Pacific Perspectives Front Page, a publication of the Asia Pacific Media Network

'Our prosperity is not a threat to our neighbors'

2011-10-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Modern-day China still seems to search for a clear-headed sense of its true self and its proper place in the 21st-century sun.

Where and how this otherwise predictable resource-seeking superpower will fit into the scheme of things on this troubled planet is the 1.3 billion people question. The leaders of China repeatedly deny that their country of many storied millennia has any ambition whatsoever to mushroom into a dragonlike hegemon. But precisely that scenario has been the consistent pattern of rising and ambitious nations throughout history.

Yet China, we are told by China, will be different. But will it? Indeed, why should it be different from any other potent power in the course of history?

Still, a newly re-proclaimed sense of defined difference was the urgent message under conveyance in an extraordinary new white paper issued the week before last by the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China.

The State Council, roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Cabinet, issues all sorts of statements and releases, to be sure. And you can forget about most of them. But this one was different. It arrived at nearly 9,000 words and, despite the artlessly disarming title "China's Peaceful Development," was aimed at shooting down any suspicion or worry that China is trying to become a military monster.

Here is a typical thematic statement from this State Council opus: "China's peaceful development has departed from the traditional pattern where a rising power was bound to see hegemony. China does not seek regional hegemony or a sphere of influence, nor does it want to exclude any country from participating in regional cooperation. China's prosperity, development and long-term stability represent an opportunity rather than a threat to its neighbors."

The very fact that the State Council set out to impart such a self-justifying "state of the Chinese union" address to the world is revealing in itself. It tells us that it is worried that its past promises of "peaceful rising," endlessly repeated under the Hu Jintao government, have not been received with universal credulity.

The pointed and panoramic text was made instantly public in English as well as Chinese. English availability was widespread on the Internet, and China Daily, the country's showcase English-language newspaper, added analysis as well as commentary to the word-for-word translation.

An extra point about China Daily needs to be made. The newspaper is no longer little more than some lame-brained government handout. Yes, its political priorities and philosophy absolutely reflect those of the Communist Party power elite. But that is part of its value: No other newspaper available to the West so well reflects Beijing's worldview, and as China's growth to superpower status proceeds apace, understanding those views (while not necessarily accepting them) is vital to improving the Sino-U.S. relationship.

What's more, in its reporting of the State Council's survey of China's intent and intentions, China Daily augmented the official line without crossing over it as if trying to deny current accepted doctrine. This is another feature of the paper's editorial evolution worth noting. The main story, for example, emphasized that questions about China's intentions come not only from the West and its immediate neighbors — with whom it has been quarreling over disputed territories and sea rights — but sometimes from its own citizens as well.

In its main story, the associate dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University was quoted as admitting to nationalistic pressures within China that would prefer a less-peaceful rising. "Some domestic voices argue that China should be more aggressive in the international arena," the paper quoted the well-known Wang Yizhou as saying. But that view is not correct, he insisted, as the new white paper "tells the public that China should remain modest and prudent in its diplomacy."

Of course, it will be deeds, and not so much words, that will in the end define China's image in the world. As long as its many gunboats bump up against those of smaller nations in the vast seas around China, doubts about what China is really up to will surface anew. As long as it appears to reject as viable the major American naval presence in Asia, those suspicions will deepen, especially in the West.

China, therefore, does need to accept the stated wisdom of the State Council's exceptional policy statement and take it to heart. For not even China's breathtaking rise in the world can erase certain realities.

One is that China's views on international disputes will not always be well accepted. Another is that its neighbors have their own sincere and indeed urgent interests to protect. And the third is that the U.S., whatever its newly discovered financial predicament, is not going to withdraw from Asia and its oceans.

China must keep its militarists and military at bay — a chore we in the U.S. have as well. Otherwise there is going to be trouble that inevitably both sides will profoundly regret. The State Council's own wise warning on this point was well taken — and, in fact, much appreciated.

American journalist Tom Plate, distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific affairs at Loyola Marymount University, is the author of the Giants of Asia series, which includes “Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad,” “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew,” and "Conversations with Thaksin." He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com. © 2011, Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Originally published September 19, 2011 in The Japan Times.

Taiwan Redux

2011-10-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES ― The Taiwanese are being permitted to buy a $6 billion bundle of military goodies from the United States, but, says the Obama Administration, they are not to get their hands on the hot new jet fighters they want (measly upgrades only). Even so, from across the inherently-tense Taiwan Strait, China is in official huffy protest, allegedly angry that the U.S. is selling Taiwan anything at all.

At the same time, the governing Beijing elite are trying to keep a composed public face. Well short of seeming wimpy to the home crowd, it nonetheless is demonstrating scant appetite for showy preliminaries to World War Three. And for that, of course, the entire world is grateful. Thus would include the incumbent Taiwan administration of President Ma Ying-jeou, now campaigning for re-election on its policy of engagement, not confrontation, with the mainland.

Please note that it is not just China but also the United Nations and the vast majority of governments around the world that do not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent government. But that does not mean anyone wishes to see it swallowed whole by the People’s Liberation Army. Or that it doesn’t function as a separate entity.

Hence, America’s history of take-away-and give-back with Taiwan will remain a substantial thorn in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship for the foreseeable future. And so we have today a story that illustrates what is really going on behind the scenes.

It concerns an official of the Chinese government I met some years ago. He was a diplomat assigned to the West Coast of the United States. This relatively young man was also (I knew…) a member of the secretive Ministry of State Security.

I had no problem with that. All over the globe, representatives of many governments, assuming positions like economic or cultural attaché, sometimes do double duty as secret agents. Why should China be any different? Besides, this gentleman was charming and his dedication to his homeland unparalleled. At one point he asked me point-blank something like: ``Do you really think the American people care enough about Taiwan to go to war to defend it if it ever came to that?”

I knew that question came from deep within the bowels of Chinese state security, and that my answer, whatever it was, would get back to those bowels: so I offered an answer as honest as possible. I said:

I have no idea.

However, I did add: The American character adores underdogs (think Kuwait, summer 1990, Iraq’s invasion … the U.S. public solidly behind President George Bush Sr., not just because of oil). Think … oh, well, as just a wild example: Taiwan under attack from the overbearing China giant.

I think he got it: This peculiar Americanism could not be ignored.

I also think he agreed with me that the thorny Taiwan issue will not fatally disrupt the evolving, historically pivotal and potentially volatile China-U.S. relationship as long as the professional foreign-policy establishments on both sides of the Pacific are permitted to keep the issue under wraps. In this spirit, the kind of quiet trans-Pacific diplomacy between Beijing and Washington that necessarily preceded the recent halfway-house arms-deal decision needs to be massively applauded. In fact, the argument could be made that the diplomats involved in sorting this issue out again ought to be put up for a collective Nobel Peace Prize (some past awardees have accomplished a lot less…).

The pros on both sides well realize that the safest ground is a middle ground of foggy ambivalence. This means keeping the issue (1) on the back burner, (2) under the radar, (3) out of the spotlight … well, all over-writing aside, you get the idea.

Ordinarily, low-keying things is not easy with high-profile foreign policy issues, especially if you are President of the United States ― and even if you are President of the People’s Republic of China. For in this age of social media and all manner of hard-to-suppress media technology, the flash-point mood of the public can quickly become the titanic twitter of the moment, no matter the structure of the political system.

So, keeping the Taiwan issue from metastasizing into a mass issue won’t be easy, in America or China. In the U.S., all major foreign policy decisions are invariably Presidential decisions, as the late, great Theodore Sorensen used to put it to his graduate-students at Princeton. He’d say something like: ``Gentlemen, the Secretary of State might offer good advice or bad advice. But it is the President’s decision that is decisive for the big ones.”

So here’s another related story: In 1996 the angry Chinese created a fuss with a flurry of missile volleys deliberately aimed well off target ― but still in the general direction of Taiwan. The U.S. responded by dispatching an aircraft carrier group. Military advisors urged then President Bill Clinton to permit the carrier to steam into the Strait between the island and the mainland in a determined show of U.S. force.

That such an incendiary move did not happen was due to the intervention of wiser heads. They included the-then U.S. Ambassador to China, James Sasser, a good old-boy from Tennessee. In a rare use of personal privilege, the former senator personally telephoned Clinton at the White House to warn that such a maneuver would be viewed by China as the intervention of an imperialist bully in what Beijing regarded as an internal matter.

Sasser was right. And Clinton ― bless him ― did listen. The carrier group halted outside the gates of the Strait; then, the Chinese high command un-cocked their weapons; and the crisis wound down. But it was a close call ― closer than is generally known.

What will happen if a similar scenario were to arise again? It’s the job of the diplomats on both sides of the Pacific to somehow see that it doesn’t. Blessed be the brave warriors of under-the-radar ambiguity. And applaud the fog of non-war.

Originally published September 29, 2011 in the Korea Times.

Freedom from those democracy cliches

2011-09-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Political man is a complicated species. Cultural conditions and histories differ widely. Humility in the interpretation and prediction of human nature is the wisest bet.

The evolving "Arab Spring", as the media term it, in the Middle East and North Africa is viewed through Western eyes as if it's the transformation of "Ali Baba and the Seven Thieves" into Thomas Jefferson and the International Court of Justice. This is a joke, and an insult to the Arab political man.

Western eyes are often shaded by ideological or provincial thinking. Other political cultures arise from different circumstances than the West and shape their thinking accordingly. Western democratic forms of government transplant only with dignity and are no cure-all.

The Philippines with a Western-style democracy has less economic development to show for it than any number of autocracies.

Even in the US right now, our sometimes elegant and venerable democracy seems on the verge of running out of gas. Its theoretical one-man, one-vote inclusiveness seems mostly notable nowadays for producing brain-dead divisiveness along partisan lines and thus gridlock.

The "Arab Spring" is especially complicated - and hugely important of course.

Regarding Egypt, almost all Western observers imagine that ancient civilization as evolving Western style. But we should wager a different outcome: Yes, people there are frustrated and angry up to a point.

Egyptians are volatile but not desperately irrational. They want palpable material progress and won't settle for less. But the ousted long-time Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak was not totally evil. Somewhere in their hearts Egyptians know this. They simply want choices and a sense of genuine hope for themselves and their children. What particular political form allows them to attain that is not as big a deal to them. They will be flexible on form as long as they get results in hand.

In Indonesia, the late Suharto was a dictator, to be sure, but he was no Mussolini. He left behind a mainly unified country now proceeding to develop at its own pace and style its Muslim democracy. It is a potentially thrilling story.

Malaysia is now in street-demonstration turmoil, even as the economy has been solid. The government's police-crackdown response has only made the country less stable. Just because politicians have been elected more or less democratically, which doesn't make them smart enough to handle the tough spots of governing.

In neighboring Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, now 88, was no "Little Hitler", as a New York Times columnist once tarred that country's exceptional modern founder.

And so when Lee's long-ruling party garnered "only" 60 percent or so of the total votes, he felt the winds of change blowing in his face and retired from government for a long-deserved rest.

His country now moves slowly toward a genuine two-party system, but don't hold your breath and think it will become Switzerland or Sweden next year. In some sense, Singapore will always be Singapore.

A yearning for clone-like Western-style democracy is not universal. Neither is it wise. Surely Afghanistan would be better off with an "Islamic Lee Kuan Yew" than, say, a Western Jimmy Carter. Democracy fundamentalists who continue to believe Iraq is good to soon copy the British parliament had better not get their hopes up. Even if preying Iran decides not to exploit after the Americans exit, Iraq without some kind of modern Leviathan might just be ungovernable.

The political tsunami in Thailand, well illustrates the folly of simplistic thinking. The recent election of the opposition by a powerful 2-1 margin was as much about what the Thais don't want as what they do.

On the not-wanted side, the majority said they don't want military government that produces little more than ribbons for generals, and they don't want more than half the country left out of the inner circle so that the greedy elite can slurp up all the spoils themselves.

If a parliamentary democracy now headed by Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of the incisive but controversial Thaksin Shinawatra, living in Dubai, can produce that change in Thailand, fine. If not, then further change will come. They might even rent a Lee Kuan Yew for a time if things don't get better.

People - from Arabs to Thais - want opportunity and choices. They want better governance, whatever form it takes; and they want a voice and a measure of participation. How precisely they get it is less important than that they do.

The point is extremely simple, even though human beings are not. If democracy provides progress, that's what they want. But what they are searching for isn't a political ideal but something more down to earth: a practical and credible political delivery vehicle. It only stands to reason.

China's smart diplomacy

2011-09-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES – China’s new and first aircraft carrier isn’t fully operational yet. But whatever its ultimate naval potency, we know that it does at least float! It’s currently in a mainland dock for further dressing up and hosting of crew training before setting sail.

We recall that the very idea of China even acquiring an aircraft carrier, when originally floated by Beijing, was not popular elsewhere. Hearts sank around the world, then enamored with China’s declared policy of “peaceful rising.” Why would a truly peaceful-rising country need an aircraft carrier?

The answer is that the Chinese apparently want what the Americans have. It’s not that China is preparing for war as far as anyone knows with the U.S. It’s simply behaving as any rising power has throughout history. It now has serious money to throw around, so why not have a serious military to throw around, too?

You could perhaps wish otherwise, but then you’d be guilty of seriously wishful thinking, if not self-delusion. So let’s sit at the feet of Harvard’s Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who explains how the world really turns – and how rising powers tend to burn their money on arms – in his masterful and essential new book The Future of Power.

It goes like this: Even under the inward-looking Mao Zedong, China marshaled a large army and of course had a tranche of nuclear weapons. His successor Deng Xiaoping kept China’s focus on economic modernization and “warned his compatriots to eschew external adventures that might jeopardize this internal development,” as Nye writes. Even so, the People’s Liberation Army always was at the top table: China’s leaders were no Gandhi-pacifists decked out in Nehru jackets.

The former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government rightly credits the “peaceful rising” advertising to current China President Hu Jintao, who stylistically preferred what might be called a foreign-relations approach of “soft power.” This clever term was practically invented by Nye and is the exact title of his previous book, a bestseller. “By accompanying the rise of its hard power with efforts to make itself more attractive,” he writes, “China aimed to reduce the fear and tendencies that might otherwise grow among its neighbors.”

That worked quite well for a time but two things served to undermine it. One was China’s new feistiness in seeming to assert every single territorial claim it has in the Pacific against its neighbors. That sent off alarm bells throughout the region. Countries, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, which in the past had little appetite for openly hooking up with the U.S. were suddenly inviting Uncle Sam to dinner. Nye understands their alarm: “Over-confidence in power assessment (combined with insecurity in domestic affairs) led to a more assertive Chinese foreign policy behavior in the latter part of 2009.”

The Harvard professor, who has held positions in both the U.S. State and Defense Department, takes the view that China has to be careful not to lose its sense of balance, scare its neighbors half to death and play into the hands of those in the West who are convinced that military conflict with China is inevitable. A consensus over that would trigger a U.S. military buildup of potential Cold War dimensions. Even so, Nye, and many others, worry whether China is “beginning to deviate from the smart strategy of a rising power and violating the wisdom of Deng, who advised that China should proceed cautiously and skillfully keep a low profile’.”

That was certainly good advice for China when Deng was alive. But to hope that China will continue to low-key it, especially on the naval front, when the United States preeminent Seventh Fleet continues to bob in Pacific waters, is not realistic. If the U.S. had taken the initiative to lower its own naval profile in the Asia-Pacific, maybe a strategic bargain might have been struck. But with its treaty commitments to Japan and South Korea – and a bunch of other stuff – the U.S. was never going to do that. China wants to do its own thing, anyhow.

Thus, the Chinese naval buildup – and it is significant – is less alarming than logical. After all, Beijing’s interests sometimes do conflict with ours. For instance, it views both Taiwan and Tibet as integral parts of core China, not as aggressive acquisitions – potential or actual. The central government will appear to lack credibility if it has no muscle. That’s the way many Chinese look at it.

Thus, some measure of tension – rising, falling, whatever – is inevitable. But war is not. Smart diplomacy on both sides can work wonders. That’s why Nye’s book The Future of Power is such pertinent reading. He explains, clearly and so very knowledgably, why soft power can be more powerful and effective than the harder kind. Elites on both sides of the Pacific should make reading this smart book a must read if they really are mutually committed to a peaceful rising.

Originally published August 15, 2011 in the Korea Times

Another term for Ban Ki-moon

2011-09-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

What’s surprising about the probable confirmation of incumbent United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a second five-year term is not its near-certainty! It is the virtual lack of controversy surrounding it.

This is to say that if you judged the former South Korean foreign minister’s first-term solely by the generally critical news media coverage of it, you might be led to conclude that his tenure has been a failure. And yet the probability is that the member states of the Security Council and the General Assembly will react to his formal announcement of candidacy this week with little dissent at all.

So the question we might want to ask is: Why in the world is that? Why do we read and see one version of reality in our news media, and yet the true reality would appear to be something quite different.

There are several reasons.

The first is that the vast percentage of the negative coverage of Ban’s first-term has come from the news media of the West. You can troll all day in the news media of Asia, for example, and be hard pressed to find much disapproval of this quiet man. To be sure, you might be tempted to dismiss this virtual negative-news blackout as homeboy favouritism. Or it just might be that much of Asia is actually pretty comfortable with Ban’s performance, noting that at least his administration has not been hit with the kind of embarrassing scandals that plagued the administration of his predecessor Kofi Annan. Absent as well has been the kind of dysfunctional antagonism from the permanent members of the UN Security Council that confined to one term the UN career of Annan’s predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

There is an additional, related reason. The fact of matter is that much of the non-Western world loathes us Western journalists and our constant sock-em-in-the-eye faultfinding approach to everything. Negative but honest journalism absolutely has its place but too much of it is depressing, like rank bad weather.

It might not even be too much to suggest that Ban’s chance for renewal only increased in the eyes of some Asian member states with each negative story in the Western press. Certainly Beijing, whose influence in this UN process these days cannot be overestimated, has had little but contempt for the general Western coverage of Ban’s work. Having agreed in 2006 to Ban’s candidacy in concurrence with Washington — a particularly useful example of substantive Sino-American cooperation at the highest level — Beijing was not about to have its judgment second-guessed by so-called news media experts anywhere, especially in the West. The enormous and disproportionate influence of the Western news media on the world media stage, even as it is being eroded daily by the free-for-all of the Internet, sometimes boomerangs. As, for example, it did in this case.

Yet another factor is the considerable loathing — in Beijing and elsewhere, but particularly in Asia — of the media’s insatiable appetite for what is usually termed charisma. Over and over and over, the Western media especially has correctly reported that Ban doesn’t have much of it, to which his many supporters retort: So what? How shall we define charisma and is it more chimera than content?

Questioning the value of charisma is particularly relevant in assessing Ban. While he certainly is not, as has been pointed out by one senior Western official who declined to be identified, “lightning in a bottle,” he has brought to the UN a number of other qualities that make you suspect that maybe charisma (however defined) is overrated.

And what might some of these qualities be?

For starters: basic and indeed advanced competence. Ban has been a professional diplomat all his life and his last non-UN job — that of South Korean foreign minister — is no joke (especially when you consider what lurks up north, and who else prowls around that difficult neighbourhood). Ban has also previously served at the UN in New York and had done so with distinction. Notably, he has not feared to put the UN behind the toughest issues, especially global warming.

This is why Ban is getting a second-term. He is a worker. And, as you may have noticed lately, the world sure does need a lot of work.

So guess what? Some people think a guy who works hard and is obviously honest and tries the best with what has been given to him (both genetically, and institutionally) deserves a pat on the back — and in this case five more years in office.

Makes sense to me.

Originally published June 5, 2011 in the Khaleej Times.

Kissinger analysis key to understanding China

2011-09-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — It is very tempting to proclaim "On China" as the most important new nonfiction book of 2011. But that it may well be.

Several reasons compel this judgment.

The first is that this extraordinarily clear-headed analytical study has just one central focus: China. It does not wander all over the lot and try to incorporate some tiny study of Montenegro: For China is the home for close to one out of every four citizens of this planet and, of course, China is no longer asleep.

Reason number two is that any authoritative study of China, such as this one, helps us understand the all-important China-U.S. relationship. What are the stakes here? It seems reasonable to believe that if Beijing and Washington construct their policies on parallel tracks that are as accommodative of each other as is consistent with their respective national interests, then the probability of a world war occurring will be greatly reduced.

Those are therefore some stakes.

The third obvious reason why this book merits special ranking is that its author is Henry Kissinger, now 88.

Whatever your politics and whatever you may think of him (the seriously illegal bombing of Cambodia, Watergate, Nixon, the wiretapping of his own aides, etc.) this is a deep thinker who knows China the way (say) Bill Gates knows the logic of software or Stephen Sondheim lyrics.

The former Harvard professor was, after all, the policy pioneer who in the early 1970s made history with his boss, President Richard Nixon, by tearing down the diplomatic wall between America and China. Since then, Kissinger has tracked China's evolution with patience and perspective and surely understands it at least as well as anyone outside China.

This is why "On China" has, in the book's initial reception on the mainland, gotten such great press. China Daily, the largest English language newspaper, hailed the book, drawing on a dispatch from its New York office, as the number-one story of the day (May 31). The banner headline across the top read: "Kissinger's Book a Warning to China, U.S." The point of the article was that the author's historical perspective affords an analysis of China's behavior and intent that absolutely must inform policymaking on both sides of the Pacific. The Kissinger book, wrote China Daily, offers "a clue of how the world's two largest economies should handle their relations."

This is not exactly faint praise. And the importance of getting that relationship right (balanced, contextual, stable, mutually regarding) is vital, whatever — again — one thinks of the author. Implicit in the China Daily article is the fear that, in getting the bilateral relationship right, neither side is blameless. Hence the headline's finger-pointing at China as well as the U.S.

Kissinger's methodology is not new, but in some ways, in this day and age of fancy-statistics social science, it is unusual: Let the remorseless lessons of the past be the best guide as to what the future might hold.

Only the sweeping and unemotional gaze of history can offer a proper perspective on the events and personalities of our era. This is why this new book could well contribute to world peace and stability if Beijing and Washington permit its central themes to be influential.

What are those themes? Just one example will have to suffice: Consider Chapter 13, about why China decided to go to war against communist "comrade" Vietnam in the late 1970s. This took place, of course, even after the mighty U.S. had unceremoniously withdrawn ... defeated, exhausted, demoralized.

The value of the analysis of the interaction between Hanoi and Beijing is its clarity, and its emphasis on the decisive role of national-interest over ideology. After all, here were two alleged communist countries going at each other fiercely. Most observers at the time were shocked. But by analyzing China from the perspective of its traditional tactic of "preemptive deterrence," and viewing Hanoi from its long-held regionally imperialistic ambitions, the author demonstrates why the behavior of neither country was demonstrably irrational, much less unpredictable.

To put it plainly, the Chinese had concluded that an advancing Vietnam would not stop with the occupation of only Cambodia and, unless deterred, would go on to gobble up Thailand (and then presumably Malaysia and Singapore as well). Yes, Beijing believed in the Domino Theory, too! The end result would be a Southeast Asian mini-empire on China's doorstep (sort of like a North and South Korea united under Seoul backed by the U.S. military — another potential nightmare scenario for Beijing).

Why is this history so relevant? Well, just follow Kissinger's analysis further and what you get is a better understanding of the current tension and turmoil in the South China Sea. Why is China behaving as it is (that is, badly)? Why is Hanoi playing so curiously nice-nice with America, even as the scars of the terrible war with the U.S. remain evident today (because it trusts China even less and detests it even more than the U.S.).

Without the benefit of historical perspective, the present remains inscrutable and the future a constant surprise. But not so much if you carefully read your Kissinger. This invaluable book is very highly recommended.

Originally published June 22, 2011 in The Japan Times.

A very risky — IMF style

2011-09-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

We need to have a clear understanding about what is happening with the International Monetary Fund.

Do not for a minute believe the current scandal is just one of those more or less happening things. It may not be the total end of the world for the IMF, but if the world’s largest money-granting bureaucracy doesn’t straighten its act out soon, the beginning of the end of its primacy may be at hand.

The current reassessment comes about in the wake of the embarrassed resignation amid the sordid sex-assault scandal of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the once-Olympian IMF director, and the consequent scramble to anoint a successor to the powerful position of global bailout banker-in-chief.

Although not that widely known, the IMF plays a key part in world affairs and is easily in the same league of importance as the United Nations. Much of the time the IMF worries about un-thinkables --- such as world financial catastrophe. Most normal people, we would agree, do not fret much about global financial stability. They assume they will always be able to make a visit to an ATM and emerge liquid; send out personal checks that do not bounce; and get institutions to add cash to their businesses with long-term loans.

Normal people do not live in a world in which one could imagine that the long-term economic outlook was so volatile that long-term loans would be unimaginably scarce and almost everything would be up for grabs — though we did have a bitter taste of exactly that with the 2008 recession.

But IMF staffers are not normal people and they live in just such a world of fear. Their worst-case scenarios prudently make the assumption that the world may come to chaos and ruination at any time, presumably triggered by a country or countries whose finances are so bad that its only next logical step is default on its overwhelming sovereign debt. The theory being that one country’s default will lead to another’s and before you know it the world is staring at a cascade of fallen dominos. This is called financial contagion.

So we do need the IMF, with its many banked billions at the ready to bail out some troubled country from defaulting and threatening to push other sectors of the global financial system off the cliff. Stability is what the IMF’s balancing-acts are all about.

But in this regard the sometimes-effective IMF has also proven a sometimes-nightmare to deal with.  Just ask Asia. During the frightening Asian Financial Crisis in the late nineties, the IMF seemed the proverbial wicked witch, cackling with glee as it  effectively blackmailed governments into adopting budgets and reforms that were political suicide as well as obvious formulas for short-term economic convulsion.

The rare Asian leader who said  ‘no’ to the IMP, such as Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad, became an overnight living legend.

That is the rueful memory of the IMF among many millions of good people in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. To them the European-US dominated bailout bureaucracy exhibited neo-colonial behaviour in its arrogant response to the Asian crisis. Its draconian reforms, required as conditions for the billion-dollar loans, led to unnecessary pain, from social disorder, unemployment, and even outbreaks of suicides. In its own candid post-mortem, the IMF admitted its programmatic inflexibility had added to the severity of that crisis. That was to understate the matter.Since then, however, how the times have changed! Asia has emerged from those dark days stronger than ever and potentially in the driver’s seat of the world economy for decades to come. Taken all together it already accounts for well more than half of the world’s population and economy.

But Asia still doesn’t get much respect from Washington, where the IMF has its headquarters. Driven by the resurrection of China from its near-death experience of Mao, and a rising India, Asia is now demanding to be permitted to sit at the head table, not on the IMF back porch begging for scraps from the rich white boys’ club.

But here is the problem: As the IMF power elite proceeds apace to select a successor to risque-business Strauss-Kahn, accused of a sex assault on a New York hotel employee last week, there is almost no chance at all the job will go to an Asian. Basically the boys want to keep it within the Euro-American club. Outsiders need not apply.

But it is in that field of outsiders, especially from Asia, that one finds some of the very best successor prospects. Consider that Asia offers genuine brainiacs such as Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Palaniappan Chidambaram from India; Andrew Sheng and Zhou Xiaochuan from China; and, last but not least, Sri Mulyani Indrawati from Indonesia. These are serious players to whom attention must be paid.

Another significant prospect, Tharman Shanmugaratnam – from the small Asian economic power, Singapore – has just been named the country’s deputy prime minister and is thus viewed as now unavailable. But the very respected Tharman, who is also the IMF’s chair of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, had wise words for the IMF power elite this weekend. He urged that the selection process be “open, transparent and merit-based, so as to ensure the selection of a highly capable candidate, with the qualities needed to engage with a broad group of stakeholders internationally, and sustain the Fund’s active and effective role in global economic management.”

Translation: Think imaginatively, Selection Committee. You have got to get this one right. And that would be a towering understatement.

Originally published May 25, 2011 in The Japan Times.

2011-09-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

It may be quintessentially American to believe that elections are good things and their absence inherently bad — in theory.

In reality, everyone knows that elections sometimes seem more trouble than they are worth and can produce unwanted results. This is what happened in the tiny city-state of Singapore recently.

First, don’t say anything negative about elections to most Americans — at least out loud. In private, you might quickly mention a few uncomfortable examples to flesh out your point:

· In 1992 the Islamic party won elections in Algeria and when the scared army intervened and coup-ed the winners out, the lack of protest from “democratic Europe” was all but deafening.

· About 10 years ago, in Thailand, the ruling party of gifted but controversial politician Thaksin Shinawatra was elected twice — overwhelmingly. But the powers-that-be in Bangkok didn’t like that and since 2006 Thaksin has been cooling his heels in exile.

In 2006, Palestinian parliamentary elections were held, in large part due to US urging, and when — shock of all shocks! — Hamas won the majority of the seats, the reaction from Washington was that the United States would not recognise the winning government! And so it is with the context of the stunning national elections in Singapore last weekend. The results are both bad and good. It was a bit of an election whopper — at least by Singapore standards. Like many countries in Asia, Singapore has been long ruled by one dominant political party. The good news is the People’s Action Party has produced some of the best governance and highest living standard in the world. The bad news is that PAP’s near-monopoly apparently left many of the otherwise satisfied and sated people restless.

That restlessness has found its outlet in recent years with the pervasive penetration of social networking. To its credit, the PAP government accepted the economic and social value of this technological and social revolution, instead of fighting it like the frightened authorities in China and Vietnam.

