he or she politically wants, certainly not all the time, and maybe not even often.But in Thailand some people ― too many people ― do want it all, and to achieve that aim they are prepared to deny everyone else almost everything.And so one feels terribly sorry for all those many people in Thailand that voted for the government of Yingluck Shinawatra (who became the 28th prime minister ― and first woman premier ― in Thailand’s history from the 2011 general election) and who now find this nice and hard-working lady out of th

May 16, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Getting a little hot over global warming

By Tom PlateLOS ANGELES ― Like each of his seven predecessors, the current occupant of the Office of Secretary General of the United Nations gets to pick his own impossible dream to pursue. And Ban Ki-moon certainly has his. But the SG disagrees he’s tilting at windmills, as skeptics of modern science scoff. He believes there’s nothing imaginary about problem No. 1 on his to-do list.For some past U.N. leaders, you see, past SG choices have included such obvious ones as “world peace” (good luck with that) or universal respect for human rights (oh sure, easy … Rwanda, etc. etc. etc.). But Ban, the former South Korean foreign minister who has served as UNSG since 2007, feels a special urgency about the global threat from radical climate change. And there’s just something about the way Ban tilts at the impossible dream of soliving that problem , and stays with it through bad and good, year after year, that makes you feel the world really ought to be following his lead ― maybe for once actually listening obediently to an urgent call from the U.N.Ban is

May 2, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Russia in Ukraine: beyond good and evil

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― “Ukraine Isn’t Armageddon.’’ Now, how bold and direct is that? That was the banner headline splashed over the most incisive journalism I have read on Vladimir Putin and the Crimea crisis. It led the April edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, the sharp monthly out of Paris. You won’t find anything like this analysis in the mostly war-baiting U.S. media. Being left-leaning, the Paris paper was not remotely defending “Tsar” Putin. And being French, Le Monde Diplomatique was determined to be (well, you know) contrarian. But in this instance, the French paper was persuasive. “Media treatment of recent events in Ukraine,” read the analysis by Olivier Zajec of France’s Institut de Strategie Comparee, “confirms that some in the West see international crises as Armageddons, conflicts between good and evil where the meaning of history is enacted, rather than as signs of differences of interest and perception between parties open to reason.” In the juvenile Manichea

Apr 20, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

US West Coast and Crimea crisis

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Viewed from Los Angeles, tiny Ukraine seems much, much farther away and remote from our core national interests than, for example, gigantic Indonesia. So perhaps something is wrong with us on the West Coast of the United States and we simply fail to understand history?This past weekend, the American mass news media, which is anchored on the East Coast of the U.S., in New York and Washington, was all over the “Crisis in the Crimea” like a rash on a baby. American television became Putin-obsessed, as if the Russian president were the new Hitler and President Obama a Neville Chamberlain, the vaunted Munich appeaser of Nazi evil. You know, it’s Her Putin with his finger on the trigger … today Kiev, tomorrow London.Yes, the U.S. West Coast perspective on global developments really is different and I would argue you don’t have to be naive to remain calm about Crimea.Doesn’t anyone remember his or her Machiavelli (I’ll bet Putin has read his)? “Only annex contiguous provinces,’’ the Prince was advis

Mar 11, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

The huge stakes in tragic Thailand

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― The stakes in the outcome of the ongoing Thai crisis are huge and go beyond the strict parameters of the country itself.Geopolitically, Thailand has been a solid U.S. ally, particularly during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Economically, it has been a vital force amid the cluster of Association of Southeast Asian states.  Demographically, it is anything but small, with a population greater than that of France or the United Kingdom or Spain or South Korea or Myanmar or South Africa. (Did you know that?) The domestic political crisis looks to be prolonged, and the possibility of catastrophic implosion remains very real.One has to wonder whether the world is taking the Thai crisis seriously enough.Is this unfolding drama, perhaps to end at the level of a viral Syrian tragedy? High enough on President Obama’s worry list? Is it not worthy of an intervention by Ban Ki-moon, the caring U.N. secretary general who ordinarily seems ever ready to minister to a crisis? Just take a quick look at Southeast Asia. In the region are countries struggl

Mar 4, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Is Japan heading in the wrong direction?

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― With the Japanese, one might venture to say, the love you take is equal to the love you make. For all their incredible achievements as the world’s third-largest economy, they are, after all, only human like the rest of us. So as tensions mount in East Asia over sea rights and island ownerships, we need to remind ourselves that nothing is gained without mutual respect, especially in the heat of disagreement.Japan’s global image should be better than it is ― certainly not the image its clumsiest politicians tend to present to the world. Its political system is a parliamentary democracy that takes in aspects of American mass politics and Japanese authoritarian structures. The result is often not a thing of beauty ― nothing to brag about like, say, elegant Japanese floral arrangements. But it has worked well enough to offer the imperial monarchy a continuing presence but at the same time not a political role. This is an achievement of no small significance that Asian neighbors might admire more attentively ― especially Thailand. The current gov

Feb 5, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Big stakes for Indonesia - and for the world

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Our favorite optimist of Asia is at it again, and may the gods of our future bless this learned man. He is Kishore Mahbubani, the savvy Singapore policy-school dean and acclaimed author whose most recent book ``The Great Convergence’’ might almost be considered an over-the-counter antidote to geopolitical depression. His latest asserted positive trend-line is none other than Indonesia, heretofore the famously troubled country and hypothetically hopeless archipelago of countless islands and numerous ethnicities and dazzling corruptions which in their totality would dampen the optimism of any normal mortal man. But not Mahbubani, who for years had been Singapore’s well-respected U.N. ambassador: For KM, Indonesia is a developing nation with immense promise and strategic importance as it is home to more Muslims than any country in the world. Here he is with his latest sunburst ― about a rising political star in Asia: Jakarta’s quietly charismatic governor Joko (Jokowi) Widodo: “Fortunately, many

Jan 19, 2014By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Fighting words

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― On the whole, a recent trip to China left me more hopeful than ever about the all-important U.S.-China relationship. Media officials, journalists and journalism students alike (my basic happy audience in three mainland cities) clearly want the relationship to improve. They want Americans to understand China better. For our part, every authoritative poll shows Americans wanting to think the best of China. Which is why I left China so worried ― I worry about the way we sometimes tend to talk about each other. We need to be more careful. Maybe I do worry too much but it does seem to me that our actual relationship is actually better than the words we sometimes use to describe it. Recently I have noticed two horrible phrases in particular befouling the Sino-U.S. vocabulary, like unwanted bats buzzing in on bad radar. They add stress to the relationship by emphasizing an unpleasant past instead of moving forward. On the U.S. side, I call your attention to the phrase “containment of China.” On the Chinese side, the p

Jul 15, 2013By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Read more

Is China really the bad guy?

Three people who never give up

Tragedy in Thailand proceeds apace

Getting a little hot over global warming

Russia in Ukraine: beyond good and evil

US West Coast and Crimea crisis

The huge stakes in tragic Thailand

Is Japan heading in the wrong direction?

Big stakes for Indonesia - and for the world

Fighting words

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