But a price has been exacted. Largely in consequence, the ruling party has just been returned to power with “only” 60 per cent of the vote. This was the lowest vote for PAP since 1963. In 2001, by contrast, the government’s party won 75 per cent of the vote. As a result, the opposition will now hold six of the 87 seats in Parliament — a lame shock almost anywhere else, but a near-tsunami in tightly run Singapore. For the paranoid PAP politician, the trend seems clear.

Consider the symbolism: One of the outgoing members of Parliament is none other than the country’s foreign minister. George Yeo had to run for re-election in one of those oddball group-candidate constituencies that exist in some political systems, though blessedly not in the US (our own system has enough anomalies of its own). When the multiple-candidate PAP team lost, all were suddenly out, including two other ministers besides Yeo.

With his seat in Parliament gone to the opposition, Yeo can no longer serve as foreign minister. The PAP-dominated government will find a suitable replacement, of course. Cosmopolitan Singapore has plenty of talent to choose from. But Yeo was special and his departure from that position will be noted.

Exceptional diplomatic talent is not that common on the world stage. Yeo was one of the reasons that tiny Singapore, with something like five million people, is often described as a country that tends to punch well above its weight. A key reason is the keen intellect of many of its top people.

To be sure, George Yeo will wind up with some important position. Worry not about him. Even so, his many admirers around the world will wonder why it is so often the case that bad things happen to good people. The truth is elections cannot be trusted to always produce optimal results. But we hold them anyway.

Originally published May 16, 2011 in Khaleej Times.

A man who always got the last word in

2011-04-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Mahathir of Malaysia offers an important version of history

By Tom Plate

Los Angeles --- Prior to 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 but also an intense mutual antipathy that entertained the rest of Southeast Asia for decades. But by the late nineties the land of the Malays was pretty well established on the world map. Love him or hate him, the once country-clinic doctor was something else again.

Mahathir Mohamad is one of the giants of Asia because Southeast Asia itself is well on its way to becoming a giant player in the 21st century. The progression wouldn’t be happening quite as noticeably had the mainly Muslim Malaysia remained the largely rural and agricultural Muslim culture that it was in 1981.
That was when this family doctor turned politician landed the job of prime minister –and was to stick at the top for more than two decades.

In his turbulent years this ultra-ambitious politician managed at times an almost unachievable feat: to alienate seemingly half the country (sometimes even imprisoning political enemies) while at the same time keeping his increasingly modern (and Muslim) Malaysia more or less hanging together while moving closer to real modernization. How did he do it all? His story is now available in the long-delayed autobiography hitting stores with the title “Doctor in the House.”

It’s a lively and very interesting book – certainly interesting enough to make it an instant bestseller not only in Malaysia, which one would expect, but also in Singapore, which you might not expect. To be sure, this is not a history of the times: Readers who want a more rounded description of those decades under discussion should look elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, in fact, some of Asia’s very best journalists, especially those with unapologetically exacting standards, have found the book seriously uneven and the author’s memory suspiciously selective. But what Dr Mahathir gives us in his
memoirs is nonetheless a valuable replay of the political life and times of Malaysia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, precisely as the former PM himself sees it and as this complex man, now well in his eighties, is best able to remember it. The main value of autobiographies is not their objectivity but on the contrary their subjectivity. Indeed, what Dr M gives you here is no less subjective than Margaret Thatcher’s “The Downing Street Years” or Bill Clinton’s “My Life.”

It is absolutely his book, and his stamp seems evident on nearly every page. For my money no present or former national leader offers more sensible and pertinent views on the nature of Islam and the extreme need to quarantine the Muslim extremists who take the holy Koran, which he views as nothing other than a book of peace, into their own evil hands and massage it into a missive of conflict. For my money no leader, Asian or otherwise, ever stood up more courageously (and correctly) to the wrong-headed Ayatollahs of the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank than Dr. M. Roundly condemned by the Western media and most Western leaders during the Asian financial crisis (1997-99) for ignoring their advice, Mahathir paid them no mind and quickly steered his country out of the frightening economic downturn. He never took one cent of IMF or WB bailout monies. Looking back, that took more than a little courage, not to mention intellectual self-confidence.

He was not always a gracious winner, however, and always gave back at least as good as he took. But Mahathir was as consciously theatrical as he was thoroughly political. When he speaks, Dr M, I have come to accept, is sometimes only 90-to-95 percent real. The rest of him is best understood as the canny political stagecraft
of an ambitious leader eager to punch well above the weight of Malaysia by out-shouting and out-outraging the bigger players in the scene. Over the years his favorite sparring mates, besides sitting-duckie Aussie potentates, were Western currency traders, especially Jewish ones, the present government of Israel and the Western news media. Whom or what have I left out? No matter. That’s enough for now!

His views on the dangerous evolution of Islam are, it seems to me, invaluable, especially to us in the West. He believes the extremists have the upper hand, generally, and so endanger not only the West but also Islam itself. The solution is obvious: Islam needs more leaders like Mahathir. For all the feisty rhetoric and occasional Jew-bashing (which, even if intended to irritate complacent Muslims more than Jews, he should have stopped long ago), this is a man who gets things done in his own country and will work with you to get things done in yours. Future decades will treat him as a figure of considerable historical importance. As his long-time rival Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore puts it graciously when I asked him for an assessment, “He was an outstanding prime minister of Malaysia.” Amen.

American journalist Tom Plate is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is the author of the best-selling “Giants of Asia” series, including the most recent “Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad.” © 2011, Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Death of quiet American diplomat

2011-04-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES ― He will certainly not be remembered for any grand theories of international relations, and his speeches were generally not memorable. But as U.S. secretary of state, he served President Bill Clinton during his first four years in the White House as well as he could, and his country over the course of decades in diplomacy basically as well as anyone could.

Warren Christopher, who died last weekend at 85 here in Los Angeles, at home with his family, was a man who brought immense decency and an almost objective fairness in his dealings with all. Not everyone in public life can claim that distinction, and few, if any, would dispute that he had that special quality.

As a journalist who would seek out his insights, I would be hard put to say that they were often scintillating. But his views were invariably helpful, and always honest. And he was sometimes more farseeing than people knew. As a once-Los Angeles Times staffer launching a column about Asia and America, I took missionary encouragement from his sense that American foreign policy was unbalanced.

For Christopher, as secretary of state, felt, as many did (and do) here on the West Coast of America, that the East Coast foreign policy establishment had its head screwed too hard toward Europe and the Middle East, to the unfortunate de-emphasis of Asia, the obviously growing giant.

Even in the exalted position of secretary, Chris, as almost everyone who knew him called him, could do little himself to uproot that wrong-headed policy orientation. And Asia itself never quite knew what to make of this superficially bland man who came from Los Angeles. But the truth was he was more of an Asian soul mate than anyone realized.

His working relationship with some Asian foreign ministers and secretaries were invariably good and cordial, but with a few they were quite special. Surely at the top of that list was Qian Qichen, the legendary foreign minister of China from 1988-98.

To Christopher, this unusual Chinese government official, who went on to become vice premier of PRC State Council, was the diplomat’s diplomat. One night before I was to fly to Beijing for an interview with China’s foreign minister, Christopher telephoned to say something like this.

“Tom, you are a fortunate man to get an interview with Qian Qichen. Despite all the differences between China and America, he is a man you can deal with. He is a man who likes to get things done, without fuss. You will enjoy your session.”

And I did, indeed. But looking back now, I think of Chris’s line about China’s FM as a man who likes to get things done without fuss as a near-precise definition of this quiet American diplomat himself.

Christopher never received much recognition, much less a Nobel Peace Prize, for all that he did. But just look at the record: he was a master negotiator. He helped end the horrific civil war in the former Yugoslavia, painstakingly negotiated the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, and kept fighting the good fight to give democracy a chance in Haiti.

Back in the administration of Jimmy Carter, he bravely worked to help bring about the release of the American hostages in Iran. I once asked former President Carter for an assessment of his former deputy secretary of state. He quickly looked me in the eye and said, with a bit of Georgian twang: “Chris, I would trust with my life.”

Taking credit for achievements was not in his DNA. Posturing was not his thing; getting results was. I once asked him when he was still secretary of state why he so rarely appeared on American television. He flashed that gooey loose-faced smile and said simply: “I try to let Madeleine [Albright, to succeed him in Clinton’s second term] handle that, she’s so much better than I.” He was right about that. But history may well show that he was the better secretary of state.

In his last years Chris continued to do good work as a public figure, especially as the behind-the-scenes guru of the Pacific Council on International Policy. But he never neglected his loyalty to colleagues at O’Melveny & Myers, the international law firm that never ceases to remind people that it was one of the first American firms to open an office in Beijing.

Chris, who in 1958 was made a partner at the age of 33, never took credit for that decision. But I think it was one of those deeply quiet accomplishments about which he took very great pride. Like most of us here on the West Coast, he knew in which direction the future lies. He always knew which way was up. And he rarely let anyone down, especially his country.

American journalist Tom Plate, distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific affairs at Loyola Marymount University, is the author of the Giants of Asia series, which includes “Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad” and “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew.” He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published March 25, 2011 in the Korea Times.

Taking tension out of the nexus

2011-04-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

It was a perfect (if quiet) storm in the tense triangular relationship between Beijing, Tokyo and Washington, but — with all the noise coming from North Africa and the Middle East — hardly  anyone noticed.
First there was the China development. President Barack Obama pulled Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, a quiet Chinese-American, out of his Cabinet and re-assigned him to Beijing to replace former Republican Utah Gov. John Huntsman, who is considering a run for the White House.

The latter’s resignation as US ambassador to Beijing is effective April 30. Locke, with his West Coast perspective on international issues, was a good quick substitute pick. It might even prove a net plus.
So far, so good — but then.

At the same time, Japan had an announcement to make, too. America’s closest ally across the Pacific offered up a new foreign minister: the ultra-cautious Takeaki Matsumoto. Seiji Maehara, although intellectually refined was dumped and forced to step down in the muck of yet another one of those only-in-Tokyo campaign-financing messes. It’s hard to see how this one is a net plus.

Matsumoto’s first headache will be to cope with increasing Japanese public apprehension over China’s military buildup. Lately Beijing and Tokyo have been circling each other in the East China Sea as warily as Siamese fighting fish in a tiny fishbowl. If they keep poking their noses at one another’s circling ships, planes and helicopters, something is going to have to give.

Then, as if this weren’t enough, Washington had another shock  to offer.

The US State Department had to publicly sack Kevin Maher as head of its Office of Japanese Affairs for some bizarre and exceptionally politically incorrect observations about the alleged character deficiencies of Japanese citizens in Okinawa.

Okinawa is the big festering toothache in the Japanese-US alliance.

This southernmost island of Japan has been virtually an American military colony for six decades. It’s where the US Marine Corps base known as Futenma, with no less than 17,000 Marines of the 3rd Marine Division, sits controversially against the will of local public opinion.

It would be sign of respect if the Obama administration would move them elsewhere, unconditionally. Maher’s unauthorised but hurtful comments offer us that opportunity anew.

The three changes surfaced independently, of course. But underneath that surface is an unnerving swirl of worry about China’s rise and  Japan’s decline.

In different ways both trends could combine into a security threat to the United States, which remains the leading military power in the Asia-Pacific region—and wishes to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Japan is already alarmed about China and has issued yet another warning that it is not to be trifled with in the seas around the long-disputed island of Senkaku, which has suddenly become one of the globe’s top hotspots. Beijing, which also claims the island (as Diaoyu), has been brushing ships and helicopters up against the Japanese to test their resolve.

Once that of a marshmallow, the Japanese resolve has suddenly become dangerously firm. The reason is domestic-political weakness in the  Nan government.

Any unanswered provocation would almost certainly cause the Democratic Party of Japan government to fall. It is usually the case that governments are most dangerous when they are weakest. That is the exactly the case in Tokyo right now.

Amid these uncertainties, the one move Washington could make to help would be to bow to Okinawan sentiment and accept the Japanese wish for the Marines to be moved elsewhere. That is the real lesson of the Maher incident, and it is sad that so few in Washington understand what it means to be a true friend and ally.

Weak as the Naoto Kan government is, it would become immeasurably stronger domestically overnight if Obama were to extend the largesse of a withdrawal of some of our forces as a gesture of respect to our most important ally in Asia. Even relocated on a US base on the West Coast, our Marines would be available as a strike force in plenty  of time. No matter what Obama decides about Japan and Okinawa, the Chinese military buildup will proceed apace. It is its national right to have the armaments it believes necessary for its security. Centuries of pushy exploitation by European powers, not to mention by Japan, have not eased its  build-up mentality.

This is why withdrawing our Marines from Okinawa would not only cement our friendship with Japan but also send a positive signal to those in Beijing who argue (against their military) that America may be a hegemon but it is not an aggressive one.

American journalist Tom Plate is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

Originally published March 15, 2011 in the Khaleej Times.

Open-minded self-review

2011-04-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

SINGAPORE ― Many residents of this famous and successful city-state doubt that the new book “Hard Truths” offers true full disclosure. The political system here is not open in the breezy (even sloppy) manner of a Western democracy, and so such wonder about this new runaway bestseller spotlighting the wide-ranging views of Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew is no surprise.

But is it warranted?

The soft truth is that I have been coming here on reporting trips virtually every year since 1996 and I can’t answer the question, either. But what must be said about this extraordinarily skilled 458-page compendium of interviews and commentary about the venerable Singaporean legend LKY is that it gives lie to the notion that this place is some sort of totalitarian society.

Call it a “soft” authoritarian political system or even call it a Singapore Inc. economic system, if you like. In fact, label it almost anything you want ― but do not call it totalitarian.

No such totally closed society ― the abject totality of the closure being the essence of the definition of the term ― could have supported a culture that could have produced so broad and deep and in fact so free-wheeling a national self-examination.

The book’s formal title is: “Lee Kuan Yew/Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going.” It’s based on a mountain of interviews with Lee, now titled minister mentor, conducted with almost Jesuitical thoroughness by a crack team of editors and reporters from the Straits Times. This is the island state’s leading daily newspaper and (easily) one of Asia’s most comprehensive and professional.

I have been scratching my head for days now trying to recall a comparable tome from America’s political culture. I think there is none.

In this book Lee does his thing in his usual inimitable way ― and this engaging and entertaining act is almost always worth the price of admission.

He tosses off deep political insights like a contemporary Asian sage and lobs out politically incorrect bombshells like an irreverent (but think very high-end) nightclub satirist. You laugh almost as much as you marvel over the guy’s amazing brain. I always tell my university students that anyone interviewing Lee Kuan Yew who leaves with a flat story is a failed journalist who belongs in another business … like accounting.

But let’s be honest: There is a stern and relentlessly old-fashioned side to Lee, however widely admired among world leaders for the quality of his geopolitical analysis and of course for the astonishing achievements of his beloved Singapore (its most recent recorded growth rate hovers at 14 percent).

The fact is he can be pretty starchy and unyielding, and so maybe the best chapter in thus superb volume is “Not Your Average Grandad.” It was conducted and written by Rachel Lin, at 25 years of age, the youngest of the Straits Times team of seven. Let it be true of allegedly starchy Singapore that more like her roam the island with such a free spirit.

The brave and hip Lin peppers the elder statesman with queries about homosexuality, love-at-first-sight, fave films, gothic rock bands and body tattoos. At times Lee admits he has little idea of what the young woman is talking about. Undeterred, she says at one point, almost instructionally: “This may be a bit shocking but many young Singaporeans are specifically getting yakuza-inspired tattoos now …”

You can almost imagine seeing Lee’s jaw drop: For while he is in no way out of his depth with the Kissingers of the world but hilariously, he was no match for this young un-fearing with-it journalist.

In fact, it is to take absolutely nothing away from Lee’s many insightful contributions to walk away from the book even more in admiration of the concise and highly informative commentary sections provided by Straits Times editors sandwiched between the lengthy chapter conversations.

Many of them bring a level of self-examination and critical awareness about their national progress and political system that easily rival the depth of our own ongoing political self-examination here in the United States. The editors ask themselves whether the country’s economic progress is sustainable and its present course correct. Their evaluation is as penetrating as it is subtle.

No truly closed society could yield such open-minded self-review. This is an astonishing book well worth reading beyond the narrow confines of Singapore, the tiny non-totalitarian city-state. Anyone concerned about the quality of governance and the state of the world will learn from it.

Veteran U.S. journalist Tom Plate is the distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University, the largest Catholic University on America’s West Coast. He is currently in Southeast Asia promoting his new book “Conversations With Mahathir Mohamad” (Marshall Cavendish). He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published February 25, 2011 in the Korea Times.

POWER OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY MEETS PRACTICALITY OF THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL

2011-02-21T18:34:00.000-08:00

Why Ban Ki-moon has ‘gone Hollywood’

BY TOM PLATE

LOS ANGELES --- Issues of power are the reality of the United Nations, an institution that routinely has to traffic in the realities of war, pestilence, plague, ethnic cleaning, nation-building and nation-destruction. But it generally gets bad media.

By contrast Hollywood often swims in the world of unreality, shaped into gripping stories and unforgettable images that seek to engage us to the extent (frankly) of commerciality. It generally generates great publicity.

What a difference! So last year Ban Ki-moon, the workaholic Secretary General, came to Los Angeles in an effort to utilize some of that image-power on behalf of his image-battered UN. And next Tuesday [editors: 28 Feb.] he’ll be back here again to try to do more of the same.

Whether it’s the power of illusion or reality, power is power. The UN, Ban feels, is one big treasure trove of untold stories – of individual heroism by field workers or collective competence by various and affiliated UN agencies. But only a massive screw-up is sure to attract the mainstream news media’s attention. That’s anything but the full true story of the UN.

The chosen venue for Ban’s mission for a more complete understanding of the far-flung world organization is the Global Creative Forum, a Hollywood nonprofit with the credibility of the entertainment business’ marquee names. Run by “Chicken Soup for the Soul” entrepreneur William Rouhana and Kate Moulene, a former magazine editor, Hollywood insider and self-described “Charity Chick,” its annual killer event includes issue-panels at the Hammer Museum that featureBan – and other stars.

One particular moment last year hit everyone hard. At the concluding GCF dinner, packed with Hollywood’s cause-committed stars, the UNSG got up to speak with great emotion. The difference between your reality and mine, Ban explained, could not be overstated. When the shooting stops on your sets, your “dead” and “wounded” jump up, wash off their bloody makeup and live to be “shot” another day. But the UN tragedy is real: when some horrible happening takes me to a UN scene, he said, the bodies lying on the side of the road do not rise up and walk off the “set.” They do not live for another day. They are really dead.

The large and attentive patio crowd included everyone from Hilary Swank, Orlando Bloom and Kiefer Sutherland (to drop just a few names) to powerhouse directors such as Ron Howard, Ed Zwick and Jason Reitman. They were visibly moved. For all the glitter, this crowd represented the more caring portion of Hollywood. This is the part of Hollywood that’s not continually in drug rehab, divorce court, or contract litigation – the part the media doesn’t usually cover: the productive part.

The media is invariably cynical about the effectiveness of charity celebs, as I used to be – at least until Moulene (and to some extent Ban, by his very presence at the annual event) wiped that cynical smirk off my face. I used to think that charity celebs had no idea about the complex issues they were fronting for, but in many instances I was wrong. I also used to think they didn’t accomplish much – wrong again, as found out.

Star power adds money to causes and expands the audience. Explains Moulene, the Charity Chick who’s also a mother of five and an environmentally-active outdoors-woman: “These are celebrities who don’t just ‘show up’ to be seen. Their issues tend to be lifelong passions for them. Richard Gere is totally genuine about his Buddhism and Tibet; sure, Jackie Chan is a virtuoso about making people laugh – but could he care if people laugh at his activism? No.” To my lingering cynicism, the Charity Chick says: “None of these actors need to be more famous! They get all the attention they need. Even so, they are willing to step up and help in order to bring attention to other people and other issues. I think that is something that we as a global community need to really acknowledge and appreciate. It is because of the generosity of time and concern of so many of these key artists that people behind the scenes, like me, have been able to raise many millions of dollars to help pressing causes.”

Ban doesn’t need the publicity, either, but he has been gambling with a little of his time to forge some kind of working alliance with Hollywood’s sincerely concerned image-makers. Now into his fifth year at the helm, the Secretary General is convinced that more stories about UN humanitarian intervention and heroic life-saving need to reach the global audience. He is well aware that the regular news media, except in rare instances, are not interested. Can Hollywood help? Maybe all that’s needed is enough good directors, the right stars and appealing story lines. Ban would only further require that the stories be true. That’s not ordinarily necessary in Hollywood, but Ban fervently believes the UN does enough good stuff out there in the real world to obliterate any need to make anything up.

Veteran U.S. journalist Tom Plate, author of the current bestseller “Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad” (Marshall Cavendish), is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University. © 2011, Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Bruce Lee syndrome

2011-01-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES ― Looked at from all the angles, China has the capacity to prove a far tougher challenger for the United States than even al-Qaida and other like-minded evildoers.

But that doesn't mean the relationship between Beijing and Washington has to be entirely problematic. Surely understanding China better will reduce misunderstandings faster.

Yes, but ― there’s one hitch with that approach. It’s the tacit assumption that China more or less understands itself. Increasingly that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Here’s why. Suddenly richer than it has been for many centuries, China now suffers from an embarrassment of options. Among them is the economic-development-first option ― maintaining a low global profile while it proceeds quietly with its extraordinary economic march.

The opposite approach might be termed the “Bruce Lee” option. Under this alternative China starts cashing in its chips to pump up its muscle and project itself in Asia (and beyond?) as the new challenger to America’s superpower-class monopolization.

These two approaches conceivably could proceed in parallel, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates might be forgiven for suspecting that the decision has been made in Beijing to Bruce Lee it from here on out.

Just consider what happened during his recent official visit to Beijing. It was aimed at warming up relations between the two huge military establishments, but it was exactly then that the Chinese brass decided to run a test of its new stealth super-high-technology fighter plane. The test’s timing surprised not only the top U.S. defense official in town but apparently the civilian government in Beijing as well.

But when the test made headlines worldwide, it seemed as if the leaders of the Chinese military were only too happy to make no secret of their new stealth. It’s as if they were saying who was the real boss back in Beijing.

The Chinese are not ordinarily rude, as they most certainly were on this occasion. So what was the point? Consider, then, my Bruce Lee hypothesis. In general, everyone knows, China today is feeling its "Wheaties," as we sometimes say in America.

It's flexing its muscles, throwing its newly bulked up weight around. Another way of putting this is that it is exhibiting "Bruce Lee syndrome." The late, great Lee was not simply the legendary proponent of martial arts movies and philosophy but in his time was a most prominent and applauded champion of Chinese nationalism.

Just like the glamorous James Bond lifting the British out of their emotional dumps in the 1960s, Lee in the 1970s offered his many Chinese admirers a masterful image of both assertive intelligence and effective brawn.

After centuries of invasion and exploitation and even occupation, the Chinese needed a huge dose of their Bruce Lee at least as much as the British needed their boost of Bond.

And so what you are now seeing in the new wave of Chinese assertiveness may well be the rebirth of the Bruce Lee syndrome.

Indeed, you can almost imagine the gleam in the eyes of the Chinese armed forces recently as they pushed back against the Japanese, brushed up against its Asian neighbors and puffed up their macho military plumage ― even (or especially) when the top American defense boss was in town.

To analyze and understand is not the same as to accept or endorse, however. On the movie screen, glorious and cheeky Bruce Lee was entertaining and relatively harmless. In the real world, Bruce Braggadocio can lead to scary and unwanted outcomes.

The leaders of the People's Liberation Army may be taking China on a wrong march.

If there is a corrective within China to Bruce Lee, it rests with the Communist Party, the supreme power of China, and with the top leaders in its government, as well as in the party.

But have they been cut down to size already? It didn't help their image any that the military hadn't bothered to inform China’s civilian leaders of the stealth test during Gates' visit.

The opportunity to correct this impression, if it is incorrect, comes with President Hu Jintao's official state visit to Washington on Jan. 19. Long-planned, and much anticipated in Beijing as a flattering “big-boys” confab, the summit needs to be seen as bringing the Americans and the Chinese closer together on some issues.

One place to start would be the North Korean impasse. Should joint Chinese and American efforts move the crisis toward a reduction of differences between the North and the South, a normalization of relations with the West, and the start of denuclearization in the North, that might be just the thing to halt China’s wrong march, put the Chinese admirals and generals in their place, and put reasoned diplomacy back into its proper position of celebrated prominence.

Loyola Marymount University Prof. Tom Plate is the author of “Conversations With Mahathir Mohamad,” the second in the “Giants of Asia” series, due out next month from Marshall Cavendish. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published January 17, 2011 in the Korea Times.

Growing a world-class university in Arabia

2010-12-30T19:22:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

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.

One is that you won't get much done over time unless you greatly invest in education. The other is that you won't go very far if you only invest in the education of boys.

This is now the consensual Asian regional view. Consider that, just decades ago, when the calculating rulers of Singapore opened the floodgates of higher education to women, they were able to double the size of their educated workforce, to powerful economic benefit. Malaysia, to the north, moved in a similar direction: It now has more women enrolled in universities than men — by far.

The above has been known for years. But what I did not know until my visit to the seven booming United Arab Emirates is that, in modernizing parts of Arabia, women are surging forward while retaining Arab traditions.

Consider a recent class in mass communications, guest-conducted by this very Western professor from Los Angeles on the women's campus at the University of the United Arab Emirates. It featured female Arab students traditionally dressed to the collarbone with almost nothing showing other than their intellect and the avidity for learning in their eyes. It was inspiring.

United Arab Emirates University is the leading university of this mainly pro-Western country of about 7 million that sports the world's seventh-largest reserves of oil. But that is not good enough for one of the Arab world's more enlightened leaders. Sheik Nahayan is the unofficial successor to the late Nayed, the modernizing Bedouin sheik who in effect was the nation's Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore.

Nahayan is determined to elevate UAE University into a truly Arabian peninsula research university — and, someday, into one of the world's great universities. To this ambitious end, the modernizing sheik wisely determined not to go it alone; he plucked from the West a kind of "Lawrence of America" to bring new unity and purpose to UAE University.

The high-profile American educator and educational administrator brought in from America was Wyatt "Rory" Hume. The sheik made the former University of California high official the UAE university provost, put an abundance of oil money on top of the university's table and asked Hume to transform the school into something very special.

Hume — formerly the number two over the entire University of California system, and before that, a top official at UCLA — is himself something of a secular sheik in U.S. higher education. His career has been associated with rapidly improving educational institutions. It took Sheik Nahayan only one intense interview with Hume to realize that this was the American he required to move the university upward without yanking it precipitously out of its Arab soil.

Modernizing rapidly while not eviscerating traditional values is no easy trick. But the emirs in this part of the planet are prepared to globalize, not bowdlerize. This meant that Hume has had to regard the deeply cultured sands on which the university sat not as annoying impediments but as a proper home for the roots that would help shoot the university to global secular prominence — without alienating powerful traditionalists in Arabia.

Women, obviously, were both part of the problem and the answer. Ignoring their higher education would keep UAE low on the developmental totem pole. But the mixed coed style of university school common in America was a complete no-go here. The answer: The university offers a separate women's residential campus and women's college, led by another distinguished American educator, a former president of famed Oberlin College.

One telling sign of change: When our "Lawrence of America" arrived about three years ago to consider whether to accept the sheik's offer, he was jarred by the hideous barbed wire and bars around the windows of the women's dorms. Upset, he politely told the sheik he could not work comfortably at a place that looked like a concentration camp, no matter how culturally rooted the need to separate the sexes.

Understanding the sensitivity, Hume promised that under his administration, the women would be kept separate and secure by other means. With that, the sheik broke with the past and ordered the barbed wire cut and the bars removed.

It's hard to imagine a better metaphor for where this university and this surging and important country appear to be headed. And it's heartening to see a leading educator from America so dramatically at the head of the charge.

Syndicated newspaper columnist and Loyola Marymount University professor Tom Plate is the author of the "Giants of Asia" books series. Volume II, "Conversations With Mahathir Mohamad," will be out in February. © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

Originally published December 26, 2010 in the Japan Times.

Now on Amazon

2010-12-27T20:57:00.000-08:00

Finally -- after months of delay -- "Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew" is available on Amazon.com. This is the run-away Asian bestseller...an extraordinary and well-reviewed series of deep and intimate conversations between the brilliant founder of modern Singapore and American columnist and author Tom Plate. Also available in Chinese editions from Popular Books of Singapore.

GREAT BOOKS: WHAT TO GIVE FRIENDS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

2010-12-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Los Angeles --- Books can be truly great gifts. They can make the recipient smarter for having read them, they can add that special something to the home library and they certainly help deserving authors avoid debtor’s prison. I always give books (and CDs, such as Samuel Barber’s monumental Violin Concerto) as holiday gifts.

So here – you comparison shoppers – is my 2010 list of gift books I will be giving this holiday season. They are all truly special. And, yes, they mainly reflect my long interest in world affairs and issues of Asia.

THE KOREAN WAR, by Bruce Cumings: Do you want to understand what’s really eating North Korea these days? Get away from day-to-day journalism and buy (or give) this headline-related book! It explains things better than anything you’ve read about the roots of our tensions with North Korea. This noted University of Chicago history professor shows how America got into the conflict (1950-53) for a lot of bad reasons and how it now finds itself locked into yet another dead-end policy with the potential to further drain the country’s spirit and resources. Timely and disturbingly powerful.

DISMANTLING THE EMPIRE, by Chalmers Johnson: This is another invaluable in-your-face book. The author, who recently passed away, was an unquiet-American academic who enjoyed annoying America’s smug and unimaginative foreign policy establishment. This West Coast-based professor, long-associated with the University of California, San Diego, all but invented the word “blowback.” This is the impact of pent-up foreign anger over evil U.S. interventions around the world since the end of World War Two, when the American Empire was put together. In this collection of savvy essays, this Prof blames America’s economic distress on what he calls “Pentagon economics.” The enormous cost of maintaining America’s military and national security empire is eating at the roots of our economic stability. President Obama, he insists, needs to dismantle the “American empire.” This is not about to happen, of course. Brilliant and utterly disturbing.

MALAYSIAN MAVERICK, by Barry Wain: This former Asian Wall Street Journal correspondent, now ensconced as writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, has written the best English-language study to date of Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s epic and iconic prime minister (1981-2003). It’s no surprise it has been dancing on and around Asian bestseller lists many months now. It’s an instant classic – amazingly comprehensive, clearly written, gaffe-free. It’s the Wain kind of journalism -- by the way -- that deserves the oft-misapplied “fair and balanced” moniker. Authoritative and brilliantly lucid.

RESISTANCE: THE ESSENCE OF THE ISLAMIST REVOLUTION, by Alastair Crooke. Our Western media is understandably negative about the extremist edges of Islam. But the downside of extreme negativity is its capacity to block all sensitivity to comprehension: We wind up less properly informed than blindingly angry. This overly sympathetic study of what we would regard as the dark side of the Muslim world is nevertheless an urgently needed intellectual corrective, even if some parts need to be read with tons of salt. Penetrating and usefully provocative.

THAILAND UNHINGED, by Federico Ferrara: Rarely have so many clichés about a popular country required so many revisions. Ever since the coup that ousted twice-elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, this otherwise gorgeous country of comely and smiley residents has collapsed into a continually ugly identity crisis. Is beloved Thailand a true democracy whose leaders appropriately attain their power perches through election? Or does a secret power elite run the country, as if from perches pre-selected by a “network monarchy”? This and other apt phrases, written by an extremely talented Harvard PhD. journalist/professor, populate this well-crafted collection of essays to illuminate magnificently the tragedy of Thailand today. Trenchant and continually blistering.

THE CORRUPTIONIST, by Christopher G. Moore. This novel’s wisecracking Bangkok-based private detective, Vincent Calvino, appears again to make us smarter about Thailand. He is the inspired creation of Bangkok novelist Moore, popping up anew to offer the inside story of the corrupt power-elite politics that lies beneath the country’s recent turmoil. In Moore’s demimonde, the fallen ladies of the red-light districts come across as so much more astute than all the fatty fallen politicians who so often are their repulsive their clients. But injustice, in Thailand especially, must be served. Entertaining and devilishly informative.

INSPECTOR SINGH INVESTIGATES: THE SINGAPORE SCHOOL OF VILLAINY, by Shamini Flint: This, the third in the ongoing series of rollicking Southeast Asia based detective novels, may be the best yet. Well, maybe the prior “A Bali Conspiracy Most foul” was the best…or was it “A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder”? The fictional Detective Singh – overweight, throwing back mugs of beer, everywhere disheveled – is something else again, as the centerpiece of these entertaining novels – while offering knowing expositions about the inside of SEA governments. America’s TV industry, always hungry for fresh material from Asia, ought to give this woman writer a good long look. Delicious and always lively.

Newspaper Columnist and Loyola Marymount Professor Tom Plate is the author of “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” the first volume in the “Giants of Asia” series. © 2010, Pacific Perspectives Media Center, Beverly Hills, California.

Shortlist of the totally unexpected

2010-11-24T16:49:00.001-08:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES ― Sometimes truly strange things happen in life. For those of us in 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 him “Governor Moonbeam.” This was not meant as a compliment. The Brown precedent suggests: Don’t be surprised by a surprise. Here is our shortlist of possible unexpected developments.

Don’t be surprised if …

China

China is actually in serious trouble. This amazing economic success story has been flying along for two decades now like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. But its first serious mid-course atmospheric disturbance is long overdue.

Almost nothing else (save a power-grab by the huge People’s Liberation Army) can explain the extreme up-tightness and excessive crackdowns, the government’s ugly response to a jailed dissident writer receiving the country’s first ever Nobel Peace Prize, and the testosterone pushiness of its military in the surrounding high seas. This is a country ― we say here, though regretfully ― that suddenly seems to be in trouble.

Japan

Japan won’t take too much more of China pushing it around. The Japanese public was appalled by the government’s recent cave-in to Beijing on the Senkaku (Chinese version ― Diaoyu) Island crisis.

A Chinese fishing ship was pushed into a Japanese ship guarding the island whose sovereignty is claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing. If I were China’s President Hu Jintao, with all my domestic headaches, I’d gently handle disputes with Japan for the foreseeable future.

Those who study the history of the 19th and 20th century remind us that Japan, when pushed into a corner, will come out fighting. China may have more ships and planes, but Japan has better ships and planes. Think of Lexus when you think of Japan’s military. Cool it, Beijing: You may be cruising for a bruising.

North Korea

North Korea has to do something dramatic ― and soon. Here’s our main economic beef with the “geniuses” in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital: When will they wake up?

Decades ago, China threw out the Communist economic playbook because it just wasn’t working. So did Vietnam, previously more Marxist-Leninist than Marx and Lenin combined.

Now even Cuba looks to be waking up and hammering out a new economic model. Dear Comrades in North Korea: Don’t you get it? You cannot continue like this or you all wind up like Gorbachev: out of power. That’s fine by me ― but by you?

The United States

Don’t bet against the U.S. president being Democratic again in 2013. For starters, Barack Obama is far from finished. As Karl Rove, legendary Republican strategist, argued in the Wall Street Journal recently, sitting presidents are not that easy to unseat.

For one thing, the Republicans would have to nominate a figure that doesn’t scare half the country to death. That should eliminate Sarah Palin.

Besides, if Obama falters, don’t bet against the presidential resurrection of Hillary Clinton, now performing so skillfully as Obama’s secretary of state. Maybe the nomination should have been hers two years ago.

Maybe it will be in 2012. And don’t put it past this determined woman to beat the brains out of anyone the other guys put up. The former first lady and U.S. senator from New York is aging with unusual political grace. Don’t be surprised by a surprise re-emergence.

Watch the Wall Street Journal topple the New York Times: Speaking of the WSJ, a lot of us American journalists might owe proprietor Rupert Murdoch an apology. Most predicted a steep spiral downturn when his News Corporation bought the paper in 2007.

The opposite has taken place. The old Aussie has poured a near fortune into the quality and quantity of the news coverage. While the New York Times still has stellar correspondents like Keith Bradsher in Asia and superb columnists like Nicholas Kristof in New York, the total WSJ package has moved into the No. 1 spot in America. What a surprise ― and from Murdoch. Who would have thunk?

Watch that South Korean diplomat garner a second term: Until recently, journalists in New York were having such a fun time beating up on U.N .Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

But the quiet, self-effacing foreign minister of South Korea is showing people that sheer hard work and sincere commitment can mean a lot in public life. At the moment, he is almost a shoo-in to win a second five-year term. If it happens, it couldn’t happen to a nicer man. So ― don’t be surprised!

Prof. Tom Plate, journalist and columnist ― and recently named distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles ― is the author of “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew.” He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published November 23, 2010 in the Korea Times.

The life and times of an American 'mentor'

2010-11-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

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.

The disagreements were memorable, for in my mind they illuminated why the influence of John F. Kennedy's legendary right-hand man will remain enormous for decades. And why I am no Ted Sorensen.

The first occasion was at Princeton University when the then-visiting professor tendered this humble student a measure of advice on the art of writing.

"You're a good talker," complained JFK's honored speechwriter about my term paper, noting my conversational contributions to his seminar on U.S. foreign policy and presidential leadership. "But writing is not just speaking." It requires, he explained patiently, precision, discipline and careful organization. "You must take your writing more seriously."

His invaluable rebuke was memorable precisely because no one took more seriously the need for discipline in the written word than Sorensen. His legendary emergency missive to Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 might have been the key element in the peaceful resolution of the deeply frightening Cuban Missile Crisis. The careful composition of the famous American University Cold War speech elevated the Kennedy presidency globally — and perhaps eternally. And while great speeches are almost never great line by line throughout, just one sonorous and transformational line ("Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country") can resound in history forever.

Sorensen's work on the Kennedy legacy deserves some kind of posthumous prize. For without his contributed words to JFK's legacy — in his later books as well as in his White House speeches and memoranda of the early '60s — it is hard to imagine the Kennedy presidency celebrated that much more than Jimmy Carter's.

The mere fact of JFK's mainly majestic ranking suggests to me the awesome power of language in the hands of a master craftsman dedicated to the best possible articulation of a president's dreams and visions.

No American president since JFK has come close to the JFK rhetorical level. Reagan was a masterful speaker, but the speeches themselves do not remotely equal the Kennedy body of work. The clever Bill Clinton gave not memorable speeches but long ones. The otherwise eloquent Barack Obama has yet to find his true voice and transmit a clear, inspiring vision, as last week's midterm election results partly suggest.

Sorensen's enduring influence resides not only in his words but also in his deeds. His career certainly didn't need the boast of that dreary long train ride from Manhattan every Wednesday to offer his coveted Princeton seminar; but my recollection is that he never missed a class. His decades of law practice at a famous Manhattan firm gave him all he could handle, but he was rarely at a loss of time to serve as the avid, sagacious mentor, whether for a troubled student, a worried head of state or a confused journalist.

Sorensen's invaluable role as mentor mostly escaped his many adulatory obituaries, but it was at the core of his continued influence, even after the assassinations of JFK and his brother Robert. Those of us who benefited from his mentorship will make sure that his heritage is not quickly forgotten.

Mentoring is, in fact, one of the world's most under-rated processes, as Sorensen gently reminded me at a Manhattan literary party last summer. Holding forth on my new book on Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore who now holds the odd-sounding Cabinet title of "minister mentor," I ventured the offhand remark that Minister Mentor seemed such a silly hat for this giant of Asia to wear.

Sorensen would have none of it. It's wonderful, he argued back, feisty as ever, in that unforgettably sonorous mellow voice of the windy Midwestern plains. It's rich with meaning and importance and imagination.

He was right, of course. Sorensen himself might have loved to be minister mentor in the current American government. But of course no such creativity exists in Washington for this.

Just as Singapore's Lee has been a mentor to so many people over the decades in his post as one of the wise men of Asia, so, too, has Sorensen, here in America, never tiring in seeking to elevate the level of American political discourse.

Once he asked me, after noticing some slight improvements in my prose, years after Princeton, why I had never been engaged as a speechwriter. It was a job in politics he felt could not be overestimated for influence. I answered him quickly, honestly and perhaps a little bluntly: "Because, unlike you, I never fell in love."

At that he smiled, for as he was the first to admit, he did love John F. Kennedy. I never found my own JFK. And as far as I can tell, neither has America.

Syndicated columnist Tom Plate, distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific studies at Loyola Marymount University, is the author of "Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew," the first in the Giants of Asia series published by Marshall Cavendish Asia. © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

Originally published November 7, 2010 in the Japan Times.

Are China and Japan on a collision course?

2010-10-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

By TOM PLATE

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 before some part of East Asia blows up.

Perhaps the Japanese malaise is the more obvious of the two problems. Except for the five-year reign of Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006), Japan hasn't had continuity at the top since the glory years of Yasuhiro Nakasone (1982-1987). Japanese prime ministers have had all the staying power of seasonal lint, and the result is a political mess. No one can make a tough decision.

It's getting worse. The country's economy is seemingly in permafrost and the morale of the ordinarily proud island nation is barely holding its own. Worse yet, the relentless rise of China as a voracious economic whale reinforces the sense of Japan's epochal decline. No political figure seems capable of pumping life into the Japanese spirit and pulling it all back together.

The recent dustup over who owns an isolated offshore island (that may or may not sit atop mineral riches) only serves to illustrate. The Japanese insist on calling the island Senkaku, and the Chinese insist on using Diaoyu, with obvious ownership implications. (In fact, the island is not that far from Taiwan, which is perhaps the most plausible titleholder in this dispute). The Japanese arrest of an allegedly straying Chinese fishing boat captain turned into an overnight international incident. Neither side would budge. Then the Japanese prime minister blinked, and the captain was let go. The emotional toll on the Japanese people was devastating. And dangerous: For if Asian history teaches us anything about Japan, it is that backing the Japanese into a corner is a mistake.

While China owns the larger arsenal, Japan's is by far the more modern. If I were Beijing, I wouldn't mess around with the Japanese military. Instead of pushing Japan into a corner by demanding the release of the captain on their terms, the Chinese should have graciously played it cool and allowed the Japanese to emerge with some face-saving formula for the captain's release.

These days, Beijing is not playing things so coolly. Instead, it's bullying alarmed neighbors (from Vietnam to Malaysia to the Philippines), thus playing into the hands of the American Pentagon. The latter would be only too happy to head an anti-China alliance in the Pacific.

By being pushy with its assertions of sovereignty over Pacific islands, Chinese diplomacy has managed to do what the Pentagon could not: create the picture of China as a menace. This is the unwanted achievement of the government in Beijing, and it's an amazing blunder that rolls back the impressive diplomatic progress of the prior Chinese regime.

Say what you want about former President Jiang Zemin's lack of polish, or former Premier Zhu Rongji's harshness on the Taiwan issue — they managed to lull much of Asia into relaxing about China. They tabbed China's easygoing policy "peaceful rising." This catchphase was intended to convey China as preoccupied with the massive task of caring for the economic development of its people.

Precisely because some 1.3 billion mouths-to-feed live in China (more than four times that of the United States), that evident aim had credibility. People believed China to be too busy keeping its own economic house to have much left over to entertain military ambitions. But with the full-speed buildup of its navy now surfacing for all to see, China has shattered the carefully constructed sense of calm.

Bring back Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji! That's not going to happen, of course — any more than the Japanese political system is going to start reproducing political superstars to steer it through difficult times. The danger, therefore, is that these two giant ships of state, bobbing restlessly around in the East China Sea, while captained by idiots, are heading for inevitable collision.

Columnist Tom Plate, Loyola Marymount University's Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies, is the author of "Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew." In February, "Conversations With Dr. Mahathir Mohamad" will be published in the "Giants of Asia Series." © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

Originally published October 22, 2010 in the Japan Times.

TAIWAN PRESIDENT MA SPEAKS OUT ON CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS

2010-09-01T15:26:00.001-07:00

A WORLD EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH TAIWAN’S INNOVATIVE PRESIDENT ON HIS
MASTER-PLAN FOR PEACEFUL RELATIONS WITH THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

President Ma Ying-jeou Spells Out His Pragmatic Approach to American columnist Tom Plate

Note: Shortly before the inking of the new economic pact between Chinaand Taiwan on June 29, syndicated columnist and American journalist Tom Plate faxed to Taipei six pointed questions for Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou. Earlier this month, the following answers, personally edited and amended by Taiwan’s President himself, were received by the Pacific Perspective Media Center in Beverly Hills, California. Its founder and director Plate, recently appointed Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, is the author of the recent bestseller “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew,” the first in the ‘Giants of Asia’ series launched by Marshall Cavendish Publishers.

Prof. Plate (question 1): What are the risks, if any, that Taiwan takes with ECFA? Or are there no risks?

Taiwan President Ma:

1. Negotiating the ECFA is an indispensable aspect of the ROC government’s overall strategy for strengthening Taiwan’s economy, forging ties in the Asia-Pacific and deploying globally in response to the trend of regional integration. In all we do, we strive to put our people’s interests first, maximize opportunities and minimize risks.

2. Though the ECFA removes barriers to Taiwan’s economic development and enables it to compete with other countries on a more level playing field, unless our products are outstanding and our businesses sufficiently competitive, we still will not excel in international competition. That is the real risk we face.

With this in mind, we’ve taken steps to uplift Taiwan’s enterprises to a higher plateau. For one thing, to strengthen our ability to attract foreign investment, we have established a task force for soliciting direct investment from abroad. This inter-ministerial group will target businesses worldwide and encourage Taiwanese enterprises operating in mainland China to invest in Taiwan.

As another example, to encourage businesses to innovate, in May of this year, our Legislature passed the Industrial Innovation Act, aimed at creating a healthy investment environment and providing us with effective new administrative tools.

We also hope to help our businesses boost their competitiveness by creating better products, developing markets and honing their entrepreneurial prowess. To that end, we will integrate government research and development resources; strengthen efforts to expand domestic and foreign markets; coordinate cross-strait supply chains; and assist businesses in developing new opportunities in the service sector.

Further, we will redouble efforts to sign free trade agreements (FTAs) or economic cooperation pacts with other trading partners. Taiwan’s development must not rely solely on mainland China, and the ECFA is only a first step toward global deployment.

3. Some people are concerned that the ECFA will create the risk of overreliance on mainland China and lead to cross-strait unification. In the course of the ECFA negotiations, however, we have put in place safety measures to reduce such risk. In particular, the text of the agreement contains no politically compromising content.

The agreement is designed to help cross-strait economic relations move forward in an orderly, gradual fashion, in accordance with World Trade Organization principles and in consideration of our respective economic conditions. It is similar to an FTA in nature, not a customs union or common market. Therefore, claims that it will cause Taiwan to be absorbed into a “one-China market” are unfounded. Most importantly, no one should doubt the ROC government’s resolve to safeguard our nation’s sovereignty and ensure our people’s economic security.

Prof. Plate (Question 2): What would your government have to do to induce the PRC to begin redeployment of cross-strait missiles?

Taiwan President Ma:

1. Mainland China has deployed over a thousand missiles against us. Because most of them are mobile, their redeployment has no substantive meaning. As tensions continue thawing across the Taiwan Strait, the mainland side’s expanding deployment of missiles is obviously incongruous. Still, if the mainland authorities were willing to redeploy them, we would appreciate it as a goodwill gesture meant to improve cross-strait relations.

2. It is beyond our ability to force mainland authorities to move their missiles. But through ongoing economic and cultural exchanges, we will keep working to advance cross-strait understanding and friendship and lead people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to realize that only peace and good will can bring the prosperity and well-being we all seek. Then, the missile issue will resolve itself. Prof.

Plate (question 3): What would the PRC have to do to enable you to persuade your people that Taiwan needs to stop buying US arms and even consider serious arms reduction?

Taiwan President Ma:

1. Since I came to office on May 20, 2008, I’ve done my utmost to promote peace across the Taiwan Strait and reduce the risk of armed conflict. Though cross-strait tensions have eased, after 21 years of continuous double-digit growth of the mainland’s defense budget, its military strength exceeds its defense needs, and its forces opposite Taiwan have continued to increase.

2. The scale of mainland China’s military power far exceeds ours, and we don’t have the ability to engage in an arms race. The arms we buy are purely defensive, so no matter what, we will continue to maintain the self-defense capability necessary to ensure our national security.

3. I’d like to stress here that the purpose of our arms purchases is to ensure our sustainable development. Maintaining an adequate defense force is an essential “investment in peace” that can also afford us more confidence in cross-strait talks. Besides, we need highly capable armed forces responsive to dangers posed by multifarious new types of unconventional warfare. So we won’t give up building the defensive power we realistically need in response to actions mainland China or others may take.

4. Cross-strait détente is no reason for our armed forces to relent in their mission to stay strong and protect the nation. They will remain vigilant and do what it takes to deal with any external threat and play a positive support role in the development of cross-strait relations.

Prof. Plate (question 4): How, if at all, does the evolution of the relationship between PRC and SAR/H.K. impact on Taiwan’s thinking about the “final position” between Taipei and Beijing?

Taiwan President Ma:

1. Since the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China in 1997, it has been a “special administrative region” under Beijing’s jurisdiction. Though Hong Kong’s Basic Law declares that it shall be governed by its people and enjoy a high degree of autonomy, the reality is that in Beijing’s “one country, two systems” model, the Hong Kong “system” must bow to the will of the “one country.” By contrast,　the Republic of China (Taiwan) is a sovereign, democratic nation. So the mainland-Hong Kong model can’t apply to cross-strait relations.

2. In view of the impossibility of resolving the cross-strait sovereignty dispute in the near future, my administration’s pragmatic approach is to maintain the status quo of no unification, no independence and no use of force under the Republic of China’s Constitution while cultivating harmonious relations and promoting friendly interaction. Events have shown that this approach creates space for Taiwan to move forward, with improvements in cross-strait relations enhancing our opportunities for participation in international affairs.

3. Looking toward the future, surveys conducted by our Mainland Affairs Council show that an overwhelming majority of people in Taiwan are in favor of maintaining the status quo. As Taiwan is a democratic society based on respect for the public will, in the realm of cross-strait relations, this government will continue to abide by the principle of putting the interests of our 23 million people first and respecting their freedom of choice.

Prof. Plate (question 5): In developing your cross-strait relations, what do you think you (as President) have done especially well; and where have you, in your own opinion and self-criticism, done less well or could have done better?

Taiwan President Ma:

1. Immediately after assuming office, I pushed to restart the institutionalized cross-strait talks that had been suspended for nearly a decade. This effort has eased tensions that had built up over the years. During the past two-plus years, Taiwan’s and mainland China’s negotiating teams have conducted five rounds of high-level negotiations that have produced 14 agreements. Step by step, we’ve resolved all sorts of problems that have arisen in the course of cross-strait interactions. In particular, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), signed at the end of June, is an essential foundation for orderly development of cross-strait economic and trade relations that will bolster Taiwan’s prospects for achieving a “golden decade” of economic development.

I believe that this systematized dialogue, the development of healthy cross-strait relations, and the advancement of regional peace and stability are the most meaningful accomplishments of my administration. And opinion polls seem to agree, indicating that public satisfaction with our performance is greatest with respect to cross-strait relations.

2. Undeniably, various opposition politicians and social groups are critical of the direction and pace of development in cross-strait relations. We must focus on reaching society-wide consensus on these issues. We will actively solicit the views of people on issues of common concern and listen thoughtfully to what they say. And we will strengthen liaisons with the Legislature, the media and people from all walks of life in order to understand their views.

Prof. Plate (question 6): Do you think it will ever dawn on members of the opposition party that true, complete and formal independence from the mainland is a very slim likelihood indeed, at least for the foreseeable future?

Taiwan President Ma:

1. The Republic of China has been a sovereign, independent nation since its establishment in 1912, and next year will mark its centennial. It therefore does not need to pursue independence. In fact, there is no nation in the world which declares independence twice. This is the practical reality across the Taiwan Strait as well as the common understanding of the great majority of people in Taiwan, including the opposition.

2. As to possibilities for future development of the Taiwan-mainland China relationship and for defining our statuses relative to each other, at the moment, there appears to be no way of resolving the matter that both sides can accept. Nor has our society reached a consensus about this. Regardless of how things develop, however, Taiwan’s future will not be determined by any particular political party, but collectively, by the 23 million people of Taiwan. This constitutes the strongest consensus now uniting our ruling and opposition parties.

Avoiding Catastrophic Ware with China: Keep One's Distance by Actually Getting Closer

2010-09-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

BY TOM PLATE

Los Angeles --- Genuine leadership is always eye-catching, and sometimes history-making. This otherwise commonplace observation is especially true when it comes to the matter of war between China and Taiwan. This unthinkable explosion would, if it did happen, jar otherwise prosperous East Asia back into a stone age – and bring America to the brink of war with China.

Wise leaders prudently push forward despite all sorts of easy reasons to stay put -- or bury one’s head in the sand. Great leaders are anything but a dime a dozen, of course. But Asia, surging economically even as the U.S sags and Europe sputters, can make the claim that it has put forward at least a few. The latest to emerge from that increasingly dynamic region is President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan.

His most recent claim to fame rests with the recent free-trade pact his government signed with that goliath on the other side of the straits: the People’s Republic of China. Called ECFA (don’t ask why, not worth it), the deal provides for a lowering of official barriers and ancient obstacles across the strait and reduces so much red tape as to make one wonder why ECFA took so long to happen. The answer to that while China is united in the desire to have Taiwan reunified with the mainland, by contrast Taiwan itself is virtually a house divided. No one wants war with Beijing, of course, but many on that offshore island fear that closer economic relations will eat away at Taiwan’s stand-alone qualities.

Such fears are so intense on the little island of 23 million inhabitants that President Ma had to push hard for the agreement against what in effect was a 50-mile-an-hour political wind. But this rising Asian leader – whose background includes law degrees from both New York University and Harvard --- was right to have made the good fight. So many countries in Asia have already signed pro-trade agreements with China that Taipei, but 90 miles offshore, was becoming practically the only Asian capital not to have done so. If no agreement had been hammered out, Taiwan, as close as it was to the mainland, would have been left out.

Even so, many on the island fear that the pact will lead to absorption by the mainland. I asked President Ma whether his policy of economic engagement wasn’t terribly risky. His answer was forthright: “Claims that it will cause Taiwan to be absorbed into a ‘one China market’ are unfounded,” Ma, via fax, wrote me from his office in Taipei. “In particular, the text of the agreement contains no politically compromising content.”

Fair enough – but Ma and his people live under the cloud of a China armed to the teeth with missiles capable of inundating Taiwan. Were China to invade, as it threatens to should Taiwan move further away from the mainland’s magnetic pull, only intervention by the U.S. could conceivably save the island. Would the American people --- fed up with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – willingly battle China?

Admits Ma: “The scale of mainland China’s military power far exceeds ours, and we don’t have the ability to engage in an arms race. The arms we buy are purely defensive, so no matter what, we will continue to maintain the self-defense capability necessary to ensure our national security.” Fine – but let’s try to be a bit realistic: How long would Taiwan, by itself, be able to hold out if China attacked? The generous answer would be: at best a matter of but a few months. Washington watches over the China-Taiwan relationship with great interest, of course. An outbreak of conflict would force it to confront two unacceptable options: go to war with China, or let China devour Taiwan in front of the world’s watching eyes. Notes Ma, quite reasonably: “In view of the impossibility of resolving the cross straight sovereignty dispute in the near future, my administration’s pragmatic approach is to maintain the status quo of no unification, no independence and no use of force ….”

Those calm diplomatic words (Ma’s ‘Three No’s”) are actually music to Washington’s ears. From the U.S. perspective, Ma is a huge improvement over his predecessor, the incessantly annoying (and arguably corrupt) former leader of the pro-independence opposition party, who took evident pleasure in provoking Beijing at almost every opportunity. By contrast, Ma’s style is to emphasize negotiation over confrontation – and stay focused on real rather than rhetorical issues. As he puts it, “...There appears to be no way of resolving the matter that both sides can accept. Nor has our society reached a consensus about this. Regardless of how things develop, however, Taiwan’s future will not be determined by any particular party, but collectively, by the 23 million people of Taiwan. This constitutes the strongest consensus now uniting our ruling and opposition parties.”

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Ma could have chosen to lie low and not stirred up the political hornets’ nest of a trade agreement with China that opponents on the island inevitably depict as covert capitulation. But by not taking the easy road, Taiwan’s President not only calms Beijing’s nerves but quietly buys his island people more time and breathing room.

To be sure, time is not on Taiwan’s side if it does nothing or simply spits in Beijing’s eye. But by engaging Beijing, Taipei reassures the mainland’s politicians and people that it wishes to proceed apace with the best of intentions. In effect Taiwan has chosen to keep its distance from the mainland by getting closer. It’s a paradox, no doubt. But there would appear to be is no other diplomatic formula that can work.

Prof. Tom Plate, Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, is a syndicated columnist and author of the best-selling “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew,” recently published by Marshall Cavendish. For the full unedited text of the interview with Taiwan’s President Ma, go to http://uschina.org or http:// www.pacificcouncil.org

Doing right thing for Muslim world

2010-08-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

NEW YORK CITY ― 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 a fast-rising and increasingly assertive China, then it has to be the West’s ever-more complicated relationship with the world’s Muslims.

And this assignment is predicted to be difficult at best. Certainly this would-be “clash of civilizations,” as the famed late Harvard professor Sam Huntington dubbed it, seemed all but inescapable in the wake of the horrific leveling of the World Trade Center twin towers in 2001 by Islamic hyper-terrorists.

Sensible people on both sides of the Islamic line accept that demented terrorists of all stripes will always exist, whether in the mountains of Pakistan or in the flatlands of Oklahoma. They can be contained but not eliminated. Are our own misconceptions and prejudices when dealing with the worldwide Islamic community, of well more than a billion mainly innocent souls, also vital to contain?

If all Muslims are extremists, then we should have to say that all Christians are crusaders and all Protestants are Christian fundamentalists.

To understand the complexity and cope with different challenges, it is especially important that our leaders avoid demagoguery and embrace humanitarianism without exception. The few standouts can provide invaluable stand-up examples for many.

Recently, two of New York City’s most prominent public figures did just that. By rising promptly to the occasion, they offered us the opportunity for wider reflection on how we can best relate to the Muslims immediately among us ― and across the globe at large. The standouts were Mayor Michael Bloomberg and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Beset with the raging controversy over the proposed establishment of a Muslim community center within throwing distance of the 9/11 site, Mayor Bloomberg has stuck to the high ground.

The easy course for the mayor would have been to give way to the fierce opposition and rack up populist ratings by opposing the facility. But on the principle of American tolerance for religious diversity, Bloomberg refused to alienate the city’s many Muslims by catering to emotion.

That mosque is no danger, and its existence would speak volumes about our strength as a truly tolerant society. Its distance from the former Twin Towers site is but a few blocks, but in Manhattan a few blocks is a dense impossible forest of concrete and steel. In no way would the center overshadow or impinge on the tragic ground.

The other notable move last week for sensitivity on issues Muslim came from U.N. chief Ban. This workaholic, often-traveling world diplomat is something else again: he is practically a one-man refutation for allegations of U.N. inefficiency!

Last week was classic: As reports came in from Muslim Pakistan that the cataclysmic flooding has not waned but was worsening, Ban abruptly scotched long-settled weekend plans, to fly to the scene of the devastation. It was no easy trip: The decision was made late in the week and neatly-linking commercial flights were hard to find (unlike the U.S. President and many other heads of state, Ban, astonishingly, is not provided a private plane).

But there in Pakistan by the weekend was the doughty former South Korean foreign minister, rain hat in hand, boots in mud and water, aides at his side, showing the U.N. flag, and letting the country’s 170 million Muslims know that people all over the world truly did care and in fact were there to help.

Ban’s trip was of course hugely appreciated not only in the region but also beyond. Observed Nimmi Gowrinathan, director of South Asia Programs for Operation USA, a privately funded disaster relief group, "I think the hope is that the secretary-general’s humanitarian trip to Pakistan raised awareness about human suffering, which helps the public move beyond political prejudices."

In fact, tireless Ban had not even returned to New York when several donor countries upped their contribution to Pakistan, most notably the Japanese, who so often are ready with the money. Suddenly private U.S. aid organizations shifted into higher gear. And Ban’s trip garnered an extra jolt of major international news-media attention, especially from the BBC and Al-Jazeera.

The use of the U.N. secretary general’s office to highlight humanitarian crises is hardly new with Ban. But no secretary general has started out in his first term doing more of this. He was one of the first in Haiti after the horrendous earthquake, and was one of the first to Chile after another terrible earthquake hit.

This is not political grandstanding but humanitarian flag planting. Ban’s message is clear and admirable: if we do not care about others when they are hurting badly, we forfeit a part of our humanity.

It may be that the Muslim community center in the end may not get built on that site near the 9/11 tragedy, and Pakistan’s recovery from these epic floods will prove slow. But Bloomberg and Ban gave it their best. In this time of great worry about our relations with the Muslim world, their efforts need to be more widely noted, applauded ― and emulated.

Veteran U.S. journalist and syndicated Asia columnist Tom Plate ― the newly appointed distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles ― is currently writing volume two in the “Giants of Asia” series, on former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The first volume ― “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew” ― is a runaway bestseller in Asia. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published August 20, 2010 in the Korea Times.

Interesting times on Asia's south-east seas

2010-08-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

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. relationship.

Let's take a look at the two main aspects of this development.

The first involves South and North Korean waters, where U.S. and South Korean warships were bobbing last week in a military display. This was for the benefit of North Korea, whose navy apparently was the culprit that sank a South Korean vessel in March, killing 46 seamen. The aim is to deter the communist regime in the north from further foolishness.

The other audience for the military show is the South Korean public. The March sinking of the Cheonan vessel shocked the South Korean public, which expected more retaliatory spunk from its navy. But now the secret is out: the South Korean military, whatever its virtues, probably is not ready to run its own show. It still needs the United States there to help call the shots.

So there will be a delay for at least a few years in the planned handover of command of forces in the South from the United States to the national government of the South (Republic of Korea). That development dismays Beijing, greatly preferring a reduced American regional profile. But since the Chinese apparently can't keep their North Korean allies out of trouble, there's not much they can do about it except complain.

At the same time, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has quietly promised that Beijing will not protect the guilty party, though it claims not to be convinced that the North is the perpetrator. So far, though, that is exactly what it has done, watering down a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution that would otherwise have condemned North Korea for aggression. Beijing, however, has arranged for the immediate resumption of the on-again, off-again six-party talks.

China is probably more upset about U.S. naval ships rolling around in the South China Sea. This is the second theater where the Obama administration has staged a show. Earlier in the year Beijing issued a decree that could be read to suggest that it viewed those seas as virtually its personal pond. The idea sent shudders throughout Asia, especially in Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, with their tinier "fleets." It irritated Japan, too, but Japan has a serious fleet.

These Asian nations have quarrels with China over island territories in these waters and regard the South China Sea as an international commercial highway. So does the United States, which has made that point of view plain.

Nobody in the region wants a fight with China, so none of those worried Asian nations are waving American flags to thank President Barack Obama for ordering more ships into that area. But in fact they are pleased by the move — and by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's firm resolve at a big regional meeting last month in Hanoi.

The American expression of solidarity strengthens their hand so that the resolution of these island-ownership disputes can be settled through negotiation, not fear — at least as long as the United States keeps its ships bobbing over the horizon.

Because the South China Sea represents waters territorially adjacent to the mainland, China might well go ballistic if it sees U.S. interference. But that would tarnish its image and raise questions about whether its economic rise will be so peaceful, as Beijing has often claimed. At least now the United States is being viewed as helpfully standing up to the Chinese giant that has of late occasionally seemed bullying in manner.

East Asia clearly is at a tipping point. But the proper role of the United States is not to provoke China or violate its true sovereignty but to balance its rising military power. In recent years China's naval buildup has been extraordinary and muscles are being flexed. The American balancing on both fronts is an effort to remind the Chinese that they are not the only muscle man on the block.

Handled carefully, the U.S. effort could actually serve everyone's interest, including Beijing's. For China is not ready to rule the Pacific unilaterally. That day may come but it's a long way off — at least as long as the U.S. Navy is bobbing around.

Syndicated columnist Tom Plate's new book "Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew" is on best-seller lists in Asia. His next book in the "Giants of Asia" series — about former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad — is due out early next year. © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

Originally published August 8, 2010 in the Korea Times.

GUEST COLUMN: WHAT’S THE MOST LIVABLE CITY IN THE WORLD? (Here Is One Vote for … Hong Kong!)

2010-07-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

By David Dodwell

For me, there is no question that Hong Kong is one of the world’s most wondrously livable cities. Be in no doubt, I feel very strongly about this. After 30 years of adopting Hong Kong as my home, I would challenge anyone to claim that – on balance – any other city can deliver the same combination of virtues.

So you can imagine the sense of perplexity, verging on outrage, when three quite separate organizations recently published “livable city” indices that left Hong Kong bumbling along in the deep penumbra of “also ran” cities. Something clearly was amiss.

This synchronized triple assault came to my notice first in the idiosyncratic UK style magazine Monocle, which ranked Munich, Copenhagen and six other European cities in their top ten livable cities, letting in just Tokyo (Tokyo?? Livable?? I always felt that was a contradiction in terms) and Melbourne (reasonable choice). Whether Europe’s cities look as smug in five years time—after the deep government spending cuts and tax hikes now being implemented to fend off bankruptcy—can only beguessed.

Monocle alone would of course have given me few palpitations. After all, it is very breathlessly contrarian, and includes wonderfully evocative but opinionated factors like “mall-ification”, outdoor sitting areas, and a Zara and Starbucks “chain test” that discriminates against cities that have lots of them. Editor Tyler Brule also seems to have a love affair with Munich airport, which would not rankle if I did not have my own irrational love affair with Hong Kong’s airport, and with cycling – which may be fine if the other choice is driving a car, but is a profound eccentricity in steamy, mountainous Hong Kong where everyone uses excellent public transport, and only 28% of the population bother to have access to a car.

But after Monocle came Mercer, the very worthy human resources consultant which developed its “Quality of Living” rankings to help client companies select preferred locations for overseas operations, and to tell them whether or not they were sending an expatriate to a hardship post deserving of a “sweetened” salary. To find Hong Kong wallowing down in 71st place, just above San Juan in Puerto Rico, came as a bit of a shock. Again Mercer shows a strong European bias, with Vienna in its top slot, and a total of seven European cities in the top 10. But if Mercer is counseling on best locations to serve Asia, its clear preferences are Vancouver or Auckland (equal 4th place), or Sydney in 10th. These too are among my own favorite cities to visit, but to operate a business focused on Asia?…Joke.

The final and fatal assault came from the much respected Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) whose “Global Livability Survey” put Hong Kong down in 31st place (interestingly, just a few notches below Munich, so loved by Monocle). I say fatal because at last I was forced to capitulate. Here, I was able to wade through a methodology that painstakingly and transparently explained why it put each city where it did. Here I was able to work out why Hong Kong gets marked down –which of course is the important first step towards doing something about it.

For the EIU, Hong Kong scores brilliantly by stability measures, education measures and infrastructure measures. It slumps in culture and the environment (no surprises here), and in healthcare, where public healthcare provision was regarded as just “tolerable”. I am reminded that many westerners simply cannot fathom how Hong Kong people can actually enjoy high-rise living. Perhaps the one source of comfort here is that Hong Kong remains head and shoulders more livable than alternative locations for serving the Asian region - Shenzhen ranked 82nd out of 140 cities, while Shanghai ranked 83rd and even Singapore ranked 53rd.

Of course, the real “takeaway” from these various rankings is that they vary widely depending on the factors you choose to determine livability, and how you weight each factor. This makes both Mercer and Monocle controversial and of limited use, because neither is transparent about their methodology. This makes me realize that many of the reasons I see Hong Kong as one of the world’s most livable cities are simply not appreciated in the same way by others. Germans don’t seem to mind that all the shops close at 8.00pm, and don’t open on Sundays. These quality of living boffins seem not to appreciate how wonderful it is to have just a 25 minute journey from my busy Central office to high mountain trails, and swimming over coral in Clearwater Bay. When complaining about the lack of quiet little squares, they forget the astonishing mountain panoramas all around us and the thrill of sunset ferry rides to Tsim Sha Tsui or further afield.

The second takeaway is that these Quality of living indices measure factors that may matter very little if your company is looking for the best place to base operations to serve needs in Asia. Yes indeed, Auckland or Melbourne may be wonderfully livable cities – but they rapidly become “unlivable” if you are spending half your year on aircraft shuttling between hotel rooms across the region.

The third takeaway is that in spite of the manifest shortcomings of these rankings, they still have tremendous force. This may be why austerity-smitten Foreign Ministries across Europe may be considering closing or cutting back on their consulates in Hong Kong (the Norwegians closed in 2003, while the Danish consulate is planning to shut up shop and move to Guangzhou in 2012), and Hong Kong-based heads of multinational companies complain about constant pressure to relocate away from Hong Kong.

At this level, such rankings clearly need to be taken seriously. Talk to Invest Hong Kong or the Trade Development Council, and it is definitely a worry that European and US business leaders are being told that the quality of living in Hong Kong sucks. If this means headquarters don’t settle here, it means the financial, legal and accounting services that support their Asian operations also don’t settle here, putting in serious jeopardy Hong Kong’s aspiration to be Asia’s “world city”.

Obviously we must do two things: we must do a better job of getting the message out about how utterly livable Hong Kong is; and we must do a better job improving the environment, air quality in particular. The Government says it is doing what it can. It is not doing enough.

David Dodwell is Chief Executive of Strategic Access Limited. An acclaimed veteran journalist and expert on international business, global trade and economic and political developments, particularly in Hong Kong and China, he founded the company in 2005. He is also is vice-chairman, government relations of the British Chamber of Commerce, and has a place on the policy think-tank arm of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. Dodwell spent 18 years as a “Financial Times” journalist, mostly in Asia, with a secondment to the “China Daily” newspaper in Beijing. This piece is being syndicated with his permission. © 2010, Pacific Perspectives Media Center, Beverly Hills, California, and Strategic Access Ltd., Hong Kong, SAR, China.

Tom Plate's Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew: Some Wise Words for Dysfunctional Western Democracies

2010-06-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

By Nathan Gardels
Editor, NPQ, Global Services of Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media

There are two types of courage among journalists. Some might risk their lives crossing paths with an IED on an arid back road in Afghanistan. Many fewer risk their reputation by going against the herd of conventional opinion.

Tom Plate, America's only syndicated columnist who focuses on Asia and a former editorial director of the Los Angeles Times, has taken the second risk in his Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, just published by Marshal Cavendish. And it has been a risk well worth taking.

When the history of the 21st century is written, Afghanistan will matter little. But the rise of China modeled on the pragmatic, soft-authoritarian template of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore will be seen as the game changer of our time. Plate has had the uncommon vision, for a Western journalist, to see this. And his book could not be more relevant at a moment when recession, debt and dysfunction are plaguing the West while Asia strides boldly into the future.

At a time when it appears that democracies are becoming ungovernable, a discourse on the ways and means of good governance by the neo-Confucian master thinker of modern Asia could not be more useful.

Much to the credit of Plate's talent, this book reads breezily, despite its heavy themes. It is broken into many easily digestible chapters with titles mimicking movies or television shows such as "Father Knows Best," "The Year of Living Dangerously (with Indonesia)" or "Citizen Lee." Even if Plate's "new journalistic" self-insertion sometimes annoys (we learn about his episode with Prozac and his weight gain), overall this was the right choice to make what could easily have been a wonkish drudge into an enjoyable read.

From a journalistic standpoint, what has always been great about Lee Kuan Yew is that he never minces words, whether his target is China or the West. While he has no problem taking credit for his influence over Deng Xiaoping's policy of "opening up and reform" or understanding the necessity of the Tienanmen crackdown, he also has no bones pointing out that China's corruption is out of control because prosecution rests in the hands of the Communist Party Discipline Commission instead of the state. Since cronies tend to scratch each other's back, corruption, virtually non-existent in Singapore, flourishes in China. For Lee that is its great Achilles heel, and he has no compunction saying so.

From the outset, Plate tries to squeeze Lee into Isaiah Berlin's box of either being a "one big idea" hedgehog or a small idea, tactical fox. After many attempts, it is clear that Lee can't even think in these terms. In his mind, the only big idea is the smallest one: what works in a particular circumstance.

In the West we call that "utilitarianism" or "pragmatism." In the Confucian tradition, it is the well-known principle of "non-universalism" -- that truth is grounded in concrete conditions and is not universally applicable or codifiable into an ideology.

Deng's famous one-line slogans could have come as well from the mouth of Lee Kuan Yew: "Seek truth from facts;" "white cat, black cat, what does it matter as long as it catches the rat;" "feeling our way stone by stone across a shallow river." Deng and Lee certainly came from the same civilizational DNA.

Though putting it into terms of the Western mind, Plate gets it right in the end: Lee Kuan Yew is a mix of Plato and Machiavelli. Lee, he points out, not only believes in the reasoned rule of a learned elite. Over the years, he has employed the practical political genius of a city-state Prince to make it a reality.

Here is how Plate sums up Lee's worldview: "Sustained and sustainable progress is possible only when a gifted, empowered elite is in more or less in complete control of policy. The complete corollary to that is his belief that politics that includes significant decision-making by the unqualified -- or by well-organized narrow interests, the lobbies -- is the enemy of superior public policy. This leads to the third forbidden thought: that democracy, at its one-man, one-vote purest, is almost always the enemy of a practical, here-and-now, best-we-can-get utopia."

Such a view no doubt is anathema to those who believe history has ended with liberal democracy. Yet, it is hard to argue these days with the view, held in both Singapore and China, that liberal democracy ends up being captured by the special interests and short-term mentality instead of functioning effectively for the long-term good of society as a whole.

Lee Kuan Yew only seems off base when he violates his own rules. For example, he projects from his experience with Malaysians that America will inevitably decline as Latinos dilute the Anglo-Saxon core America once was. Looking across the Pacific through the lens of China's ancient mindset, he can't see that a new culturally and racially-hybrid civilization has been born in the US, one that lifts up and enriches talents and imagination, not diminishes them, through mixing it up.

But mostly, Lee Kuan Yew's wisdom makes sense. Tom Plate has done a fine job of conveying it for a Western audience that ought to be paying attention.

Originally published June 9, 2010 in The Huffington Post.

The giants who shaped Asia

2010-06-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

THE ineffable quality of leadership is so hard to define. But everyone knows we need it badly, especially in difficult times; and while the experts tend to quarrel over definitions, ordinary people tend to know real leaders when they see them.

It is my hypothesis that 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. In the 19th century, Europe immensely benefited from the machinations of its Machiavellian empire-building leaders. In the 20th century - the so-called American Century - no one can imagine the United States having such global success without its Roosevelts, Ikes and JFKs. So now, as Asia bodes to supersede America as the dominant global region of the 21st century, one might ask whom history will identify as the leaders that helped push Asia so far forward.

That is the central question a new book series, the first volume of which has just been launched, seeks to illuminate. It's called Giants Of Asia. But who are these so-called giants? And how are they to be selected for the spotlight? The pro-cess cannot be easy: What are the criteria? Why him and not her? The potential for argument is enormous and endless.

I should know. I am the one who has - foolishly or not! - started on this series, and I have been wrestling with this question of Asian leadership not just since last summer, when I began writing the first book in the series, but since 1996, when my columns on America and its relationship with Asia first began appearing.

At that time the region was well into its upward mobility drive. Seoul was one gigantic metropolis of drive and ambition: You could feel it the minute you stepped out of the airport cab. Shanghai back then had more construction cranes up and running than any city anywhere (and it may still). Singapore wasn't so much caning as redefining - a worldwide gold standard for efficient and honest government. Malaysia wasn't abandoning the farm but it was discovering the magic of the cyber age and the best way to escape the limitations of its laid-back culture. India was waking up from too many dusty decades of neo-Stalinist central planning under well-meaning but wholly misconceived governance. Tiny Taiwan and tiny Hong Kong were constantly reminding the mainland that being Chinese didn't mean having to say, 'sorry, we have no money'. People were even starting to bet that India would awaken. Japan's post-war rise may have peaked in the 1980s but giant China's is nowhere near played out.

This powerful and relentless transformation of a loser area of the globe into perhaps the biggest winner of the current century didn't just happen. Credit, if you want, the hidden hand of history, but I prefer to look for tangible factors. One of course was the people of Asia. Many of them worked until their backs broke. Almost everyone seemed to be either working or studying.

Another reason had to be that some Asians were getting superior leadership, however one defined it. While Africa remained more or less notorious for leaders who sucked the life - and much money - out of their countries, Asia became known for leaders who were leading their countries to new prominence, staying with the job and their countries and watching them grow to new heights. Post-colonial Asia had drive and ambition. There was less defeatism and more realism; less demagoguery and more economic production.

No scientific way exists to identify contemporaneously, without subjectivity, the giant leaders of Asia. That is the eventual proper job of history. But I can tell you that in compiling my own list and using it to launch this Giants Of Asia series, I found there was a consensus about certain assessments.

One was that no such series could be written without the inimitable Lee Kuan Yew on the roster. He and his elite team helped redefine Singapore and set governance standards for the entire region.

Consider the Malaysia story: the outspoken Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has more detractors than anyone can count; but for 22 consecutive years he was the prime minister of a country that went from nowhere on the economic map to somewhere special.

Similarly, Mr Ban Ki Moon, the experienced South Korean diplomat, has been having a bumpy run as United Nations Secretary-General, it is true. But the very fact that the world body chose as Mr Kofi Annan's successor this hard-working gentleman from the successful southern half of the Korean peninsula is taken by Koreans almost everywhere as an affirmation of their rise.

And so that's how I began thinking about the series. Not everyone will agree with the choices. But how can anyone argue with the concept? Without such giants of Asia, the region would not be where it is today. It is that simple.

I am happy with my choices so far. At least they have been made. Let the debate begin.

The writer is a Los Angeles-based columnist. His latest book, Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew, was published last month.

Originally published June 10, 2010 in the Straits Times.

Bloomberg's Asia Confidential

2010-06-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

Book takes mildly irreverent look at MM Lee

2010-05-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

US journalist shares candid insights on MM's private thoughts and beliefs
By Zakir Hussain

AMERICAN journalist Tom Plate, a fan of Singapore and the way the country works, has written a book that gives a personal, mildly irreverent, insight into Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his thinking.

The book, Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew, was launched at the Shangri-La Hotel yesterday, with Mr Lee and some 40 guests present.

Mr Lee, who spoke briefly off the cuff, hoped the 216-page book makes for interesting reading.

'I don't agree with all of it, but that is to be expected - the Western journalist's exaggeration of eccentricity,' he said.

'But on the whole, he got my point of view across,' he added.

Mr Plate, 66, a veteran journalist and former journalism professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he wanted to take a 'fresh, unique approach' that people will remember 50 years from now.

Over two days last July, he interviewed Mr Lee at length at the Istana.

The result is a scintillating insight into the private - and brutally candid - beliefs and thoughts of the 86-year-old Minister Mentor on a wide range of topics, from his temper and children to various countries and his 'authoritarian' ways.

These are captured in a writing style that is fast-paced and conversational over 24 chapters that are peppered with Mr Plate's views.

Although Mr Lee had asked for the book 'to have critical and negative stuff in it', and to 'tell the true story of me, as you see it', Mr Plate said the 'warts' in the Lee Kuan Yew story are well known and not that interesting to him.

Far more engaging are the insights of this 'iconic and fashionably authoritarian director' of the blockbuster that is Singapore, the man he describes as 'the Clint Eastwood of Asia'.

The reader, whether local or foreign, will find much that is novel in what Mr Plate describes as his 'screenplay'.

Take Mr Lee on how well Singaporeans know him: 'They think they know me, but they only know the public me.'

Or his temper, which he resolved to keep in check, having seen how his father's nasty temper created unhappiness for his mother and family.

'I never try to lose my temper. Maybe I have occasionally, but I try to control it,' he said in the book.

As for his faults, he lists them as 'impatience in getting things done, pressing his associates and aides in putting in their best to get the job done, or fairly quickly replacing them when they are not making the effort well'.

'I tend to blow up when my secretaries are dilatory and I am under pressure,' he said, adding that this was not an exhaustive list.

'I cannot see myself,' he added.

'My faults are many and numerous. You will have to ask my opponents and enemies, and there are many in Singapore.'

In the book, Mr Lee is also asked about some of the other great men he has met.

The greatest, he says, is China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who admitted he had been wrong and broke away from communist economics, enabling China to grow rapidly.

Asked whether he is really an 'authoritarian', he replies: 'Authoritarian means one has not got the consent of the people to your policies.

'My policies have been endorsed by the electorate every four to five years by a clear majority, never below 60 per cent. I do not consider myself authoritarian.'

Mr Plate sums up Mr Lee as someone who knows utopia does not exist, but believes 'we cannot stop trying to get there'.

The book is published by Marshall Cavendish, and is the first in its Giants of Asia series.

Next is a book on former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, whom Mr Plate interviewed recently.

One on United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, is on the way too.

Tun Dr Mahathir, who has been critical of Mr Lee, also gave Mr Plate a comment on Mr Lee's legacy for the book on the MM.

He said: 'He is a big frog in a small pond. He is not satisfied with what he has... But I think he will go down in history as a very remarkable intellectual and politician at the same time, which is not a very often thing.'

The book costs $32.62 (before GST) and is available at major bookstores.

zakirh@sph.com.sg

Originally published May 27, 2010 in the Straits Times.

Democracy and UK election

2010-05-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate
Former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles,
Director of Asia Pacific Media Network

LOS ANGELES ― Democracy is not always decisive, and even when it is it doesn't invariably produce results that optimize the public good. We all know that, right?

And elections are certainly no panacea. They can even be a disaster. Or produce a debilitating muddle at a time of economic nerve-shaking uncertainty.

Trot such cynical thoughts by British voters right now and you will find them to be a rather easy sell. By producing one of the higher voter turnouts in the history of the United Kingdom, the residents of the planet's oldest functioning democracy clearly wanted change, of some kind ― and now.

But the lock-jawed result ― with no one party winning a parliamentary majority ― appears not to have cleared the air but fogged it further.

Perhaps the only clear winners from last week's British national election are those of us who have refused to be cheerleaders for democracy ― of the British and American kind ― for every place and for every situation.

We still don't like it for Iraq, for example, and never did. For Afghanistan? Maybe in 100 years! You like democracies that can elect absolute idiots?

We will leave all of Latin America and Africa out of our argument (too easy ― like shooting fish in a barrel). How about the Philippines, a democracy, with all its elections, a total mess? You happy there?

The democracy fundamentalist is, in one sense at least, are as narrow-minded and as dangerous as the Muslim fundamentalist. They would impose their will and their preferences on others, if not by force of arms then by other means. But people don't like to be told how to live their lives. Isn't that something?

The Scandinavians have more or less fine democracies but they tend to be classy about it and not go around the world telling everyone to be Swedish.

They accept graciously that well-achieving countries like Malaysia and Singapore have gotten to where they are by devising their own tied-to-local-conditions political approaches.

Why can't we? Ideological approaches to world events work better in the academic world where they are of little consequence than in the real world where they can do actual damage.

For their part, British voters may well wonder how often they will have to go to the polls to get some sort of conclusive change of direction.

The minority government that will now have to be formed via some slapdash patchwork coalition will not last long, if British history is any guide.

And what's the guarantee that the next election ― perhaps sooner rather than later ― will prove any more decisive than the muddle the Brits now have before them?

The problem is that the incumbent Prime Minister ― Gordon Brown ― has been discredited but his Labour Party held on to just enough seats to prevent the Conservative Party from moving into Number 10 Downing Street all by themselves.

In a statement that actually rose to the historic occasion, for once, Brown said: ``I understand, as I know my fellow party leaders do, that people do not like the uncertainty or want it to be prolonged. We live, however, in a parliamentary democracy, the outcome has been delivered by the electorate, it is our responsibility now to make it work for the national good.''

Good luck. But Brown could start that process off by immediately stepping down as party leader ― and therefore as prime minister ― and let a fresher man or woman take up the job.

This might encourage the third party ― the Liberal Democrats ― to tack their won votes in parliament onto those still held by the Labour Party and form a temporary governing coalition.

Whatever happens, American and Asian interests will not be immediately threatened. For Asia, Great Britain has long devalued itself as a serious world player, though culturally its influence remains immense as the originator of one of the two most important languages on the planet.

And the so-called ``special relationship'' between America and Great Britain has, for some time, been more like a too-long marriage that would have broken up years ago save for lack of viable re-mating options.

Sure, we still need each other ― we share a common language, after all, and have veto powers on the United Nations Security Council that can come in handy. And increasingly our security services are bonded more tightly than ever in the face of the Islamic terrorist threat against the ``white nations.''

The latter is no joke. Seriously. Times Square almost blew up the other day, but the terrorist bomber, apparently acting on extremists instructions from Pakistan, was wonderfully incompetent. Thank Allah ― or God, or the Higher Power, or whatever you want to call Him or Her ― for that.

Terrorism, of course, doesn't always come from them: the Islamists. Hardly. They come from inside our own home-grown nut cases.

In this just-past British poll, one parliamentary seat in North Ireland could not immediately be counted because of a bomb scare from radical anti-London elements. It was a timely reminder of how little evil even the world's oldest democracy can cleanse away.

Veteran American journalist Tom Plate once worked on Fleet Street, in London. A recent archive of his columns can be found at:pacificperspectives.blogspot.com. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published May 9, 2010 in the Korea Times.

So, Ready for War With North Korea?

2010-05-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES ― Sometimes less is more ― a lot more.

It is true that there is not much that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak could reasonably do, one way or the other, in response to the sinking of a South Korean navy patrol vessel in the Yellow Sea.

But what little the president of that country has done, he has done near perfectly. This needs to be noted. A penchant for caution around the Korean Peninsula is no little blessing.

North Korea is a miserable economy of a country but it is nonetheless a military force with which to be reckoned. It is one that includes, everyone assumes, some small speck of nuclear weaponry.

Was the ship named Cheonan attacked by the North Korean navy as it bobbed around the unofficial line on the high sea dividing Northern from Southern coastal waters?

Or did the 1,200-ton, corvette-style, anti-submarine patrol ship stumble on a Korean War era mine? Or perhaps faulty maintenance problems aboard the ship were responsible for the blast and the South Korean Navy may be covering up?

But just the other day, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young declared in favor of the enemy torpedo theory. Whatever the cause, the simple fact of the matter is that on March 26 this South Korean vessel exploded.

At least 40 South Korean sailors are dead ― and the total will rise as more bodies are found. Almost the entire ship has now been dredged up from the ocean deep. A thorough investigation is under way.

And so the pressure on President Lee will grow. But instead of raising the perfervid temperature, he should continue to ask good questions for the military to answer and continue providing additional resources to get at the answers ― and provide for better future detection and defense if it was an attack.

In such a charged atmosphere, with the story on page one of Korean newspapers daily, it is hard to keep perspective. Imagine something comparable to this in waters off Hawaii: faster than you can say Fox News, you'd have flag-waving toward and political posturing over every conceivable military option available. Our own President would be branded as pusillanimous for preferring non-nuclear options.

But President Lee had firmly established a more hawkish position toward the North than his immediate two presidential predecessors. Whatever that policy's deficiencies, on this occasion, it bought him some time to think.

President Lee even swallowed a bit of national pride by publicly asking for investigatory and intelligence help from the United States, which has a military force of about 28,000 stationed in South Korea. This is superior crisis management.

In parallel, the U.S. response, led by Kurt Campbell, the veteran Asian hand who has labored in the Pentagon but now plants his attach? case in the State Department as an assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, has also been exemplary in its cool. This needs to be noted, too.

It also needs to be noted ― for those in America prepared to bomb Pyongyang tomorrow ― that North Korea has not taken credit for the attack. Why not? The North Korean economy remains in such across-the-board shambles that only a gigantic Marshall-Plan type economic excavation can salvage it now.

That won't happen unless some icebreaker is found to push the current Cold War-style chill in a warmer direction. President Lee, the political conservative, is just the man to thaw out the diplomatically frigid peninsula, especially now that the incompetent North Korean regime has seen him operate coolly in crisis mode.

There thus may be a silver lining in the Cheonan cloud. In a timely public briefing by the Korean Studies Institute of the University of Southern California, a major private university here in Los Angeles, a pair of teamed experts argue that even if the North is found definitively culpable, the South has few military options.

And so, conclude USC's Prof. David C. Kang and Leif-Eric Easley, a visiting scholar from Harvard, we need to accept that yet more of the same back-and-forth military and diplomatic counter-punching will get us nowhere.

They write: ``We believe that such a 'status quo' is unsustainable for North Korea ― there are simply too many factors coming to a head in the near future. South Korea and the United States, working closely with Japan and China, need to press hard for a deal with North Korea, before more costly scenarios unfold.''

They are right. No other course takes either side anywhere rational. The time now is as propitious as it will ever be. For if in fact the North did the nasty deed, the cruel incident may yet be but another example of an infantile North Korea throwing its rattle out of its playpen, as if in desperate cry for help. What else makes sense?

Veteran journalist and columnist Tom Plate has interviewed two past South Korean presidents and has written often on tensions over the peninsula. ``Confessions of an American Media Man," originally published in English, has recently been published in a Korean edition. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published April 28, 2010 in the Korea Times.

Making buddies in Beijing

2010-04-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Caring about China can be hard to do. Many Chinese, for starters, resent the caring of others as an intrusion, especially when the outside care-givers don’t agree with something China has done. That happens more than occasionally.

Recently I wrote about the China versus Google fight in a way that sort of tilted in favor of supporting Google’s decision not to accept Chinese hacking into the email accounts of some of its customers. But it hardly nominated the Google people for the Nobel Peace Prize. Even so, soon after this column, syndicated in such major world papers as The Japan Times and the Korean Times, I was told my email account had been hacked. The hacking, said Google Gmail security, originated with some computers or computer networks on the mainland of China.

One can only speculate as to the cause of the hack. But it must have had something to do with the column asking China’s leadership to exercise a bit more tender care when it tries to roll over people, whether protesters, dissidents or American corporations. It is true that “How Google Got Too Hot for China’s Kitchen” did praise the northern Californian web giant for more or less boldly objecting to unauthorized intrusions into some of its mainland customers’ accounts. Google now looks to be downsizing or even eliminating that mainland business in the face of little compromise from Beijing.

China’s sovereign right to protect its internal security and stability, sometimes even in ways that are alien to the American norm, has to be accepted. The point simply is that not all American entrepreneurial thrusts into the mainland are going to come up easy winners, especially media ones. In China, as in other political cultures, the media is not permitted to be an independent player. Even amateur media — such as social networks — are viewed as potentially subversive. Just recently, the Chinese government expanded its notorious “bureau five” to monitor interactive websites and other social networks.

Despite all this, we need to work with China and its government as positively as we can and avoid as much immaterial nonsense as possible. The world is a better and more stable place if China rises not only peacefully but develops healthily and soundly as well.

An American policy of passive hostility or active disruption would be counterproductive. A half a billion underemployed, furious Chinese running around the mainland looking to cause trouble is not going to do anybody any good, including China’s neighbours. A disintegrated China would be a geopolitical tsunami like nothing the world has ever seen. America needs to work with China in a respectful but careful way, while safe-guarding its national interests and not letting its military guard down. All we can do as Americans who care about China is to try to offer sensible alternative perspectives to official policy when we think such policy is taking its people in a bad direction. Indeed, by endorsing what we know to be China’s mistakes, we would only be aiming to undermine it. My sense is that China’s top leaders understand this quite well. One of them is clearly Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. The government’s number two (behind President Hu Jintao) recently penned a moving and lengthy tribute to a controversial reformist figure by the name of Hu Yaobang.

Long exiled to a political Siberia (pardon the Soviet allusion), Hu became a black sheep in Communist Chinese political yore because his death became a rallying cry for the protest demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

So for someone of Wen’s stature and standing to flat-out praise this pro-market, liberal-tendency political figure is extraordinary.

Of course Hu is safely dead and buried: He died in 1989, only two years after being forced out of the Chinese Communist Party by hardliners. But he has evolved into an incandescent icon of potential political opening and reform ever since. Reportedly, tens of thousands of email comments were posted in response to the Premier’s unexpected essay, which appeared in the Communist Party’s official newspaper People’s Daily.

My guess is that my hacker or hackers did not come from the crowd applauding Wen’s positive comments on Hu Yaobang. More probably, they originated from the hard core of Stalinist-style fundamentalists who regard all thoughtful criticism of China as treasonable, not to mention hack-able. But it is these Neanderthals who are the true enemies of China. It is they who will bring down the country by bottling up all reasonable opinion and debate and creating the kind of gigantic pressure cooker that someday can only blow up in their faces.

By contrast, it is all those Chinese who brave being hacked by supporting the unorthodox commentary of Premier Wen who are on the right side of history. And I’m with them — and all future hackers of my email can count on that.

Columnist and veteran journalist Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books called “Giants of Asia.”

Originally published April 20, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

Thailand: Cry havoc

2010-04-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Even viewing the spectacle from afar (chin sunk in open palms, heart sagging too), it is utterly brutal on the emotions to observe an otherwise wondrous people and culture tearing itself in two. And that would be Thailand today.

For no one who has ever been treated to the extraordinary charm and hospitality of the Thai people could be blamed for practically breaking into tears over the sight of the Tiananmen Square type government crackdown this weekend. The sadness before us is the terrifying transformation of the land of the smiles (as Thailand is often called) into the frowns  of the clowns.

Clowns, because the responsible people of Thailand, on both sides, surely know better than to have let it come to this. Even if the eventual end point of this prolonged convulsion is a properly politically integrated Thailand (think convulsive US Civil War), the short-term cost will be huge. Forget about tourism — few will risk a visit except journalists and returning family; forget about foreign investment — the prerequisite for which is always a heartless rock-bottom political stability. Until recently, in fact, Thailand offered that in considerable abundance. The politics of the country revolved around the ritual of the monarchy. The people’s perception of the King and his Court as the nation’s benevolent if unassertive hub minimised the importance of the politicians and seemed to suffuse the entire political culture with a kind of saffron softness.

That began to change with the so-called coup that really wasn’t a coup. A democratically elected parliamentary government was ousted by military force. This was in 2006, the result of which was to transport the popular-with-the-people Thaksin Shinawatra into exile. The King, who had been ruling the country from behind the throne anyhow, was still the King. This is why it was an odd kind of superficial coup.

You have undoubtedly heard many bad things about the fleeing Thaksin. That the multi-billionaire telecom business mogul was corrupt. Or that he violated the law. Or was a demagogue. Or sat down on the press like an elephant. Or evaded taxes. Indeed, by the time he fled, he had been accused of almost everything. Some of the above had some truth to it, to be sure. But it is also a fact that not only was Thaksin elected in 2001 via a landslide, but also that his overwhelming reelection in 2005 came amid the highest voter turnout in Thai history. Why? For one thing, the Thaksin government reduced rural poverty by 50 per cent while in office and put together a universal health care programme for the first time in the  country’s existence. But he was tough on political enemies and he was nails-hard on drug traffickers, for whom the severe Lee-Kuan-Yew-type policy in Singapore seemed to this Thai-born self-made man only sensible if you wanted to be effective.

And on the international stage, Thailand seemed to have new life, especially under the sauve and warm foreign ministry of Kantathi Suphamongkhon, the country’s 39th foreign minister — and perhaps the best ever. But in zero-sum democracies where someone’s gain is perceived as another’s loss, Thaksin seemed too much for the Crown, and its associated cronies. They were, generally speaking, the coddled urban elite for whom the country’s locked-in rural poverty was in effect their sub-prime mortgage free-ride to riches. But the sleepy, sweet, quiet, ever-smiling rural masses woke up. And, rightly, the elites blamed Thaksin for that. And so, roughly speaking, this is where the bloody battles  are now drawn.

What is the US interest in this impending civil war? Years ago, before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Thailand was a lynchpin against the communism-spread threat, whether of the Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian or Soviet kind. But when that urgency suddenly evaporated, the country’s profile on the US State Department radar screen shrunk. Such de-prioritisation is a terrible miscalculation. The American ambassador in Bangkok is a career US Foreign Service officer. This is a good thing: it means he’s not ignorant of the country to which he has been assigned, as is the case with so many of our inglorious, ugly American political appointments. But his fluency in Korean and Vietnamese, of which Ambassador Eric G. John is rightly proud, will however be of little help with the average Thai. And some of his preliminary comments seemed to tilt against the “Red” shirt democracy protestors. It might be better then were Ambassador John to say nothing at all than to suggest God Save the King at a time like this.

The cleavage between the Crown and the people has grown wider than ever. It is time for a United Nations supervised cease-fire, and a UN supervised countrywide election. Already, at this writing, casualties are mounting exponentially. This is nothing to smile about. A great country and lovely people are burning. Indeed, if it weren’t for one’s appreciation of the otherwise live-and-let-live talent of the Thai people, you’d be tempted to worry that “The Land of the Smiles” is veering in the direction of a failed state.

Columnist and veteran journalist Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books called “Giants of Asia.”

Originally published April 12, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

How Google got too hot for China's kitchen

2010-04-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

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, etcetera — and others we still have to learn about. But as long as old geezers in Beijing are still calling the biggest shots for the globe's most populated nation, China remains an account no one would want.

How many times have they been warned not to remind people of horrible Tiananmen Square? OK, the Chinese hacking of Google's e-mail accounts in China reaches not quite the same order of malevolence as the bloody head-cracking that took place in China's capital in June 1989. But, symbolically, the two cases are too close for comfort: Both are examples of dealing with dissent and uncertainty with force. In the end, the people with egg — if not blood — on their face are those that pull the trigger or encourage the repressive hacking of "dissident" e-mail accounts.

To be sure, having to work on the side of U.S. corporate public relations would exactly not be my cup of sake, either. But if I had to do it, there are clients far worse to have than Google. By the simple gesture of protesting the Chinese hacking, Google wound up atop the moral high ground — almost by default.

Perhaps Google's moguls indeed were naive to think that China would cease being a censorship regime as time went on. But that's not the issue. The Chinese government can censor all it wants, any time it wants, for whatever reason it wants; after all, it is a sovereign state. But when it agrees to do business with an American company whose core business is servicing clients in a reasonably open way, it has a responsibility to not muck around with that business. If Beijing couldn't stand the heat that Google's e-mail operations brought into the country, it should never have let it into the kitchen.

Note that the telling divisions in public reaction in China to the Google case really does reinforce the sense that there are at least two Chinas. First, there are the traditionalists, who buy into the bread-instead-of-political-freedom approach and could care less about Google's problems.

But then there are the Chinese yuppies, growing in number, comprising a new technocratic class and helping to drive the emerging middle class of China. This new class is increasingly influential and, from the Communist Party's perspective, perhaps increasingly dangerous.

In a sense the central government and party is a victim of its own success. Now that so many people who were once ill-fed, ill-clothed and filled with hopelessness are no longer in such a state, they are looking to put new ideas in their heads as well as fresh bread on the table. For China, then, the Google affair must be considered as a setback.

To illustrate: In the late '90s, I had a confidential meeting with a man whose intellect and judgment anyone would greatly respect. He was a top professor from China's hugely influential Central Party School. The meeting was billed as an "informal exchange of views," as these things tend to be dubbed, but before too long the professor got to his point: How can China develop a better image in the United States? The answer was obvious: Get rid of that brutal Tiananmen tank image and replace it with something kinder and gentler.

And, in fact, that's exactly what the Chinese did — brilliantly — with the 2008 Beijing Olympics: The "bird cage stadium" became the new icon of an emerging China.

But now they are almost back to Tiananmen Square one. When unflashy Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington later this month, he ought to flash the cameras a smile and announce a rapprochement with Google. (To help Hu save face, perhaps the Google-ites should present China's leader with some kind of "I'm Feelin' Lucky" award or something like that?)

It won't happen, of course, because some inside (and outside) China believe that it is now so big and tough that it no longer matters what its image is. That's a mistake: Image is important whether you are Mother Teresa, the Catholic Church or, well, Google.

As for Google, I must say that it's nice to see an American corporation for once looking like it may come out more than just OK. So Google loses the Chinese market? That may not be such a bad thing. Just ask media mogul Rupert Murdoch whether it's easy for a media company to make money in China. These days Murdoch is probably even more frustrated than Google.

So are a lot of people, alas. The Chinese government's present default positionon certain key issues is destined to cause some Western ventures to melt down — or run away.

Syndicated columnist and veteran U.S. journalist Tom Plate (who uses Google e-mail) is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's Center for the Digital Future and a board member of the Pacific Century Institute. © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Originally published April 7, 2010 in the Japan Times.

Why China kills a chicken to scare monkeys

2010-04-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

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 move into the World Trade Organization.

He gave the most interesting press conferences of any Chinese leader in anyone's memory, and he certainly was able to keep his cool: As troops were entering Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 ready to bash heads, they were doing no such thing in Shanghai, even though the streets were also jammed with protesters.

That was because Zhu, at that time Shanghai's mayor, took to the city's loudspeaker system to appeal for calm. Because of his enormous credibility, not to mention popularity, the appeal, even though from a high government official, was accepted. There was calm. That was Zhu.

This special and telling moment is well recounted in the appealing titled "China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom," just published by the University of Washington Press. In this fine memoir professor Richard Baum reminds us of many events, truths, themes and insanities over his four decades of visiting, studying and writing about China as an exceptionally well-traveled academic.

He writes nicely, though not so slickly that you are made to wonder why he isn't struggling harder to understand China (he believes understanding China is a terrifying constant struggle, even for so-called experts), and he thinks deeply, though without the unnecessary density common to academic studies that have very little to say and — tragically — a whole of space in which to say it.

Over the years, Baum, who teaches in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, transformed himself into something of a public resource. Because of his ability to break down complexity into language most people could understand, he became one of America's most quoted and most requested China experts. He has been all over the world media as an instant commentator and has written articles for almost everybody. The label I would throw on him is that of the scholar-explainer.

These relatively rare individuals are sometimes put down by their colleagues as all too glib merchants of mediocrity, and in some cases the put-down is perhaps true. But in the instance of Baum and some others like him, the scholar-explainer becomes a huge civil asset, educating not only students in the classroom but the rest of us citizens who want to understand what is going on with China.

It, after all, is only the world's most populous country, with the fastest growing economy. So you struggle to get a handle on the latest feral contretemps: China's "undervalued" currency? What does that mean and why won't Beijing just fix it? And what also is up (for Marx's sake) with the censorship clash with Google, who never did anyone any harm? We all thought China was opening up to the world, not trying to close things down again.

Scholar-explainer Baum helps us put these issues in context by taking us by the hand and walking us through China's modern history — jumping the barriers of complexity with a well-chosen anecdote, explaining the Chinese "mentality" without remotely coming across as an abject apologist for the worst excesses of Beijing's blind-side.

His memoir underscores how in China there is no free lunch, as the saying goes: Generosity leads to obligation, so take a favor from China only if you dare. He writes how many Chinese remain in denial about the awful Cultural Revolution, so be forewarned that almost any positive story about that terrifying and tragic meltdown is invariably "stereotyped, melodramatic and almost certainly untrue."

Even today, he concludes, China suffers from "post-Tiananmen stress disorder." Meaning? Authorities fear any serious loosening up of control will bring Tiananmen back all over again. So file the unseemly dustup with Google as the time-honored Chinese authoritarian tactic of "killing a chicken to scare the monkeys." As you can sense, the book is a wonderful way to get a handle on the current situation between China and the United States without losing your mind or your composure, or falling asleep.

One final note: In the last year or so, California budget cutbacks have been devastating to the University of California system of higher education. The cutbacks are nothing less than tragic. Public education in America has been a model for the world and central to our success as a superpower. Exceptional professors like Baum (and there are many of them at UCLA) do not come cheap, and the value of the best ones can hardly be quantified. I left UCLA as an adjunct professor in August of 2008, just before the short-sighted funding-collapse tsunami hit. But even now, a year and a half later, I can feel the university's pain. One wishes there were some magic answer. I, for one, wish I had one.

Syndicated columnist Tom Plate's book "Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew" will be published by Marshall Cavendish in May. © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

Originally published March 31, 2010 in the Japan Times.

Ivy League in the Net!

2010-03-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Sometimes virtue doesn’t have to be its own reward. The Cornell men’s basketball team just won a pair of big-time basketball games here in the United States. If you’re not utterly shocked, then you don’t know the inside story of college athletics in America.

Cornell University is an Ivy League school whose sole major misfortune is to be frozen every winter like an Arctic ruin in the God-awful upper New York state city of Ithaca. So when its men’s team scored upset triumphs in basketball, it was national news. That’s because it wasn’t just any other time. They were victories in early rounds of the gala national-college-athletic-association (NCCA) marathon tournament known to all hysterical hoopster-lovers as “March Madness” — and/or “The Big Dance.” It was the venerable school’s first NCAA tourney wins ever.

You would never know it when you travel abroad, but it gets very crazy in America around this time of year. For March Madness also sounds the opening gong for a different kind of youthful athletic frenzy. It’s known as Spring Break. But let’s not go into that. The significance of Cornell team’s triumph over much-higher ranked Temple University, from Philadelphia, is hard for outsiders to fathom. What’s a good comparison? Maybe the armed forces of Taiwan invade and seek to occupy China? Or maybe I pitch the ninth inning of a Los Angeles Angels game and strike out Japan superstar Hideki Matsui in three or four pitches. Something like that.

The reason for the astonishment that swept over America is that Ivy League universities pledge not to award scholarships to students for athletics, only for academic achievement or palpable financial need. By contrast, at Temple (like the vast majority of US schools) maybe everyone on the team has an athletic scholarship, including water boys. Not surprisingly, therefore, many Ivy League basketball players are short, lightweight and slow. But they also tend to have stratospheric IQs and brilliant grade-point averages.

When a major basketball power wins a NCAA game or even title — whether universities from Maryland, Connecticut, Kentucky, Florida or whatever — you are observing a semi-professional athletic team represented by a university athletic department that probably has more power on campus than the otherwise powerful academic Senate. These days, the best college players don’t even bother to hang around campus for four years to get their degree. Some sign multimillion dollar pro-contracts after just one year at school. That makes me sick. For it makes institutions of higher education little more than transition day-care centers for the National Basketball Assn. The entire scene shows the power of the almighty US dollar at its worst. To be sure, the quality of the basketball is often superb. It’s even possible to make the argument that somehow these successful athletic programs benefit the academic programs, too. But I, for one, don’t buy it. Instead, they tend to corrupt the academic environment. And every honest student knows it.

There’s a proposal in the air of America to expand March Madness and make the tournament bigger. But anything that bloats, even more, college athletics is a bad idea. What we need to expand and improve is our academic excellence. This is what has helped turn the US into a superpower. This is what has helped make us the envy of the world. Basketball is just a game, though a great one. What’s of enduring value from our universities is the triumph of our educated brains.

Cornell has its own troubles, to be sure. A spate of recent student suicides drew attention to its extreme isolation and internal competitiveness. No one is perfect. But otherwise, off-court, there’s no one in the NCAA field that sets the same standard. Cornell might never win a national hoops championship, but already it’s the biggest winner in the NCAA’s 64-team field.

Columnist and veteran journalist Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books called “Giants of Asia.”

Originally published March 25, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

Don’t Rock the Boat Now

2010-03-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Chinese diplomacy generally comes in all sizes and shapes, but until relatively recently the size was small and the shape a question mark.

Decades of international isolation did little to nudge many nuances into its foreign policy. Under Mao Zedong especially, China didn’t so much as conduct secret diplomacy under the table as it simply would duck issues while hiding under the table.

It was nearly pathologically involvement-adverse. You could almost imagine that for the longest time the Chinese language character for foreign policy was the same as the one for foreign contagion — as in, don’t get involved and you won’t become ill.

It would make for a much easier, simpler column to suggest that this is now all ancient Chinese history. After all, the country with somewhere between a fourth and a fifth of the world’s people could hardly stay near-invisible. Its mushrooming economic interests have pushed its investors and its people (and thus its diplomats) unto the four corners of the earth.

To some extent, this is exactly what has happened. In recent times, the Chinese have played a more constructive role on the United Nations Security Council. You would almost never hear a peep from its chief representative unless it was to slap down a veto. This is changing: Recently promoted to the top job in China’s Washington embassy, Zhang Yesui, for the last several years their dynamic UN ambassador, almost personalized the livelier Beijing line. This was good to see. So was Beijing’s 2003 plunge into the black nightmare of Korean peninsular diplomacy when it put together the Six Party Talks, against all diplomatic tradition.

But the putative new rose of Chinese diplomacy has not yet fully bloomed. The issue of China’s diplomatic capabilities continues to haunt China and put it on the defensive. The Obama Administration, for example, continues to hope that Beijing will take a more aggressive attitude toward the Iranian nuclear question. But Beijing still says: No-no, a thousand times no.

China’s top people are now spread out well enough across the globe to know what others are saying behind their backs. It is that China is becoming a giant country while adhering to a midget diplomacy. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi no doubt was responding to such back-alley bad-mouthing when he delivered a remarkable speech recently in Beijing.

The venue was centre-stage at the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC). This is China’s top legislature. The U.S. parallel would be something like a Special Session of Congress — if America were run by a tight-fisted one-party system. It’s thus a very big deal (which, of course, gets scant U.S. media coverage, so the American public has no idea of what’s going on … but it’s only China, right?).

The Foreign Minister sought to portray China as less developed than outsiders might think and as more or less feeling its diplomacy-way while clambering out of decades of self-imposed international insulation. “There are those who really want China to play a bigger role and those who overestimate China’s strength, exaggerate and play up China’s capacity to influence world affairs,” he told NPC delegates. China, he suggested, is at best a reluctant diplomatic dragon.

Later he expanded on that perspective: “We don’t do things that go beyond our strength and current level of development.” Cop-out? Or honest self-assessment?

The answer is a measure of both. The problem for the rest of the world is that certain global issues are utterly unsolvable unless the New China joins in the hard work and leaves the Old China buried somewhere near Mao’s Tomb. The obvious example is climate change. But it is the less obvious example that is even more urgent. That’s the state of the economies of both China and the United States.

They’re shaky. NPC delegates know this well. The key to China’s continued rise is more jobs. Fewer of them will trigger political instability. What that might bring to the Chinese mainland you don’t want to think about — nor do they.

On the American side, the country faces nationwide Congressional elections this fall. The majority party in Congress is Democratic; so is the Executive. The key issue is producing new jobs and preserving existing ones. So far America is experiencing a joyless jobless recovery. In six months, that could translate into many Congressional incumbents losing their own jobs. That might resolve into an even fiercer U.S. policy gridlock, when time is  of the essence.

What is hard to swallow is the failure of Beijing and Washington to fully accept that they are basically in the same rocky boat. And right now Sino-US relations are not exactly at an all-time happy-hour level. There’s too much shouting about Taiwan arms sales (basically irrelevant to the cross-strait balance of power), too much dancing over the Dalai Lama.

Tellingly, a recent page-one headline in “China Daily,” the official English-language newspaper, used this apt analogy to depict the bilateral relationship: “A car with two drivers”. The result, the newspaper suggested, is the current bumpy, if not reckless, drive.

What’s needed now is not a car with two drivers but a van or SUV sufficiently large so as to be energy-saving enough to allow the two great powers to pool their perspectives, plot out a safe and efficient trip and arrive at a common destination. Anything less and the car with two drivers may be heading  off a cliff.

Columnist and veteran journalist Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books called “Giants of Asia.”

Originally published March 16, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

The U.S. Media Badly Needs a Wakeup Call

2010-03-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

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.

Unfortunately, these days, it is not even widely admired within the United States. This is beyond sad.

A recent column expressed my view that the feverous coverage of Tiger Woods' private life was beyond all good taste and professional reserve. Actually, I thought it was totally disgusting. This view appeared to be widely shared.

One e-mail from a reader in Southeast Asia more or less spoke for many others received: "I full-heartedly agree with you. This kind of prurient media circus nauseates me no end. Tiger Wood's affairs should remain between him and his wife, or between him and the women who agreed to have affairs with him, unless a crime has been committed. Bravo."

A reader in South Korea e-mailed: "I agree with your article 100 percent. The media knows no bounds and their recycles often run stories into the ground."

But a contradictory salvo from a serious professional (whom I greatly respect, so I wish to keep his identity private) completely shook me up. "I have never read such complete ———— [well-known four-letter word] in my life."

That ribald response bothered me not because it was critical of my column (big deal!) but because it reflected what I fear is an attitude of widespread denial in the established U.S. commercial news media. They may not know what has hit them; worse yet, they may not realize what is going to hit them.

Let me explain.

The current crisis in the U.S. news media is usually attributed to technological or financial factors. But my view is that the crisis is largely spiritual. When the heart and soul of something is lost, darkness and disintegration are not far behind.

Journalists all over the world used to admire the U.S. news media; some still do. The power of our journalists to set the agenda, topple presidents and in general scare the living daylights out of political and public figures used to trigger an envious drool from journalists in other lands. But to see the U.S. media fall over themselves in the race to the bottom of propriety has been sobering indeed. The sordid specter even raises doubts about the quality of our democracy.

Not too many American journalists are aware of their role-model status. Few perhaps care one way or the other. Except for the U.S. foreign correspondents, after all, the worldview of the average journalist here does not extend much beyond Washington, as if that provincial city were the center of the political universe — which of course it once used to be.

But that was then, and this is now. Like our melting ice caps, the American news media is shrinking in size — and significance — and much more precipitously. Today, loud-mouthed, know-nothing bloggers vie for influence and effect with heretofore famous New York Times columnists. Network-news divisions downsize while new Web news sites spring up like springtime weeds in an abandoned lot. Seasoned journalists willingly defect from established news organizations to start up or join existing Web sites. In 10 years the American news-media landscape will be barely recognizable.

America's iconic media institutions are receding so dramatically that new jobs are scarce and existing ones are evaporating. The ultra-premier publications — Time magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post — once led the professional pack triumphantly and proudly. At Time, all the stupid if tantalizing gossip was rightly ghettoized into one page of the magazine: People. No more. Now People is not only its own magazine, but Time is more like People today than the Time of yesterday.

I feel sorry about what's happening. Now an issue of a news magazine comes to your home that looks so anorexic and so feeble that you feel bad for it. I don't even consider myself a subscriber anymore; the decline is so pathetic, I view my subscription check as a sort of a charitable contribution, as if saving the imperiled jobs of an endangered species: the traditional American journalist.

All of this may well be somewhat exaggerated, to be sure. Time and The Washington Post and ABC News still have significant clout. Some of my students would still drown their two little pet Pomeranians in a bathtub to land a job there. A major American newspaper columnist probably still has more pull than the average U.S. congressman (though that's perhaps not saying much).

But the trend lines are near- catastrophic, and, if you believe they will proceed apace, they contain evil seeds to transform American democracy in ways we surely cannot predict. The insistence of the quality news media on joining the race to the slimy bottom will only hasten their irrelevance.

The tragedy is that I do not believe they really understand that.

Veteran U.S. journalist Tom Plate's 2007 book on the American media, "Confessions of an American Media Man," will be reissued in May in a second edition. © 2010 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

Originally published March 11, 2010 in The Japan Times.

Skating on Thin Ice: South Korea Versus Japan

2010-03-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Thankfully, World War Three is over. The big battle between Japan and South Korea is done. The big guns on both sides have stopped smoking and victory has been declared. And somehow — miraculously, but in the way almost unique to Asia — the war has ended without a single life being lost.
The reference, of course, is to the finals of the ice-skating championship of the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Call it the war of the poses, if you like. In the shootout for the Gold Medal Thursday night, the Korean nation beat the Japanese nation. Exultant hysteria in Seoul ensued, but there was no joy in Japan. Like mighty Casey at the bat — in the legendary lore of the famous American folk poem — mighty Casey has struck out.

That is how they look at it in South Korea; and that is how they look at it in Japan. The bottom line on the hot ice of the Olympic skating rink was that Mao Asada had her skates cleaned by  Yu-na Kim. Period.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over this silly formulation. What really happened that sensational and otherwise wholly enjoyable night was that a relatively diminutive Japanese lady skater all of 19 years of age finished second to a relatively non-diminutive Korean lady skater all of 19 years of age.

The skate-off occurred near the end of the week’s overwrought ordeal in figure skating, perhaps the most glamorous event of the Winter Olympics. In the end, Kim skated first and scored her second record high of the week. Asada skated after her and would have copped the Gold Medal if Kim had  never existed.

The general sports fanatic as well as the hard-core figure-skating fan was left swooning. Memories reverted all the way back to the incredible 1973 Triple Crown competition between Sham (Asada) and Secretariat (Kim). Or how in the old days of professional basketball the Lakers could never beat the Celtics — or how the old Brooklyn Dodgers could (so rarely) beat the New York Yankees. Some things were just made to be; and others weren’t.

The figure-skating aficionado had to admit the skate-off between the taller Korean Kim and the more elfin Japanese Asada produced a performance level that could not be topped. Surely Kim’s “James Bond Girl” short-routine is for the ages. And surely it will be some time before the gymnastic pyrotechnics of Asada’s free-skate routine will be eclipsed.

Though not even out of their teens, Asada and Kim are almost seasoned veterans, sharpened by international competitions, each representing two of the world’s most industrialised economies. And in their public comportment, at least, they are adults, never trashing each other or in any way reinforcing the more juvenilia that sometimes plagues sports of all kinds, not excluding  ice skating.

But the same cannot be said of their countrymen back home. You would have thought basic national identity and ethnic worth were absolutely  up for grabs.

What if Kim (coming into the Olympics as the experts’ favourite) slipped and fell on her tutu? Wouldn’t that suggest South Korea was slipping too? What if Asada tripped on her triple axel? Wouldn’t that show Japan in decline — like, oh, a major car company embarrassed by mammoth safety recalls?

Little in the above paragraph is exaggerated, if anything. As evidence, I offer the recollection of a 1996 visit to the capital of South Korea to interview then-President Kim Young Sam. The bubbly, bumbling, boisterous politician opened the session by openly crowing about the prior night’s defeat by the Korean national team of the Japanese national soccer team in a  dramatic victory.

I tried to slip in questions about other things — silly issues such as relations with dangerous North Korea, nuclear China, ever-troublesome Russia, the economy, the quality of Kim-chi. But it was a no-go. Beating Japan — whether in soccer, at the Olympic Games, or with tiddlywinks — was the big earth-shaking event of the moment.

Reflecting on this, I felt sorry for Yu-na and Mao the other night, even as I appreciated their awesome skating performances. Sure, these two colossal talents will never have to worry about money and as national icons will be in the position forever to write their own tickets to whatever their hearts desire. But to place on their teenage shoulders — and inside their tender young heads — the whole sordid weight of deep-seated Korean-Japanese enmity is a mighty burden indeed.

Why can’t we adults just accept sports as the fun-giving games they were designed to be and not make it into some kind of allegorical theatre driven by the grim dark depth of reality?

By the way, while we’re on the subject of the Olympics: Did you see how the US women’s hockey team absolutely choked against the Canadians? My god! Now people will think America is in some sort of decline, losing its nerve — a capitulating nation of chokers. It made me so angry!

Columnist and veteran journalist Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books called “Giants of Asia.”

Originally published March 4, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

Lost between the forest and the Tiger Woods

2010-02-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

At times my loyalty to my chosen profession of journalism cannot be taken as a given. This is one of those times.

To put the matter in a quite unrefined way, the Tiger Woods psychodrama makes me sick, and besides turning my stomach, it is turning me into something close to a double-agent. I am in danger of becoming a career journalist with such cavernous doubts about the values and virtues of journalism as all too frequently practiced in America that I am almost ready to spy for the enemy.

Yes, this is because of Tiger Woods. The transcendently great golfer let it all — or at least a lot of it — hang out in his public confession of serial sinning at an appearance Friday before the so-called news media in Florida.

Please note that in America these days, a personalized, self-humiliating outing of any and all aspects of one’s private life has become part for the celebrity course. Nothing whatsoever is deemed to be out of bounds from the prying public eye. Tiger, a married man, had already admitted that, yes, he has been quite the swinger — and not just on the links.

That should have been more than enough to satisfy anyone, but the news media in attendance was not fully sated by the public self-hanging. They complained that the apology was too scripted and the sinner not pulling out his hair and fingernails. They were also deeply disappointed over Tiger’s unwillingness to take press questions. Good grief — I sure don’t blame Mr. Woods for that at all!

My own view is that the more honorable course for Woods would have been not to agree to the press appearance in the first place. Having humiliated his wife, especially, and his larger family, secondarily, the need to humiliate them all yet again — on a staged media platform, no less — is simply incomprehensible.

The more ethical turn of face might be termed the honorable Asia way. In certain Asian ethical cultures, there is only one thing more dishonorable than dishonoring your wife: It’s admitting — in a public confession, no less — that you dishonored your wife. Never admit, always deny:
Protecting the honor of one’s family is the only right thing to do. Trying to rehabilitate one’s image — if perhaps to resume the lucrative commercial endorsement trail — is nothing less than narcissistic, selfish and dishonorable.

Somewhere in the genetic double-helix deeply embedded inside Tiger Woods, who after all is half Thai, is a “stoic-gene”. Let the news media report what it does, say what it does, conclude what it does; but for yourself: Don’t lie, but do not confirm. Let the press go to Hades.

A relevant Asian exemplar for this morality play comes in the stoic visage of the bored Japanese salesman Shohei Sugiyama in the luminous Japanese movie Shall We Dansu? (1996). It explicates the nature of true passion (for living) without descending into melodramatic exploitation. The male protagonist Shohei (to tell the film’s charmingly romantic story as brief as possible here) becomes infatuated with ballroom dancing (actually, a no-no in his culture) — and also with his lithe dance instructor.

But he is deeply sickened by these feelings for her and for his hobby, and terrified of anyone finding out for fear of shaming his wife. (Now, go rent out the multiple-award-winning film to see how it works out, but in the end Shohei avoids doing a Tiger and not only saves his marriage but deepens it.)

How hard it must have been for at least the Thai half of Woods’s psyche to walk out there in the public eye and confess his sins to a media half of which would not have been there at all had he been a model husband.

The exploitative tendency of the American media improves nothing and decays everything.
Instead of honoring thy father and the best features of our American culture, it honors only commercial standards and rampant degrading voyeurism. Perhaps the biggest skirt in the history of American hypocrisy is the one called the First Amendment, behind which is hidden a media constantly drooling like a professional pack of hyenas.

As a journalist and an American, I had no interest in seeing Tiger Woods subject himself to a public whipping. Let me go further: My own view of the Clinton/Monica mess was that it was wholly overblown (once it having been established that the comforting young woman was not gainfully employed by any foreign security service, as, by contrast, was the notorious case in the 1963 Profumo scandal in England).

Certain matters should remain the intimate monopoly of husband and wife. But the American media, as a whole, is incapable of behaving with a proper measure of restraint and class. I do wish we American journalists were better than this. But, alas, we are not.

Former university Professor Tom Plate’s syndicated column in Asia is now into its 16th year of continuous publication. This journalist has worked for The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Time and New York Magazine.

Originally published February 24, 2010 in The Jakarta Post.

Walking on Water in Japan

2010-02-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Once upon a time — not so long ago in fact — the word “Toyota” was a synonym for “quality,” even “reliability.” Even that’s under recall now.
In a stunning reversal, the Tokyo-based auto giant is starting to back-pedal big-time. More than two million cars, from no less than eight model-lines, are being recalled, due to widespread performance-safety reports. Included in the massive backwards-movement were the popular Camry sedans and RAV4 sport utility vehicles. Red-faced Toyota execs admit that even the Prius, the green-car superstar, is under  serious scrutiny.

Good news for America? Sure, in the sense that what’s not good for Toyota can prove great for General Motors (not to mention Ford). Last month, the latter realised a 24 per cent increase in sales, and GM’s up-tick was also anything but shabby. Trend lines? Time, as it so often does, will tell.

In the meantime, the massive recall has an arguably philosophical as well as business dimension.

The first thing to be recalled is the notion that anything produced by the Japanese doesn’t need floatation devices because the Japanese walk on water. This idealisation was most rampant in the eighties. This was when Japan had more disposable income than the rest of us, exported cars that were almost perfect and nearly cheap, and had on display, in Yasuhiro Nakasone, a Prime Minister who looked, acted and in fact was just about everything you could want in a PM.

Actually — and some people may not know this — the Japanese don’t walk, on water that is. In fact, they are human, like the rest of us. As a nation and as a race, they may on average be a little harder working and a little more insular than most tribes on the face of the earth; but fundamentally they are human beings like the rest of us, prone to gravitational pulls and the laws  of nature.

To suggest otherwise is, in fact, reverse racism. Perhaps you don’t find Japanese mortality comforting — but I definitely do. It helps explains anomalies. Because unless you understand the Japanese as mortal members of planet earth like the rest of us, there is no way to explain why Japan’s economy is starting to lean like a potential Titanic; why its top national leaders sometimes act like goofballs; why its sizzling ice skaters (even a champ like the celestial Mao Asada) sometimes fall on their butts; why even their gigantically talented baseball players, like the great Godzilla, Hideki Matsui, the 2009 World Series Most Valuable Player, can whiff; why living-legend symphony conductors like even Seiji Ozawa can forget to give a poor exposed oboist a proper cue; and why gas pedals even in Toyotas can stick like used-Singapore-chewing-gum and cause unwanted acceleration. So now we look for some balance in our assessment of the Japanese. Note, for purposes of calibration, that the regal, silver-tongued Nakasone is now aged 91. And in a way, so is Japan. In many retail price categories, South Korea now makes better mid-sized cars. In the area of macro finance, Beijing actually holds more American Treasury bonds than Tokyo. And last year Japan posted negative economic growth rates while those of China, India, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam were (in differing degrees) positive.

How humiliating! Or — how human!

Countries rise and fall, as do dynasties and civilisations; sometimes the undulations are even predictable.

Since the nineties Japan’s friends, as well as enemies, have been predicting a subtle setting of the land of the rising sun, unless Japan reformed itself — seriously. But what happened? Japan failed to do so and so the decline proceeds apace. And now the decline apparently includes Toyota, one of Japan’s crown jewels.

Turn for a moment to another economic superpower: the United States.

All smiles at Ford and GM right now, but across the great land of America, mostly frowns are to be found. Last year’s big financial shock has abated somewhat. No one is giving President Barrack Obama much credit for this, but recognition for that will come in time.

But in the meantime, serious reform of the American economy lags, as it did for the past two decades in Japan.

In both countries, vested economic interests — as well as societal inertia — have had the political system in its vise, like a Mafia loan-shark shaking the last dollar out of a frightened, immobile customer. And so are the results predictable?

Look at the sad saga of once-invincible Toyota as a metaphor for what happens when you are riding so high, you just cannot see how far down you have to fall.

Tom Plate, a board member of the Pacific Century Institute and a member of the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles, is writing a trilogy of books on major Asian political figures

Originally published February 10, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

Odd Couplet Gets Even Odder

2010-02-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Unless they somehow manage to entwine us in World War Three with China, our friends in Taiwan truly are our friends.

That's a big IF, of course.

Over and over again, Beijing has let the world know that any dramatic move by the offshore island toward permanent and formal independence would trigger war. To back this threat up, the good people of the People's Liberation Army have tilted more than a thousand mainland missiles in Taiwan's direction.

This is serious business. Last year the prestigious and nonpartisan RAND Corporation, nearby in Santa Monica, concluded that the military balance over the Taiwan Strait had overwhelmingly tipped westward toward the mainland and a full-scale attack from China would be very difficult to repel.

Unless, of course, you-know-who intervened on the side of the little guy.

But there are problems with that, because you-know-who is currently (a) bogged down militarily in Afghanistan, (b) still in Iraq, (c) worried to death and militarily involved in Pakistan and (d) hovering over the threat of Iran's nuclear ambitions as if the military option is still prominent.

All of the above means that the United States has enough on its plate already. Having to defend Taiwan would be no picnic. And so, it is good to be told to relax by respected diplomats like Jason Yuan, visiting Los Angeles the other day. Invited by the Los Angeles World Affairs Council to serve up a speech on Beijing-Taiwan-Washington, Taiwan's top-tier representative to the U.S. was all measured reassurance and calculated calm, expressed in a blessedly concise speech notable for seeming lightness of being.

This guy is good. Taiwan, with many friends and relatives here (and most of them seemed to be in the audience!), sought to soothe America's nerves. You may have noticed that over just the last half dozen or so years, China ― in the minds of America ― has morphed from Sleeping Midget into something like Insomniac Giant.

Yuan suggests some serious adult perspective: ``Yes, China is rising," but don't reach for the bottles of Valium just yet. ``Your media people never think to ask whether the U.S. needs China more or China needs the U.S. more." And Taiwan's diplomat was more than ready to answer that: China needs the U.S. more. ``There is still a very long way for them to go," he insists.

Yes, China will surpass the Japanese economy as number two before long. But that's solely on the scale of total economy. Japan only has but a tenth of China's population; its per-capita economy remains light years ahead of China's, as does that of the U.S. Facts and figures are important but sometimes the full reality is hidden in the footnotes.

Yuan had the packed ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel laughing after every fourth sentence, but the topic is no joking matter, of course. So to further his thesis that China's military is not about to leap all over the world like some dragon on meth, he pulled back a few pages of history.

Remember, he said, that until recently China was weak. It was almost always embroiled in some kind of war, whether internal or foreign. After decades of that errant and expensive nonsense, its smart people finally came to the conclusion that war of any kind was the enemy of China's advancement, not an intelligent way of nurturing it. ``So they know that peace and stability is good for China," he points out.

To this end, China, he believes, will bend over backwards to avoid war. ``Yes, the rising tiger is coming this way. And, yes, it is good for the U.S. to be aware of this." At the same time, he counsels, we here in America have to keep the China threat in perspective. Otherwise, we may make important decisions, on trade issues and in other areas, all out of sync ― out of emotional fear rather than prudent calculation.

Yuan's diplomatic track record is solid enough that people know his views are sensible and reliable. They are also rational and unemotional. The problem is, China's are sometimes not. These days the Chinese are in a lather about President Obama's plans to meet with the Dalai Lama next month and about the impending U.S. sale of helicopters, defensive missiles and other hardware to Taiwan.

America, for its part, has its own issues with China, particularly its insistence that the mainland stop stunting its currency's value so as to make its exported products so cheap that few other national exports can compete in global marketplaces.

Trade, Taiwan and Tibet ― these comprise the three horsemen of the apocalypse in the Sino-U.S. diplomatic dance. Handled coolly and carefully, the issues can be kept from boiling over. The problem now, though, is that the world's single most important bilateral relationship is heating up. On the American side, our economy is not producing jobs and a big national election looms this November. On the Chinese side, tempers are flaring and people are not happy.

Beijing is in a foul mood. Not everything is always so cool and rational, Mr. Jason Yuan. But putting heated international issues into the framework of objective calculation is the diplomat's job, after all. And few do it better than Taiwan's number-one in the U.S.

Syndicated columnist and veteran journalist Tom Plate, a former university professor, is writing a trilogy of books called "Giants of Asia." He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.

Originally published February 18, 2010 in the Korea Times.

On the menu: Asian fusion food, conversation

2010-02-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

At a recent dinner party, the fare was Californian fusion, but the killer item on the menu was the serious table talk about Asia.

So much food for thought was offered that, when the evening was over, few had much of an appetite for chocolate cake! For what started as an evening of Asian fusion, more or less ended in consensus about Asian confusion.

Many Asian economies are surging, especially compared to the United States. According to estimates or projections by Themes Investment Management, the red-hot Asia-based house headed by former Goldman Sachs Asia chairman Kenneth Courtis, China, at more than 9 percent growth, again led the pack last year. India, not too shabbily, crossed the growth finish line at more than 6 percent. Vietnam, the socialist republic with a reforming economy, hit the 5 percent growth mark. Even Indonesia, crawling its way through the developmental state of democracy, looks to have achieved 4 percent growth. These are numbers to drool over. The U.S. limped in last year at about minus 2.6 percent.

Investment-guru Courtis explains what is going on: "The global crisis has accelerated the shift to Asia. The magnitude and power of the shift result from the combination of the law of large numbers and the magic of compounding at high rates of expansion. The shift is occurring across a vast front and is now a major factor in every aspect of the global economy."

To be sure, there's still trouble in the paradise of the Orient. Japan's growth was at a negative 6 percent; Taiwan's was almost as bad. What's more, the worldwide recession apparently has accentuated the different directions of Japan and China. That insight provided the most upsetting moment of the night.

The guests around the dining table were glum at the thought of an authoritarian political system dramatically topping a parliamentary one like Japan. It seemed unfair and arguably ominous, as if there would be pointed implications for governance in the 21st century.

But the dinner party of Japanese diplomats, academics, Japanese-Americans and scholars (plus one journalist, who shall go nameless) was far from ready to declare authoritarianism the winner in the East Asian economic development race. While China's growth achievements continually impress, questions remain about its political maturity.

The unseemly spat with Google over whether e-mail and other accounts should remain immune to the prying eyes of government was a reminder that China has many problems left to sort out internally. And everyone knows that the Chinese people have paid a heavy price for the economic upsurge in the form of a political system that offers more intimidation than reasoning to keep the lid clamped down tightly.

At the same time, Japan's political system itself seemed un-inspirational, to say the least. The new government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, is off to a terrible start. Corruption charges penetrate the party's inner circle. The current prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, hasn't impressed anyone, so far at least, as the leader likely to get Japan moving again.

But rays of hope filtered across the table nonetheless. One came from the amazing scholarly work of Professor Yusaku Horiuchi of Australian National University. He said that recent electoral reform consolidations in Japanese municipalities may have been a profound hidden factor behind the recent historic victory of the DJP over the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party. This electoral transformation raises the possibility that Japan may be evolving, structurally, into a genuine two-party system that will bring vigor, challenge and self-correcting mechanisms to America's leading ally in Asia.

One roots no more for Japan to continue to slide than for China to suddenly implode. Asian political stability is a prerequisite if the region is to continue to rise. The Chinese economic story is a very good one, but many chapters remain to be written in the history book of this modern-age ancient nation. And counting Japan out would not seem to be a wise bet. The two need to grow in a healthy way together. It's hard to see how Asia will become more stable if the disparity between Japan and China continues to lengthen. That thought left the dinner guests with much to chew on.

Tom Plate teaches Asian politics and media at UCLA.

Originally published February 3, 2010 in the Pocono Record.

From Boston to Bangkok: The Truth in Fiction

2010-01-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Almost everyone I know wants to be like Spenser. The fictional Boston-based private investigator stood for almost all the right things.

This P.I. thought clearly, acted quickly, bonded with the good guys, wasted the bad guys, and always knew the right thing to do and say. And could this boy ever whip up a gourmet meal! But don’t ask about the private eye’s first name, his creator didn’t give him one, much less his secret recipes; and don’t be critical — remember, Superman himself got only one name.

The famed Spenser novels (37 of them, from 1973) were beloved by millions of readers. Many were huge bestsellers. Even readers who lived in Boston learned new secrets about Boston life with Spenser as their tour guide.

Fictional heroes fill in reality’s gaps and disappointments. This celebrated literary hero created by American author Robert B. Parker hails from the macho-man tradition of Philip Marlowe and even secret agent James Bond. The latter, concocted by former British intelligence officer Ian Fleming, hit bookshelves at a time (fifties/sixties) when the British were not feeling so great about themselves. They had won the war but lost an empire and were sliding into mediocrity. Its politicians were as exciting as pub food and couldn’t do anything right. Sir James was able to beat back bad guys without spilling one drop of his dry martini. His fellow countrymen thought him more like how they wanted to be.

Reality is often too much to take, don’t you think? Consider Thailand — “the Land of Smiles.” Who’s laughing now? Today it’s a maudlin muddle in a political puddle. Thank heavens, therefore, for artists who can conjure up a hero as wise and snappy as the private eye named Calvino (who in this case does get a first name: Vincent). Thanks to the impressive artistry of Canadian expat writer Christopher G. Moore, Calvino, who is cleaner than a guardian angel, pries the lid off the real Thailand to look deep into the sewer of down-and-dirty corruption. Writes Moore, a former law professor: “No one gets something for nothing in Thailand…. Doing a deal in Thailand is like buying subprime mortgages.” This 11th Calvino novel is aptly titled “The Corruptionist,” and is graced with riveting cover art by Bangkok-based expressionist painter Chris Coles that somehow drills deep into the psyche of the fiery Thai underworld.

This pull-no-punches Parker spirit bobs to the surface in another Southeast Asian country: Singapore. We must thank lady writer Shamini Flint for bringing us Inspector Singh (another one-name wonder).

Portly, poorly dressed, always perspiring, Singh, however, is smarter than even your average Singaporean math student, and is glued to following the truth. In “Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder,” the second in a series with a third novel coming, a gorgeous model around whom men hopelessly orbit is said to have whacked her husband. Singh believes otherwise and his superiors send him up to Malaysia to “assist” the police in their investigation.

This is where the fun begins, for Singapore and Malaysia sometimes get along no better than North and South Korea. So the story gets nasty and tasty but in the end — you guessed it — Lady Knockout in fact turns out  to be innocent.

Another character right out of the Robert B. Parker casting-book is Central Narcotics Bureau senior officer Jimmy Tan. He gives a whole new meaning to the term “Singapore party-pooper.” From the pen of English expat Neil Humphreys, Tan makes no apologies whatsoever for his country’s so-called “draconian” anti-drug laws. He knows in his heart that drug dealers are scum and their nefarious networks nothing less than spider webs of societal cancer. When caught and convicted, they will hang, and so he cheers. Call me boring and predictable, he intimates to the reader, but my streets are quiet and my family grows up in one of the safest countries in the world — you have a problem with that? This is the classic proud-to-be-a-Singaporean speaking in national straight talk.

Plot-wise, Humphreys’ deliciously entertaining “Match Fixer” is about corruption in Southeast Asian sports (yes, this happens even in Singapore, though of course the book is just fiction, right?). Is the real Singapore knowable better through unofficial fiction than official nonfiction? That’s the kind of question all of these fine detective-fiction writers inevitably raise. Whatever the answer, they each honour the memory of Spenser P I and his creator Robert B. Parker with their artistry. Alas, this brilliant master of the detective genre passed away the other day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 77. He will be greatly missed, but his legacy will endure. You can see that in these wonderful books whose fictional detectives tell real stories about our lives today without boring the living daylights out of us in the process.

Tom Plate, a board member of the Pacific Century Institute and a member of the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles, is writing a trilogy of books on major Asian political figures

Originally published January 26, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

Clash of Civilisations Over Bitter Bytes of Data

2010-01-21T09:04:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

19 January 2010 Prelude to World War Three? Not exactly — that’d be a rather spectacular example of journalistic inflammation at its worst.

So let’s put Google’s spat with China in perspective. Considering the gigantic size and enormous global footprint of the US and China, the areas of genuine major conflict between them are relatively small. Yes, you have the tensions over Taiwan and Tibet, which may well drag on forever. And then you have the roiling quarrel over China’s currency subsidies, which impact trade- friction issues.

Enter now, though, a more pressing problem that has been looming for some time — and now has hit the international-relations fan big-time. Call it a “clash of civilisations” between the Chinese civilisation and the American one — with nary a fiery Muslim cleric or bomb-toting terrorist in sight.

At issue is a conception of information that is distinctly and honestly American, versus one that is distinctly and honestly Chinese. In the former, information is ordinarily viewed like the air we breathe: accessible to all and rarely dangerous. In the latter, information is viewed as potential gas warfare: dangerous unless controlled and subject to severe state quarantine.

And so when those geniuses (non-sarcastic here) at Empire Google discovered to a technical certainty that Empire China had cracked into clients’ email accounts in its China network operation, it cried foul. This ultra-successful Silicon Valley giant is about information-Googling, not Gulag-ing. So it raised the possibility of withdrawing its business from China entirely if such raids continue (and/or, if market share continues to erode).

For all appearances, the general targets of the hacking appear to be email user-clients whom Chinese authorities suspect of anti-government attitudes, or even activism. Beijing doesn’t like to tolerate anti-state activity of any kind; Google doesn’t like being associated with intellectual suppression triggered by information access.

For both parties, a prudent measure of caution is urgently advised, because neither has much room to maneuver. Google has planted its flag dramatically on the side of informational freedom and client confidentiality and for that, it is being widely and rightly applauded, even by many people within China. That’s why Beijing doesn’t have much room to manoeuvre. It is absolutely true that many on the mainland genuinely respect the national government for its sagacious guidance of the economy to unprecedented heights of wealth, especially after such dreary decades of economic dysfunction. But they do not want to live in an informational Dark Age, and would much rather twitter, blog and splash around in the warm and refreshing ocean of our informational age, just like almost everyone else.

Chinese authorities, precisely because they are well aware of the immense undercurrent of domestic debate and internal criticism, will not budge on the issue of control. That’s why they slapped an 11-year jail sentence on human-rights activist Liu Xiaobo. In no uncertain terms, they aim to warn everyone that they will sit on the lid on dissent for fear of everything boiling over.

In this respect, at least, China is further away from California than Mars; and Google is a particularly Californian media giant. By that we mean that it is (1) relatively young and new, and (b) youthfully idealistic. It proffers a most counter-establishment corporate motto: “Don’t Be Evil’. I love it. It is meant to suggest that huge corporate profits can be made without committing huge capitalistic sins (exploiting labour, eviscerating the environment,  supporting dictators).

It’s a lovely thought. But the enormous potential for naivete is about to be tested. China is not about to appreciably back down because its authorities fear political chaos (see M. Gorbachev, Soviet Union, decade of ‘80s). From its perspective, political implosion on the mainland would be evil-incarnate.

So Google will have to decide if it can tolerate trying to make profits in a country that will steal from client and proprietary accounts whatever it wants and whenever it thinks it’s necessary.

The task for Google is to recognise that sometimes the definition of evil is culturally and politically relative (executives: Just Google this idea up!). The task for Beijing is to recognise that sometimes its political stability would be enhanced, not undermined, by the occasional light touch on the political controls. Even so, the issues are real and profound. Yet it is the American (indeed, Californian) optimist in me that says the two sides need to grow up together and work this out. The world does not need a burgeoning US-Chinese clash of civilisations. Google should stay in China if it can but leave if it must. It will lose the business but keep to its true self. There is a time to remain silent, and a time to stand up. China may need to do what it has to do, and it needs to preserve face. But an American company has every right to stand up and say: Fine, but this is not for us, though it must not crow about it. China has its own ways. We have ours. How can we live better together?

Author and syndicated columnist Tom Plate is a member of a number of international-relations organisations, including the Pacific Century Institute and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council

Originally published January 19, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.

Wayword Woods Meets the Religious Intolerants

2010-01-13T12:54:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate
January 12, 2010

LOS ANGELES — Buddhism is one of the historic religions of Asia and today its influence remains strongly felt throughout the world. One has only to scratch the surface of this philosophical religion that originated in India in the 5th or 6th century B.C. to know that it has much to say about suffering. Suffering emerged as a primary focus of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama because the true Buddhist understands suffering to be a constant of existence. And don't we all know how true this is!

In effect, Buddhism tells you that there is no easy escape from the reality of existence, other than coping with present reality through Buddha's consistent (if rather severe) teachings. With this as a necessary preface, let us now examine the strange case of an American news-television personality who made a splash the other day by advising Tiger Woods, with all his troubles, to forswear Buddhism and turn to Christianity.

Yes, Tiger received that unsolicited advice from one of the mainstays on the Fox News cable network. The golfer Woods, by his own testimony, inherited the gift of Buddhism from his mother, a Buddhist born in Thailand. He has said it has been invaluable as a corrective for his faults. It's been said that some of his faults include stubbornness and impatience, but the whole world now knows he has a few others as well.

What's so interesting about Buddhism, in this context, is its unwavering emphasis on desire as a prime cause of suffering, and thus the need to escape the imprisonment of desire in order to achieve the transcendent state of Nirvana.

The TV personality in question is Brit Hume, a proud and avowed Christian. But wearing his Christian cross on his sleeve by inviting Mr. Woods to convert to Christianity seemed to move this TV journalist very far away from the Walter Cronkite model and uncomfortably close to a televangelical Billy Graham.

Hume, a star Fox staffer, made his pitch on "Fox News Sunday" about the superiority of Christianity to Buddhism. Believe it or not, this is what this American TV journalist said on the air:

"Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question, and it's a tragic situation for him. He's lost his family. It's not clear to me whether he'll be able to have a relationship with his children. But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He's said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world'."

We need to repeat a few facts here. One, this little sermon was offered in the course of a cable news television show. As such, the same U.S. Constitution that requires separation of church and faith from government also protects its content from government censorship. That's a tremendous privilege we American journalists are given. Not many countries offer it. We American journalists should thank whatever God we worship at night for this great gift.

Not every U.S. journalist or news outlet merits this protection, however. Both print and video/TV at times abuse the privilege. The U.S. news media are awash with gossip, innuendo, bad information and outright slander — and now one network is revealing a religious preferment.

What's more, even as it greatly pains this print journalist to admit, the fact of the matter is that, on the whole, the TV news media is terribly influential. And thus the responsibility of the TV journalist not to abuse his or her position is great. Woods, who remains in hiding, has had no public reaction to Brit Hume's bid that he convert to the "better" religion.

But the non-Christian world sometimes looks at the United States with great wariness on the religious issue. It imagines that some wars (like Iraq) are but Christian crusades, the crusaders always ready to mount offensives against infidels. And there are plenty of those infidels out there, aren't there?

You have many millions of Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and Taoists and so on. A lot of Christians don't like that and wish everyone would convert to the one "true religion," as some proselytizing or evangelical Christians rather aggressively define Christianity.

Then you have the world's atheists who believe all these religions are for crazy people. Those ruling Chinese atheists in Beijing, for example, would sure love to snuff out resurgent Tibetan Buddhism. That's why the Brit Humes of the world and the Communists play, in a sense, in the same league: the league of religious intolerance.

Rather than live and let live, they want everyone to be more like them. This is very dangerous — and the mere thought of it utterly depressing.

Author and syndicated columnist Tom Plate is working on a trilogy of books on Asian political figures. He is founder and director of the Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Originally published January 12, 2010 in the Pocono Record.

An Optimist's Wish List for 2010

2010-01-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

IT IS said that the optimist peers at the glass and assesses it as half full, the pessimist gauges it half empty. But the cynic asks: Where's the leak?

This past year was so bad, it was almost impossible to describe. New words were needed. For example, consider the ruckus at the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark, headed by the indefatigable UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. It is now known simply as 'Copenhagen', which immediately morphs into a new verb - 'to Copenhagen' - which means something like to fuzz over the reality, such as 'zero plus zero equals whatever you want but never equals zero'. As in 'polluted' means 'almost as clear as the eye can see'. You get the idea.

That is one new term. Then from the proper noun - the last name of our United States President - comes the morphed verb: 'to Obama'. This means to split political differences to such a fine degree that it is hard to detect the presence of any actual coherent policy change. A third I fear that will make it into our political lexicon is 'to Ahmadi-Nejad', created to honour Iran's prevaricating and wholly annoying President. This proper noun to verb means, well, 'to prevaricate' - that is, 'to lie'. Catchy, eh?

Persistent illusion across the globe requires the observer to develop the psychic and professional protection of a realistically cynical attitude towards people, places and things. But let us not give up hope. In this spirit, here are several good things I hope will happen in 2010.

World pays more attention to South Korea, less to North Korea

A GREAT contemporary success story is South Korea, too rarely rendered in its full prideful panoply. A much larger- scale version of the excellent Singapore story, it is a sweeping saga of economic development catapulting a once beaten- down people to First World status. Notice how Seoul recently landed a multibillion-dollar peaceful nuclear power contract from the energy-ravenous United Arab Emirates (ordinarily the French or Japanese probably would have got it). Appreciate how it now ascends to the presidency of the so-called Group of 20 leading world economies - a sort of economic-Olympic Gold Medal award. Note, too, that today's Korean technology is not the shabby brand of yore - as those of you tooling around in a new Hyundai know happily. For South Korea, failure is not an option. By contrast, its northern neighbour is nothing more than a portrait in the pathetic. It is the tired story of failure with no exit. Maybe if we ignore it more, it will expect less from us?

These bad big shots will resign

AT THE top of a long list of unhelpful figures, three especially prominent personages stand out: Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (he is seriously politically tone-deaf), Burma's (okay, Myanmar's) junta boss Than Shwe (a bad geriatric joke) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (rank incompetent). The world would be a much better place with all three off somewhere playing golf or checkers or some-such full-time.

India's Odd Couple named Time's Man and Woman of the Year

HEY, you white boys at Rockefeller Centre: Please take a look at nuclear-armed India, with more than a billion people, a hundred languages, many religions and as many problems, including nuclear-armed Pakistan. But it has been moving forward lately and could round out into superpower centre some day (maybe).

One positive factor has been the steadily wise guidance of clear-headed reform economist Manmohan Singh, now serving his second term as Prime Minister of giant India. This religious Sikh is smarter than President Barack Obama, wiser than China's President Hu Jintao and probably knows as many facts, figures and graphs (if you are into this) as Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (past-labelled, by us, as 'Prime Minister Google'). Dr Singh is well backed by ruling party chair Sonia Gandhi, the legendary Jawaharlal Nehru's powerful granddaughter-in-law and India's reigning behind-the-scenes- matriarch. This odd couple should share the honour. We Americans need to understand India much better - now.

China's President Hu opens up, gets down with Western media

THIS leader of China is of paramount importance to the world, but he is so tight-lipped one is tempted to label him the Great Clam of China. He really needs to do everyone a favour and show the public some of the awesome qualities said to have got him to the top of the mainland heap: thoughtfulness and an encompassing command of the issues, tempered with the proclivity to press the 'repression' button at the first sign of trouble.

Let some serious and respected journalist have an honest and open go at him. On the American TV side, who would be better than Charlie Rose, whose great work in interviewing complex Chinese leaders like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore qualifies him for the big chance. (If Rose happens to be unavailable...who is around to do Mr Hu? Hmm...). Anyway, dream on: This one is not going to happen.

Japan finds a successful premier

THAT is probably not the incumbent, Mr Yukio Hatoyama, who every day seems more and more overwhelmed by the very idea that he is Prime Minister. Japan, you see, tends to go through prime ministers faster than Tiger Woods goes through nightclub hostesses. The Land of the Rising Sun will begin to sink in the East unless it gets a grip on its political system and finds itself a prime minister with real staying power. This is urgent.

Originally published January 2, 2010 in the Straits Times.

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From 1989 to 1995, Tom Plate was editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times. Until 2000, he was an op-ed columnist for The Times. Today his column is syndicated internationally in newspapers from Dubai to Providence, Rhode Island. He is writing a trilogy of books on Asian political figures. Recent columns are catalogued at © 2010, Pacific Perspective Media Center.

Three Stars in the News, Three Insights into Diplomacy

2009-12-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Los Angeles – In America, trying to understand what makes other complex countries and cultures tick is usually done in the university classroom, through travel abroad or by following the mass news media. But there’s another option that sometimes produces gold: Peering into other cultures through the behavior of their stars and their artists.

Take Hideki Matsui, my favorite active baseball player who until recently played on what used to be my favorite American baseball team, the New York Yankees. Amazingly, the Japanese-born slugger garnered the title of Most Valuable Player in the recent World Series, the first Japanese ever so honored. He well deserved it. A hitting virtuoso, he almost won the deciding game single-handedly.

It was a performance to remember, but here is the complaint: the callow management of the New York Yankees had no trouble dissing him. For various reasons, it did not try to re-sign Matsui, who was quickly snapped up by the Los Angeles Angels—now my favorite team. Further, I want nothing to do with the Yankees and am officially resigning as a fan, after decades of active cheering.

I also want nothing to do with that sick part of American culture that regards everybody and everything as little more than disposable and negotiable economic factors, and which treats its “workers” (even superstar employees) as commodities to be shoved around like furniture. That kind of purely materialistic and manipulating behavior in Matsui’s own deeply embedded home culture is less common. This is one reason I greatly much respect Japan.

And, speaking of Japan, our English-language news media have been making a big deal about some recent Beijing-Tokyo flirtations. Xi Jinping, the heir-apparent to China’s number one honcho, Hu Jintao, recently paid a controversial courtesy call to the honored Emperor of Japan. The dramatic gesture seems to have divided the Japanese people into two: Those who welcome the warming, and those who believe their Emperor should have played harder to get.

To understand the latter view, one needs to revert to the true artist for insight and not rely on mere journalism. One good way is to review director Ang Lee’s masterpiece, “Lust, Caution” – a great film. He shows why the wartime-rooted hatred between the Japanese and Chinese could take at least another generation to dissipate fully. In the meantime, America’s Japan-watchers need not have a nervous breakdown about “China warming.” Even the new opposition government in Tokyo is not about to abandon the U.S. and jump over to “the other side” tomorrow.

This brings us to a thought about India which, like China, is often touted as a coming superpower. But optimists beware: India is a grinding colossus of many languages, conflicting peoples, rabid religions, cultural contradictions and – last but not least – unmovable bureaucracies. Something Zubin Mehta, a Mumbai-born superstar conductor, did recently while guest-conducting here in Los Angeles reminded me of that.

Mehta, a phenomenal talent, conducts with uncanny, even metronomic, precision. Musicians, wherever he conducts, find him so easy to follow. They also love his wicked sense of humor, which helps him handle other super-egos of the classical musical world with the aplomb of a world-class diplomat.

Those talents were on display at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a second-to-none venue in terms of lustrous clarity of orchestral sound. The ultra-precise Mehta fully exploited the room’s strength. His program, of Webern, Bartok and Beethoven, received standing ovations. But with Mehta a problem sometimes surfaces in his conducting that (I would argue anyway) parallels a problem with India in general.

The Webern Mehta handled with sensitivity; and in the Bartok Second Piano Concerto he was content to follow the lead of all-world virtuoso Yefim Bronfman like a happy puppy. But he conducted Beethoven’s Third (“Eroica”) Symphony as if he were executing a house arrest.

He all but handcuffed Ludwig to the score – that he was conducting from memory – as if the composer were trying to escape to commit another crime. It was as if Mehta had suddenly turned into some kind of watchdog who was determined to make sure the composer observed all the rules and regulations of composition. Chained to a bureaucratic vision of what the Third Symphony was, the music of Beethoven never escaped capture; and so it never took off.

Mehta would absolutely hate this characterization. But he sometimes brings to his work the feeling that he is trying to prove who is boss, not boss of orchestra but of the music itself. And so he sometimes strangles the music’s lyricism the way India’s vast bureaucracy at times tends to strangle India. The moral to this story is that both India’s Mehta and its bureaucrats need to loosen their grip if they want India to breathe and flourish – as a truly heroic ‘Eroica’ symphony and culture should.

Artists and athletes, at their best, often teach us more about a culture than political scientists. You just have to observe them very attentively. But they are invaluable because they go so deep.

Originally published December 26, 2009 in the Khaleej Times.
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From 1989 to 1995, Tom Plate was editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times. Until 2000, he was an op-ed columnist for The Times. Today his column is syndicated internationally in newspapers from Dubai to Providence, Rhode Island. He is writing a trilogy of books on Asian political figures. Recent columns are catalogued at © 2010, Pacific Perspective Media Center.

Attention Last-Minute Shoppers --- China Gifts Offer Best Value

2009-12-18T18:09:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Los Angeles – Attention last-minute holiday shoppers! We have an easy-to-purchase gift to recommend. And we guarantee that it will fit all sizes, shapes and tastes.

This is assuming your intended recipients are intelligent, literate and eager to learn about the world. For as your intellectually slothful friends (if any), we recommend you just keep off your list entirely. Why waste your (presumably) hard-earned money on them? Let them spend their holiday watching football or something.
The answer to your gift-list problem is to buy your friends a book on China – in fact, any book on China, or any two or even three books. You absolutely cannot go wrong. In the last year not one book on China has been published in the U.S. that’s not worth buying and reading. This is a serious statement.

That’s not because the best writers in the world are writing only about China, necessarily. It’s because China is a subject of such vast and profound interest right now that it’s virtually impossible to find a bad or useless book about the world’s most populated nation/civilization, even if you try.

And, to be sure, no one is foolish enough to try. The field of China books today is fiercely competitive. Serious people understand the need to comprehend with sophistication the surprising shape of the emerging new world order. It is a matter of urgency and responsibility, especially in a democracy where we have an obligation to be informed.

No one has time for literary jokes of half-baked book scams. With something like one fifth of the entire world’s population, holding more U.S. Treasury investments than even the rich Japanese (the prior all-time high U.S. bondholder), and burning up more and more of the world’s energy and mineral reserves and resources, China is, as they say in Hollywood, the new plot line.

Just check in with your favorite book search engine and see what’s available. It’s an amazing list. Who has time to read them all? But why not buy at least one of them – any of them! -- for a friend if not for yourself?
But if you absolutely must have a firm recommendation, here it is: a provocative new book with an even more provocative title – “WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order,” (The Penguin Press, 550 pages).

This is probably the book to read or give to a friend if you’re not going to get more than one. It encompasses a huge range of issues, is written in flawless, clear and concise English, and comes to firm and disturbing conclusions.

I even agree with some of them.

Author Martin Jacques is something of an alarmist about China’s rise in the world. Notice we say alarmist, not militarist. The British journalist and well-traveled research fellow takes the view that China will rise on its own Chinese terms. This means its modernity will not copy-cat our Western one. And when China has finished its monumental rising, it will not look like any Western democracy you have ever seen, and will have pushed smaller nations to the side, like a whale surfacing.

Jacques has designed his highly informed book to be deliberately provocative without his having to play the fool, and the reader is richer for the effort. He is not predicting war, but neither is he predicting Disneyland. The Chinese, he believes, take the view that they are different – and better – than the rest of us; indeed, they view themselves as being (somehow) biologically different: “They have an overweening sense of superiority and the hierarchical mentality this has engendered.”

The implication for the West is that we really need to start paying more attention to what they are up to, especially because we haven’t: “China is the elephant in the room that no one is quite willing to recognize.” That’s a perfect example of Jacques’ delightful in-your-face approach, and the end result of the effort is an invaluable book.

However, it must be said that a more placidly scholarly treatment would have to recognize that Asian brainiacs have been telling everyone ‘the Chinese are coming’ for years. This column, launched in 1995, has been shouting out that West Coast over and over. Serious Singapore thinkers, especially Lee Kuan Yew. Kishore Mahbubani, George Yeo Tommy Koh and Chan Heng Chee, have been warning the West to wake up about China.

But it’s alright with me if the author of “When China Rules the World” wants to lay claim to inventing the wheel that has been rolling along for two decades in Asia. He seems to get a charge out of the phony exclusivity. No matter. The book he has produced is worth the conceit.

My advice: buy one for yourself, give one to a friend. Or buy another book on China. By comparison to the value of knowing as much as you can about this Asian elephant, almost all other gifts would be wildly overpriced.

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From 1989 to 1995, Tom Plate was editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times. Until 2000, he was an op-ed columnist for The Times. Today his column is syndicated internationally in newspapers from Dubai to Providence, Rhode Island. He is writing a trilogy of books on Asian political figures. Recent columns are catalogued at © 2009, Pacific Perspective Media Center.

Why Would We Want This President to Fail?

2009-12-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Some necessary context for President Barack Hussein Obama’s long-awaited Afghanistan policy speech:

Foreign-policy performance is anything but the total measure of a President’s worth. America’s domestic politics, not to mention its elections, are more often than not driven by the forces, and failures, of economics. But get foreign policy matters seriously wrong and the President of the world’s only superpower walks around looking like a three-legged dog. Just recall Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam failure, which more or less wound up defining his tragic Presidency.

Barack Hussein Obama’s address at West Point was remarkably clear and direct. This relatively young, amazingly articulate man was pretty much at his best. He was (a) the college professor lecturing on the historical background, (b) the First Strategist pointing out the trade-offs and options, and (c) the Cheerleader in Chief trying to pump up the troops and the American public to rally round the urgent cause.

Obama made a good case that the cause was indeed just, reminding everyone of the retaliation’s origins and of the unforgivable atrocities in New York eight years ago. But whether the cause is in fact doable is the harder case to make. In this century alone both the British and the Russians tried, and failed. Are we that much better than our predecessors? A recent column here argued that no quicksand is quicker than Afghan sand.

The Obama Presidency perforce is eight years late to the issue. That was when, overwhelmingly, momentum, world opinion and domestic opinion were all united in our favor. In life, it is said, timing is everything. But then is not now – and only a mystical time machine can wind us back to when it might all have worked for us in the land of the elusive Afghans.

The President will be criticized for proposing a time frame that gets American troops out of there in 18 months. But he should be congratulated instead, especially for calling attention to the limits of our patience and treasure. Here the President seemed to be more level-headed than his much-older predecessor. He repeatedly emphasizes that American power has its limits and that the piggy bank is (especially today) far from overflowing these days.

His recent trip to Asia underscored this new reality – and stuck a welcome knife in the old myth of American omnipotence. It was good that he bowed graciously to the Japanese emperor (just maybe now the Japanese will begin to forgive him for sending a poorly qualified new ambassador there). It was good that his public conduct in China reflected the reality that Beijing has become America’s banker-in-chief. And the mutual warmth paraded publicly in Seoul with South Korea’s heretofore crusty President Lee Myung-bak was a tonic for sore eyes, especially after watching years of snarls and barks and threats between Seoul and Washington.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy looks to be much closer to the reality of the world today. Yes, sorry—America needs to be less preachy and unilateral. What’s amazing, then, is that, critics who should know better are calling the Obama approach a bust after but 10 months in office. A recent article in Foreign Affairs, the Koran (usually we just say “Bible”) of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, carried a blistering critique of Obama’s recent Asia trip. Its basic point was that our President parted no seas and changed no water to wine. Well….

Americans generally admire our free and open criticism of big-shots and of the Presidents. And there’s no reason for any President not to get his fair share of hard hits and lumps. But the operative word has to be fair. To say that the results of the Asia trip were so bad that “Mr. Obama should have taken a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii” is not fair criticism but contemptuous commentary.

The respected author, Leslie H. Gelb, is a former government official and New York Times columnist. Of all people he should know better. Some Presidential trips are indeed result-oriented. But others are simply fancy versions of meet-and-greet sessions– a wholly appropriate trek for a first-year President.

Normally we columnists – former or otherwise – tend to stick together. Few people like us and no one in power generally cares whether we live or die unless we suck up to them. But if even America’s otherwise well-regarded mainstream commentators are prepared to declare this Presidency null and void before its first anniversary, let me part company with them now.

Obama needs fair criticism (the best of it could, after all, help him). But he could also use a fair and justified degree of support, especially at this early stage. The world economy is still shaky, the Middle East increasingly seems like a tinderbox (why hasn’t Obama solved this thing overnight? Geesh!), and high levels of unemployment, always-dangerous, look to be headed further skyward.

At this time of national emergency, why escalate the criticism irrationally? Why would anyone want this President to fail?

______________________________________
From 1989 to 1995, Tom Plate was editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times. Until 2000, he was an op-ed columnist for The Times. Today his column is syndicated internationally in newspapers from Dubai to Providence, Rhode Island. He is writing a trilogy of books on Asian political figures. Recent columns are catalogued at © 2009, Pacific Perspective Media Center.

Two Smart Guys Trying to Figure It All Out

2009-11-23T05:15:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

The two looked over the precipice and gasped at the steepness of the drop. They looked down at a desert of dashed hopes and old skeletons, scraping the bottom of the canyon.

Yes, this is where a failed U.S.-China relationship might wind up.

At first it does look like a very long way down, but gravity would make a fast trip of it. All it would take is a cliff-edge miscalculation or a loss of balance by one or the other for a huge geopolitical slip. China and the United States, the odd couple of the first half of the 21st century, would be at the bottom of the canyon of international stability.

It was that breathtaking possibility — that arid abyss — that caught the attention of the two leaders of China and America in Beijing last week. U.S. President Barack Obama was on the third leg of his Asia tour, after first hitting longtime Asian ally Tokyo and then Singapore for an international meeting. With all smiles but little evident warmth, China President Hu Jintao greeted him for a two-day stay in Beijing.

Afterward, many media assessments were gloomy about the summit. They said the two leaders of the world's two giant countries talked past each another, not looking at each another.

That's hard to believe. Both Hu and Obama are smart — and they are smart to be wary. The modern-day China-U.S. relationship is in its early chapters: Remember the international skies over the 1989 Tiananmen Square implosion? They were so ugly that they kept American presidents away from even summiting in Beijing until Bill Clinton broke the ice in 1998.

And today all of the issues are quite tough. They must figure out the national mess of North Korea, which has scraped together a handful of nuclear bombs. And they've got to figure out the national ego of Iran, which wants them, too.

Beijing itself has Muslim agitations on its western edge and a tense Tibet that somehow touches nerves and hearts all over the world. Washington has Iraq to get out of, Pakistan to get more involved in, and Afghanistan to make a major decision about. Doing the same old thing hasn't been working.

Overhanging these issues is the question of the Chinese and American economies. Both have serious problems — and in many respects are quite different. Their currencies are intertwined, almost like the famous DNA double helix.

Fundamental factors underlying the economic tensions are political. And the main one is this: Both presidents understand their system's vulnerabilities should unemployment continue to rise. They would be edging toward the cliff of catastrophe.

I put the matter to two of my favorite international economists. I asked professor Michael Intriligator of UCLA whether he agreed with the idea that America doesn't work if people are out of work, and that the Chinese need to know that.

He absolutely agreed: "People seem to have lost sight of the economic commitment of the U.S. government to full employment. This is in the Full Employment Act of 1946 and it is still on the books."

Unemployment in the U.S. now hovers above 10 percent. Should it rise much more, it will become the most explosive political issue on Obama's White House desk.

True enough, but for another perspective I ran my proposition by Asia-based Economist Kenneth Courtis. The former managing director and vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia is based in Tokyo, runs his own firm called Courtis Intergalactic, and probably deserves the distinction of having predicted (better than most) Japan's economic slide together with China's rise. His reaction was different from Intriligator's. He would rewrite the proposition to take the focus off the U.S.: "China doesn't work, if people are out of work."

The point these two economists make is simple but vital: The key issue in the U.S.-China economic and indeed strategic relationship is unemployment. Translated politically, it is "too many angry and frustrated people with no jobs, a lot of grudges and too much time on their hands."

Thus the Sino-U.S. understanding, for the immediate future, needs to adhere to this rock-bottom principle: Neither side must do anything to exacerbate unemployment problems for the other guy. Sure, this is easier said than done: It will mean achieving a tense trans-Pacific balancing act, trying to avoid getting too close to the edge and falling over. It will take constant communication, easing off and signing on, and the ability to ignore minor irritants.

If the most important bilateral relationship in the world falls off the cliff, the probability is that the rest of the world goes down with it.

Columnist and former university professor Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books on Asia. © 2009 Pacific Perspectives Media Center. This regularly syndicated column ran in The Japan Times, among other newspapers around the world, on Nov. 23, 2009

The Japan Times: Monday, Nov. 23, 2009

Why Asians Both Love and Don't Love Obama

2009-11-18T18:19:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

A presidential trip to Asia used to be a visit that was comparatively low on the global degree of diplomatic difficulty. No more.

In the good old days, the Japanese were prepared to be told what to do by any American president — and often would actually do it. The Chinese, until the last decade or so, didn't have to be told to do anything, because basically they never did much except drive their country into the ground with Communism. But now they are globally out and about and doing all sorts of things, many good, some less so. And, should you wish, you could tell the South Koreans to do what you wanted them to do, and they might smile, and then do some of it — or maybe not.

Poor Barack Obama. He goes to visit China, once a humbled country, that's now practically the Federal Treasury's American Express. We've borrowed more dough from the Chinese than from anyone, and they are getting close to wanting to lower our credit limit.

In Japan, a new government is in power — the former opposition. It is trying to recalibrate Tokyo's relationship with Washington without undermining it. It's not exactly going to get in bed with Beijing (too much historic distrust). But economic talks — and their bilateral commercial dealings — have never been more mutually enriching.

South Korea is always a bit tricky for a White House occupant, and not just because of North Korea, which is the crazy relative up in the attic that you hear prowling around making all sorts of weird noises at odd hours in the morning. In truth, South Korea illustrates the overall general problem in the entire Asia-U.S. partnership. An arduously negotiated free-trade agreement between Washington and Seoul right now is stalled on Capital Hill worse than is heath care reform. The Obama administration, accepting the reality that many of its left-wing and trade union allies don't like features of that FTA (and some, of any FTA), will pressure Seoul to make more concessions.

And that's the problem: What the South Koreans will probably do is a reflection of the whole Asia-U.S. picture right now. Obama is so popular and charming that no one in Asia will want to say no to him, at least directly. So the Koreans will clench their teeth and swallow a gallon of Soju (the potent native drink) and concede some and bear it. But they will hate compromising further than they already have. The United States is not the only country in the world with stubborn domestic interests, such as farmers and automakers.

The problem with Obama is not that he isn't (a) smart, (b) charming and (c) thoughtful and caring, it's that he's a (d) "¦ Democrat. Asians believe various union lobbies and special interests tend to tie a Democratic president's hands, but a Republican president can tell that crowd where to go and so exercise greater economic decision-making.

It's true that by the end of his eight years as President, George W. Bush was not going to win the Mr. Congeniality Award from Asian countries and elites (except, notably, from India). But they loved it when his administration's policies reflected the Grand Old Party's pro-free-trade philosophy. They also tended to marvel at how skillfully and relatively often Bill Clinton was able to outmaneuver traditional Democratic protectionist forces to keep America's free-trade deals and directions mainly on track.

Asia is now dying a thousand deaths about Obama.

They know he will give good speeches, he always gives good speeches! But they have also mainly taken his measure and they know he doesn't always move quickly from the airy realm of grand-sounding philosophy into the gritty realm of actual hard-won policy results. He bodes to become the poster boy for the obvious art of down-the-middle compromise.
So what Asian leaders and elite love about our charismatic president is also what they hate: He is too easy to absolutely love and almost impossible to hate. No one wants to stand up to him and tell him point blank that the price of not proceeding with alacrity to nail down every possible economic pact with Asia is the continued rise of China's already considerable influence.

Funnily enough, the Chinese may for some reason fail to tell him as well. And that won't be hard to figure out why.

This article ran in the Pocono Record (Pennsylvania) on November 18, 2009.

Major League Baseball: Hideki Matsui and the Secular Church of Baseball

2009-11-11T13:22:00.001-08:00

By Tom Plate

A lot of Hollywood movie moguls believe almost religiously that 1988's "Bull Durham" offers one of the best opening lines in the history of American movies. You see first a parade of images of past baseball greats and not-so-greats, as if a promenade of saints. And then you hear the sweet voice of Annie Savoy (played unforgettably by Susan Sarandon) saying: "I believe in the church of baseball."

Nice, eh?

Permit us, then, to extend this ecclesiastical metaphor further.
If the game of baseball is a secular church, then the American version Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium installed a new cardinal. Just throw off his New York Yankee baseball cap and replace it with the appropriate cardinal's vestment, a pontifical mitre. For the secular god of baseball in the United States right now is Hideki Matsui, the first Japanese-born baseball player to win the Most Valuable Player award for overall performance in a World Series. This is the crowning height of the professional sport.

In Japan, where this giant star played professionally before joining the Yankees in 2003, Matsui is known as "Godzilla." He possessed a slugger's monster bat for 10 years with the Yomiuri Giants.

In America he retained the Godzilla moniker, but he also became known as something of a mensch. This is a hard concept perhaps. Mensch, technically, stems from the Yiddish word that means "human being" and is originally derived from old German. But in New York it means much more: It means a lovable character that sometimes drives you nuts even as you cannot help loving him to death.

That would be the average Yankee fan's affection for Matsui.

And that affection was redeemed anew Wednesday night by newly installed Cardinal Hideki. In the best-of-seven World Series against a very talented team from Philadelphia, Godzilla hit an astonishing (.615), and in the deciding Game 6 tied the record for RBIs (six) in a single World Series game. As the Yankees scored seven runs in Game 6, Matsui the mensch, you might say, was the decider. That's why he rightly won the big honor.

But sometimes, Yankee fans have wanted to slug their slugger.

That's because his squishy knees tend to collapse like an over-raced thoroughbred's and he seems to get hit with more negative impact than the divider guard-rail on the Hollywood Freeway.

Even so, Yankee fans can't help but love the big guy: Three years ago, while chasing after a fly ball in a game against the hated Red Sox, Godzilla stumbled, fell on his arms and wrist, and wound up in a cast.

Sports injuries are not unusual, of course, but Matsui's subsequent public apology to his teammates and manager was. He actually said he was "sorry." He apologized to his teammates for letting them down by getting injured. The New York Times was so overwhelmed by the novelty and flummoxed by the cultural humility of the star that it devoted a major feature story to the meaning and cultural origins of the Japanese apology, and to the humble character of the Japanese.

Having been a Yankee fan since about the age of 6, I have seen great stars come and go. Mickey Mantle surely was the greatest one I actually saw play with my own eyes. He could do everything (including drink!). I loved the grit of the late great Thurman Munson, the grumpy catcher, who never let a charging base-runner push him off home plate or willingly answer reporters' questions. More recently, who can deny that infielder Derek Jeter and closer Mariano Rivera don't deserve to get into the Hall of Fame?

But if I were the Yankee manager today and I had one last out and needed one big hit and I could put anyone up to the plate, that would be Matsui before A-Rod or even Jeter.

Annie Savoy puts it so well near the end of "Bull Durham:" "Baseball may be a religion full of magic, cosmic truth, and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time, but it is also a job."

Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, Matsui the mensch got the job done.

"Man, he looked like he wanted it bad, didn't he? said Yankee captain Derek Jeter. "Matsui is one of my favorite players, one of my favorite teammates. He comes ready to play every day. He's a professional hitter."

During the game, Yankee fans throughout the stadium responded theatrically to Godzilla's heroics by holding up supportive signs in Japanese. Many shouted "MVP" after his third big hit. His RBI-artistry equaled the 1977 and 1978 World Series performances of "Mr. October," the legendary Reggie Jackson.

"Great, great player. Represents his country well," Reggie said of Matsui. "He's a gentleman. He's a class act."

And he's a credit to Japan, its work ethic and its culture of pride and humility, in the secular church of baseball.

Originally Published November 9, 2009 in the Asahi Shimbun and The New Haven Register.

A Balanced and Realistic Look at China from Singapore

2009-11-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

By Tom Plate

Putting US foreign policy into a proper strategic orientation in order to be useful in the 21st century was never going to be a self-evident process. Tough priorities would have to be sorted out. Try to do everything and little gets done.

Choose the wrong goals and frustration results. Wise foreign policy requires deep reflection of the fundamentals. Fifteen years ago, I faced a similar sorting-out problem — though, of course, on a dramatically tinier scale! That was when this foreign-policy column was born — hatched on the op-ed pages of The Los Angeles Times.

Choosing to concentrate on America’s relationship with Asia from Los Angeles was a major first step in editorial prioritisation (leave Europe and so on to the East Coast news media, etc.). But even that narrowing did not eliminate hard choices. What would be the column’s priorities regarding the vastness of Asia? What would be its purposes? How might it (somehow) contribute to public good?

Back then, stumbling around in an un-chartered forest of options, I looked around for advice. I spoke to a lot of smart people. One of them was Lee Kuan Yew, then five years past his epochal three-decade run as Prime Minister of modern Singapore.

I asked him, in his office on the government’s gorgeous Istana grounds, what was the wisest single message this column could convey to the American reader? Not hesitating, Singapore’s internationally-known political sage looked at me straight and said: Please tell the American people that everyone, especially Asia, will greatly benefit if America is able to get its relationship with rising China right. But if it doesn’t, the result will be geopolitical instability and serious trouble for everyone.

Perhaps today such advice seems almost conventional wisdom. But remember that, back then, America and China were still locked in elemental frigidity. No US President would even dare to visit China in the years that followed the 1989 Tiananmen Square shock. It got ridiculous: In 1997, a storm erupted over a simple deal that would permit China’s merchant ships to lease a dock in Long Beach, California. One of my first columns defended it: “The best advice is the simplest: Keep your powder dry. But keep a welcoming hand outstretched.”

That view touched off controversy, as many of those nineties’ columns on China did. Some readers accused me of actually being Communist. One Californian Congressman published a letter to The Los Angeles Times stating that my views parroted the Beijing line. But wise heads encouraged me to stay the sensible course despite everything. One was Lee Kuan Yew, who would offer an occasional encouraging message.

Once noting my column’s worries about anti-China sentiment, the then-Senior Minister sent a fax from Singapore specifically about the port column: “Your ‘Protect Your Back and Extend a Hand’ is balanced and realistic. It is a necessary antidote to the hysteria building up among the anti-China groups.”

Lee, even now at 86, doesn’t stop offering the world his advice, thankfully. His latest effort to set the global table came in Washington recently while receiving the first Lifetime Achievement Award conferred by the US-Asean Business Council.

His acceptance speech covered a wide expanse of policy territory, but his China remarks remained true to what he has been advocating for decades — and to what he told me at Istana in 1997.

“China,” he said, “faces enormous problems. No one knows their seriousness better than China’s own leaders….[Thankfully], successive American Presidents have moved relations with China closer toward the centre of US policies….US policy kept a steady course to increase multinational trade, investments and mutual prosperity….Sino-US relations are both cooperative and competitive.

Competition between them is inevitable, but conflict is not….Unlike US-Soviet relations during the Cold War, there is no bitter, irreconcilable ideological conflict between the US and a China that has enthusiastically embraced the market…."

For Lee, now as then, a sensible China would not threaten America: “[The Chinese] will avoid any action that will sour relations with the US To challenge a stronger and technologically superior power like the US will abort their ‘peaceful rise’.”

What’s even more interesting about such a perspective is how many key Chinese leaders agree with it. This week, for example, China’s Central Military Commission finally agreed to upgrade the level of military exchanges between Beijing and Washington.

A number of us, perhaps most notably and creditably Admiral Timothy Keating, former head of the US Command in Hawaii (who just passed the torch to Admiral Robert F. Willard), have been urging Beijing to work harder to improve instant communications at high military levels.

For some time those pleas seemed to be falling on deaf ears. Now Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Xu Caihou seems to be paying attention. A quick trip to Washington for this purpose was suddenly announced. Lee Kuan Yew is not the only voice that makes such points. But he continues to play a valuable role. This deserves to be properly noted.

Originally published November 3, 2009 in The Khaleej Times.

Paranoids feast on China's 'peaceful rising'

2009-10-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Paranoid people tend to live longer, goes the old joke. And so it is in this spirit only — not out of a desire to engage in Cold War China-bashing — that we raise concerns about China. So here's the paranoid's question: Just what is China really up to?

The facts are as follows. In parallel with its astonishing and commendable economic rise, China has put together new military architecture that's enough to give one shivers. Of course, the rising military syndrome is hardly unique to China. By and large, economic growth and military buildups go hand in hand.

Consider that even India has been sharpening its sticks and buying all sorts of military stuff. And this is in the historic land of Gandhi. It is rapidly lathering on layers of military muscle as its economy continues to upsurge. The United States, of course, spends more money on arms than anyone, by far.

But China's buildup is today's topic since it is especially dramatic. It can't just be waved off as a nonevent. Even the most levelheaded and serious Western experts, who are generally inclined to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt, are worried about what it might mean.

As is the government of Taiwan, of course. This bustling offshore island, in the daunting shadow of the colossus of China's mainland, is becoming more paranoid than American turkeys approaching Thanksgiving. It is particularly alarmed about the increase of short-range missiles pointed at them — now said to be close to 1,500. That's roughly one Chinese missile for every 23 square kilometers of Taiwan's turf.

And while China's missile count continues to mount, tiny Taiwan's territory does not. From a paranoid's perspective, this is not restful. Thus, a recently released report from Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense claims that China's buildup has even gotten to the point where it is capable of deterring the intervention of other foreign militaries — such as America's or Japan's — were it to go to war against the island.

It must be noted that Beijing considers Taiwan an integral part of China, and from its perspective any use of force on its part would be an internal political matter, not an outside act of aggression. But legal niceties aside, the overall regional balance of military power may in fact be at the tipping point.

That view has another assessment also capable of keeping paranoids awake at night. Rand Corp. author-experts David A. Shlapak, David T. Orletsky, Toy I. Reid, Murray Scot Tanner and Barry Wilson reached comparable conclusions in "A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute."

In their view, the growing size and quality of China's missile arsenal, along with other advances in Chinese military capabilities, call into question the basic ability of America and Taiwan to defend the island against a large-scale Chinese attack. They also noted that China explicitly refuses to renounce the use of force against Taiwan; nor has it "withdrawn any missiles from the hundreds it points at Taiwan."

China's government constantly proclaims a policy of "peaceful rising" even as it enlarges its international space economically and diplomatically. At the same time the Taiwan people have elected a government committed to peaceful negotiations with the mainland over the political future of Taiwan, specifically voting out the government that had been aggressively committed to Taiwan's formal independence.

So the paranoid's question is simple: If the mainland's peaceful and bilateral relations with Taiwan are now so reasonable and promising, why is China barging ahead with its arms buildup as if there's no tomorrow?

As we say, this is the standard paranoid's way of looking at reality. I am not there — yet — but to quote an ancient Chinese saying (Pinyin): Xing xing zhi huo ke ye? liao yuan, or a single spark can start a fire that winds up burning the entire prairie.

In another words, a single spark of doubt about the sincerity of China's peaceful intentions could ignite a wildfire of fear and suspicion that could unnecessarily complicate its life and return world politics to a binary state of neo-Cold War.

So, how about, for starters, Beijing removing a few hundred of those missiles aimed at little Taiwan as a gesture of its true personal warmth (and aim them nowhere else)?

This at least could allow some of the world's internationally oriented paranoids to finally get some rest — until the next paranoid crisis, of course.

Originally published October 26, 2009 in The Japan Times.

Another Twist and Shout from North Korea

2009-10-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Like the baby that hurls its rattle out of the crib to grab attention, North Korea has never been known for a subtle diplomatic style. Right now, though, it appears to have abandoned, temporarily at least, the crude infantile approach for a more adult turn.

Yes, once again, we are being manipulated. But this particular manipulation might just lead to something more hopeful than the usual.

The latest twist in the ditsy diplomatic schizophrenia known as the foreign policy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has come in the form of an official apology.

It's hard to believe but the North Korean government actually said it was sorry about something — and said it very much in public. The apology came in the wake of a presumably inadvertent flood-control error. Water from a North Korean dam was released last month that flowed downstream like a mini-tsunami. In a flash it wound up drowning a half-dozen South Koreans along the Imjin River.

After weeks of obnoxious silence, Pyongyang officially decided to say it was sorry. "It was regrettable that unintended human tragedies occurred," said an official of the Communist government.

North Korea has rarely managed to convert stupidity into opportunity. This time may prove the exception. This otherwise inept government may realize its tantrum routines have crossed the checkpoint of diminishing returns.

Note that just a few months ago, it played adult nice-nice with former President Bill Clinton and allowed him to leave with two scared and exhausted American journalists in tow. They had been jailed for months. Their release made everyone happy.

So did the apology. But note that the unusual (if tepid) expression of regret followed shortly upon the departure of China's soft-spoken but powerful Wen Jiabao. This was no coincidence. The Chinese premier had spent a few days sitting down, drinking lots of tea and having long chats with Maximum Leader Kim Jong Il, among others. The two sides had plenty to talk about.

For its part, Beijing is keen to restart the stalled six-party talks that it founded. They involve, besides itself and the two Koreas, Moscow and Tokyo, as well as Washington. North Korea can go only so far in annoying its historic ally. The Chinese, wisely, sent the wily Wen, who is Beijing's No. 2. They know better than to bother expecting significant action from Pyongyang unless the conversation is held at the highest level.

This — let us recall — was the secret of the success of Bill Clinton's Pyongyang mission. Had the U.S. not sent someone as prominent as a former U.S. president to negotiate for the release of the two journalists, the happy outcome may never have come to pass. Pyongyang was pleased with the visit and would love to have more — with either of the two Clintons, or with both, for that matter.

North Korea desperately wants to hook up with Washington. Things cannot go on like this much longer. It aims for official diplomatic respect (formal recognition) and a fistful of dollars as part of a developing "Grand Bargain," as we have called it, with the U.S.

Pyongyang would prefer to negotiate solely with Washington, but America's two main allies in East Asia have every good reason to be kept in the loop. Japan has serious, domestically corrosive issues with North Korea, and of course South Korea has to share the same tense peninsula. Both repeatedly remind American diplomats Stephen Bosworth and Kurt Campbell that they have major interests in the negotiations, too.

To be sure, Seoul and Tokyo should not be taken for granted in the slightest way. Japan, with its new government, is preparing to reduce its contribution to the effort in Afghanistan. This is a potential rebuff to the U.S. South Korea just signed a trade-opening agreement with the European Union that could be viewed also as a rebuke to the U.S. Congress for not yet passing the one negotiated by Seoul and Washington back in 2007.

A touch of forward progress may have come from Seoul. In a recent speech in New York sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Korea Society and the Asia Society, President Lee Myung Bak proposed the long-awaited Grand Bargain in explicit terms: If North Korea were to execute irreversible denuclearization, it would receive a rock-solid security guarantee against any military hostility and huge dollops of international aid.

If such a Grand Bargain materializes, North Korea would have to be infantile to reject it. But who knows what twist or turn is next?

Originally published October 21, 2009 in The Japan Times.

Recipes for Geopolitical and Personal Health

2009-10-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

Asia certainly offers the world fantastic cuisine of all kinds. Consider first some of their serious food for thought.

Asia's intellectual chefs stir minds with heady geopolitical thinking. One of the region's four-star intellectuals is Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani. He is what might be called a master fusion chef of saucy political ideas. 'Asia will demonstrate that the Western domination of world history over the last 200 years has been an aberration,' he writes in Foreign Policy.

Asia is rising, insists this public intellectual, and the West has to learn how to share power, not hog it - just like diners sharing a food-laden lazy Susan. Unilaterally shoving course after course into one's mouth with nary a look right or left at others will just not cut it in the new fusion order.

Let me try an analogy of another kind: Asian cuisines are generally fabulous, and they are usually very healthy. But, as a new study of eating habits and nutrition points out, America's food fusion movement is Americanising Asian food in an unhealthy way. The bestselling book - The End Of Overeating: Taking Control Of The Insatiable American Appetite - stumps for a new world eating order in which more and more Americans go Asian with their appetites.

This is the view of former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, Dr David Kessler. In lean prose, he singles out for applause the basic Japanese food grouping - fish, soya, miso, rice and veggies - but has no kudos for mass-produced American foods. Indeed, in the severe tone of a family doctor, Dr Kessler rails at America for its nutritional imperialism. It steals Asian cuisines, brings them over with fanfare, and then absolutely destroys them with harmful additions or additives.

His dishonour roll is led by the Americanised teriyaki sauce, which has been transformed into a sickly sweet, body-marinating mayhem of soya sauce and rice wine - 'far sweeter than anything in Japan', Dr Kessler writes, and decidedly unhealthy.

He trashes the American penchant for large quantities of mayonnaise-topped tempura shrimp, wrapped in rice as a faux sushi roll. The good doctor says Americans imperialise so many world cuisines that they should be ashamed of themselves.

'American Chinese food is not Chinese,' he complains. The classic Chinese dish General Tso's Chicken, for example, after mass-Americanisation, has been poisoned with sugar. 'Hunan cuisine is not sweet,' he rails.

His take on fast-Asian-food chains such as Panda Express, is that their menus corrupt otherwise healthy Asian dishes with piles of sugar and fat. And all across America, trendy 'pan-Asian' restaurants systematically slaughter every cuisine they touch.

It's like watching General Patton enter every national kitchen in Asia with his tank.

You see the point. Fusion cuisine, like fusion geopolitics, can be good for our health, but only depending on how carefully it is all put together. The trick is to take the best of the East and combine it with the best of the West. Go the other way around - the best of one with the worst of another - and you have major mishmash and nutritional meltdown.

Sure, not all American makeovers of Asian things are bad. Some American mothers are trying to lure their kids into accepting Japanese-style Bento boxes as their school lunch. They are cleverly disguising the otherwise rather minimalist but extremely healthy fare - rice, pickled veggies, and a small portion of meat or fish - with Madison Avenue presentations. The boiled egg gets painted like a bunny with a carrot sticking out. Veggies are hammered into delectable little stars with a cookie cutter. The Japanese lunch box itself is decorated with cartoon characters.

Good old imaginative American packaging trying to save the child!

This informal mothers' movement is a response to the challenge of raising children nutritionally in America. It shows mums battling the fast-food chains and pushing back on the bulbous norms of the American diet. A recent New York Times article suggested that the effort might become a helpful national trend.

The metaphor of the jazzed-up bento box also serves as a useful reminder that East-West fusion can prove a marvel of globalisation, when it is not a train wreck of colliding cuisines. According to Professor Mahbubani, Asia is rising in part because 'the calibre of Asia's geopolitical thinkers is today superior to that of their Western counterparts'.

That may well be, but obviously he hasn't had the honour of seeing best-thinking American mothers in forward-looking fusion action. They don't want their kids losing the battle of the bulge. Maybe Americans should put some of these hell-Bento mothers in charge of East-West geopolitical fusion as well.

Originally published September 12, 2009 in The Straits Times (Singapore)

The President's Afghan Agony

2009-10-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

The current Afghanistan policy review facing Barack Hussein Obama is quite far from the easiest task on the Presidential chore list.

This youngish President didn't order up this war, but today, eight years after September 11, 2001, it is his distinct political inheritance, in part, of course, because of his oft-expressed sense of Afghanistan's strategic importance. So before too long ― and for as long as our troops are there ― it will be increasingly thought of as Obama's war. There will be no ducking this.

Our American President is thus in the toughest of spots, and I would only wish for him some magnificently obvious and simple way out. There is none. Some Presidential decisions are simply bitterly tough, with huge consequences. But if asked for a policy analysis, this is what one humble West-Coast based columnist would say:
Dear Mr. President: Your instincts as both a gentleman and as a serious policy scholar will be to try to split the difference between those who want more troops sent to Afghanistan and those who want them gradually recalled. You must resist the instinct to take the mushy middle course. This would be a non-decision, which will not make much difference. It is a non-win decision, a losing choice.So whatever you decide, and whenever you decide it (and know most Americans will back you whatever it is), simply avoid the human temptation to try to muddle through. Your policy will sour into a complete muddle.

What then to do? You need either to listen and buy into the alleged "win" blueprint by approving the dispatch of tens of thousands more troops; or actually begin the process of gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan ― and at the same time step up the concentration of resources on Pakistan. Otherwise we'll just be marking time and taking casualties on the way to eventual defeat. And so the seemingly safe middle ground is the most treacherous territory of all. You'll just keep sinking in deeper as you try to stay in place.

But here is the other problem: if you do decide to say 'yes" to as many as 40,000 more troops, the magic upsurge number put forth by some of your advisors, down the road you'll be asked for still more troops (please Google ``Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson"). You can bet your basketball jump-shot on that.

Further: The latest news reports suggest that the only option that you are not ― NOT ― considering is the one for major climb-down. This means it looks like you are headed either toward escalation or toward keeping things as they are. Please hold on a second before you plunge ahead. There is a problem. It's called military history.

Look at it this way: The U.S., based on past performance, is clearly an exceptional performer in mammoth-scale, all-out, good-versus-evil world wars. Last century, in fact, we won two, lost none. But our record with smaller conflicts is problematic: The truth is that we are weak at winning those smaller, more localized, far-off, morally and politically complex engagements. Consider the facts since our magnificent World War Two triumph.In the Korean War, the best we could do was to hold onto only half of the peninsula despite having had more than a half million soldiers on the ground. Ditto in what used to be known as Indochina: We pummeled the daylights out of Vietnam, and had put more than a half million troops there; but at the end of the day the country was united under a Communist flag. Sorry ― but this was no victory.

In the eighties President Ronald Reagan, who was no pacifist dove, reacted (intelligently) to a nightmarish suicide bombing that killed many U.S. Marines by resolutely pulling our boys and girls out of Lebanon faster than anyone could say: ``Win One for the Gipper" (his most famous Hollywood movie line). Recall, too, that our messy Somalia engagement ended with Black Hawks down and U.S. forces then out. And we're still bogged down in Iraq, which started going downhill within days after we toppled the anti-Iranian government of Saddam Hussein (who did the heavy thinking on that one?!).

So here, Mr. President, is the question that may well define your Presidency and your legacy. Answer it properly and you could leave office a Lincoln. Here it is: Why should anyone believe that the outcome in Afghanistan will be any different from that of Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and Iraq? This is why the one option you should have kept on the front burner much longer than you have is the very one that you are reported to have already excluded. You need to begin to deemphasize Afghanistan. It is just not a good candidate for nationhood (too tribal, would take too long, very expensive). Instead, put your administration's attention and resources on vital Pakistan, where many of the terrorist bad actors are hanging out. Otherwise, you are heading in a direction that has all the makings of historic tragedy.

Thank you for listening, Mr. President.

This article ran in The Korea Times (Seoul) on October 11, 2009.

Pardon Our Presidents!

2009-10-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

American democracy is, sure, semi-corrupt and genetically inefficient. But it does at least one thing especially well. Its treatment of former Presidents of the United States is exemplary. This is not always true in Asia.

Let’s look at the record.

Jimmy Carter was a mostly ineffective one-term President. But he has been nothing less than a giant-killer as an ex-President. In his post-White House life, he has been driven by caring and commitment. His occasional hard-edged public comments, such as his diagnosis of racism beneath the poison directed at President Obama these days, are compass points. The former Georgian peanut farmer is a walking advertisement for the idea that the U.S. Constitution should include a device for allowing certain politicians to skip White House service completely and proceed directly to the Office  of ex-Presidency.

George H.W. Bush Sr., the high-class pro bono ex-Pres, could go down in history as the best one-term U.S. President ever. (John Kennedy never had a full-term, and of course had no ex-Presidency.) As for his son, the other George Bush who had two terms (whoever said life was fair or just?), judgment must be withheld. The public term of the ex-President generally commences only with the inevitable publication of enlightening memoirs.

From them we learn the degree of statesmanship versus the degree of getting-even. Will W. reveal former Vice President Dick Cheney’s madly Machiavellian mind-control techniques and so on? Be patient, world: We just  have to wait.

Bill Clinton’s eight-year presidency generally looked better with each year of George W’s. And in Presidential retirement he seems a relative revelation of deportment, not to mention national service. His recent effective trip to North Korea to fetch the imprisoned U.S. journalists should merit a nice chapter in some history of American ex-Presidencies. In fact, he should be authorised by the White House to go back to Pyongyang and give peace  another push.

With consultation with our allies in Seoul and Tokyo beforehand (we should never, ever cut them out), Bill Clinton may have the personal diplomatic chemistry to help bring about a “Grand Bargain” on the ever-troubled Korean Peninsula. His wife, the American Secretary of State, should be ready to join him in Pyongyang if the goal of denuclearisation and formal termination of the Korean War seems  within reach.

The ageing Kim Jong-il may be ready to settle up in order to clear the tables for his succession. There’s only one way to find out: Let’s give it  our best shot.

Even if the gamble fails, it will demonstrate how the U.S. democracy uses, rather than abuses, its former Presidents. This is in general unlike Asian democracies where abuse is all too common. Look at the ugly tragedies in South Korea and Taiwan.

The wolves went after former President Roh Moo-hyun when he was scarcely a year out of office. He had no time to prove himself as an exemplary ex when headline-hungry prosecutors moved against him like a political hit squad. Before long, the former human-rights crusader jumped off a cliff and killed himself.

Many years before, two previous South Korean presidents did jail time. What a political tradition! I certainly wouldn’t want to be a South  Korean ex-President!
The country’s Constitution allows its President only one term (five years) in office; thus they can start torturing him even while in office since he becomes a lame duck before you know it. By contrast, in Taiwan, as in the United States, presidents can have two full terms if re-elected – but there the trans-Pacific similarity ends.

Consider the plight of the previous Taiwan President: Chen Shui-bian had barely finished his second elected term when corralled by a court and awarded a third term: a lifetime term in jail! The charge, as with the suicidal Korean President Roh, was bribe-taking. It is certainly true that the allegation was all the less incredible given the prior conviction of his wife for perjury. So, one sheds few tears for the Chens, so-called pro-independence leaders that history may show to be more like rank  political poseurs.

In office they seemed to spend a whole lot of time baiting Beijing on the political independence issue when not independently bribe-taking.

But one does shed a tear or two for tender Taiwan’s democracy, as well as for Korea’s. It’s sad to see an outgoing President go more or less directly to jail, or to his death.

For one thing, the sight would hardly appear to encourage the best citizens from wanting to serve. For another, it greatly restricts the opportunity for ex-Presidents to shine while out of office. So, something is definitely wrong with this picture.

For all its many faults, American democracy, in this matter, shows the better way. Asian ex-Presidents seem to get no respect, no respect at all. American ones get to continue the good work, or even prove they are quite capable of it after all.

This article ran in The Khaleej Times (DUBAI) on September 22, 2009.

Beyonce and Palin Take on Asia

2009-10-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

KUALA LUMPUR ― Who said foreign-policy issues and problems don't have entertainment value? Who said rich and prominent Americans, without exception, are insensitive to the rising importance of Asia?

In that spirit, whoever said that Beyonce Knowles, the sexy rock superstar, would never be able to appear on stage in a Muslim country without risking a clash of civilizations? And whoever said Sarah Palin, the defeated Republican nominee for President of the United States, was dumber than a dead elephant and wouldn't know Asia from Africa even with a map?

Probably no one has ever said all these terrible things, altogether, in the same breath ― and so breathlessly! But such an enticing rhetorical approach seems a good way to bracket a star-studded week in Asia-U.S. relations in which custom-made American pitches toward Asia took center stage.

Let's start with Beyonce.

Unholy hipster promoters here in this Islamic Republic have been angling to get her rhythm and blues road-show onto a venue stage in this capital city for some time. But a Beyonce booking two years ago had to be abruptly cancelled when a conservative youth group raised holy Allah over it. Her provocative stage show and skimpy costuming, it was alleged, would shake and rattle the religious foundations of the country to its Islamic core. (Her people took her show on the road anyhow ― to Jakarta, another Muslim culture. And that worked out just fine.)

Now the Malaysian organizers of ``Beyonce I Am … World Tour Live in Malaysia 2009" have triumphantly announced an agreement to smooth out the allegedly offensive cultural and religious wrinkles in Beyonce's act. That is to say: Apparently she has agreed to shake it a lot less and wear a lot more here in Kuala Lumpur on Oct. 25. The evident compromise is designed to placate, most prominently, an important Malaysian Islamic group called PAS Youth. Parti Islam SeMalaysia is the conservative Muslim movement that is (how do we put it?) suspicious of cultural modernization and Westernization.

Beyonce purists won't be happy, of course. They'll feel they're not getting a fair shake. And Malaysians paying for the show perhaps may not realize how much less (in a manner of speaking) of the rock Diva they are getting, in the kind of performance in which less (as it were) is marketed as more. But the very fact that the Beyonce camp was willing to down-sex her act shows respect for this Islamic Asian culture in several ways ― not excluding, note carefully, the growing importance of the gigantic Asian entertainment market.

Another kind of American entertainer who customized her act for an Asian audience this past week was Sarah Palin. What she was selling was neither like Beyonce's near-bare fare nor too much like the ultra-conservatism of PAS. In fact, her speech, in Hong Kong, was billed as ``common-sense conservatism."

She traveled to Asia at the invitation of a major Asian-based fund-managers group to offer her foreign policy views. At first glance it seemed a set-up for disaster. Fund-managers, for their part, are a generally nervous crowd. They especially chafe about ignorant American political figures that might shoot off their mouths and stumble us all into an East-West confrontation. Their big worry, of course, is the U.S.-China relationship.

Enter on center stage the inimitable Palin: What could the former Alaska governor possibly know about China? From her perch in Alaska, after all, she could not claim much special knowledge because she couldn't actually espy its land mass, as she had said she could of Russia, this advantage awarding her a Ph.D. in Russian studies, in her own estimation.

Alas for the Palin critics, the would-be lady Presidential candidate offered a largely defensible and common-sensible outline of views. She reaffirmed the rising role of Asia, the importance of trying hard to understand China on its own terms, and the high stakes involved if the result were failure.

And to the astonishment (if not consternation) of the Singapore government, she even managed to quote that "Asian wise man," as she described the legendary Lee Kuan Yew, 86, in defense of America's staying the course in Afghanistan: ``And Minister Lee knows, and I agree, that our success in Afghanistan will have consequences all over the world, including Asia. Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan." That's a position not everyone can blithely disagree with.

In fact, the entire speech was easily her most mature exposition to date. I only have two pieces of advice for her, if she is interested in having them. One is to keep that speechwriter at all costs! The other is to never, ever depart from script if she can help it. Therein disaster lurks.

For example: Trying to be chirpy at the start of her appearance, she breezily opined that one big difference between Hong Kong and her home was the far greater prevalence of wildlife in Alaska. From that comment alone, one could tell Palin was highly inexperienced about city life. What about Hong Kong's many rats?

Any city-dweller would have pounced on the fact that every jungle habitat, urban or rural, has its own indigenous wildlife. Obviously the ambitious Palin still has much to learn. But hers wasn't such a bad show at all.

This article ran in The Korea Times.

I Fling My Shoe at Global Brass

2009-10-10T15:55:00.000-07:00

By Tom Plate

A new trend in political protest seems to be emerging. The other day yet another shoe went flying in anger, aimed at bringing a prominent figure to heel. This time the setting was Istanbul, not Iraq. The target was the head of the powerful International Monetary Fund, not the president of the United States, as in the famous incident affronting George W. Bush last December. And the latest heel-hurler was a relatively powerless Turkish student, not an Iraqi journalist.

So what’s not to like?

Compared with terrorist bombs exploding in crowded cafés or hijacked passenger airplanes knifing into skyscrapers or an assassin’s bullet boring into a head of state, we can live with the occasional airborne sneaker or lofted loafer.

If we were more tolerant of shoe-throwers, there might be fewer suicide bombers. And so let’s applaud the cool response of International Monetary Fund Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who joked afterward that the shoe aimed at him actually revealed Turkish students to be decent blokes: “One thing I learned: Turkish students are polite. They waited until the end [of my speech] to complain."

The frustration of the Turks these days is well known. It is much the same as the frustration of Asians during that regional financial crisis (1997-99). The IMF is both good guy and bad guy: It is the lender that countries turn to when they need a lot of cash fast, but they resent the loan conditions. As if the scolding parent, the kid is grounded, the allowance is taken away, and life becomes grim as the Gulag.

Ten years ago some Asian countries, notably Malaysia, said no thanks to the IMF and went their own way to climb out of its crisis. Turkey would like to do that too, but over the years it has had to go to the IMF quite often. These have been tough decisions, but with each one the Turkish public more and more looks at the IMF like some Greek occupation force. In that atmosphere I’d probably be a testy Turk, too.

Not even the most mature and sophisticated of columnists are immune to the temptation to occasionally hurl a shoe at someone. My own list of current targets starts off with America’s top commander in Afghanistan for shooting off his mouth in a recent speech in London. It seems Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is against an Afghan pullback — wow, what a surprise!

Sorry, Herr General: It’s Barack Obama who has to make the difficult decision on whether to send more troops to troubled Afghanistan, or bring the boys and girls home over time. Why not let the president make his decision without such public pressure? A soft shoe for him.

There’s another top American commander that has been complaining in public lately, but in this occasion the officer is dead to rights. Adm. Timothy Keating says his office and staff lack direct phone contacts to their counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army in China in case of a Sino-U.S. misunderstanding or crisis. His is no new complaint: To supplement the Washington-Beijing hotline, the U.S. Pacific Command has long wanted a speed-dial list of PLA generals and admirals ever since the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996.

They are right to want it, but China’s generals have not been good about giving it. In this dispute we’d thus aim our shoe at the Chinese brass.

One also has another question for China. Its 60th anniversary celebration of Communist Party rule the other day was chockablock full with goose-stepping troops and swooping fighter jets. At the center of all the martial merriment was President Hu Jintao. He is the latest Chinese maximum leader to lead his mere 1.4 billion people further away from a communist economy and ever more deeply into a kind of mixed capitalism.

Given this otherwise reassuring policy direction, please explain why President Hu, whose public appearances usually show him decked out in standard business suit, had to don a cranky old gray high-collared Mao jacket for this occasion? it couldn’t be because he has only one Western business suit in his wardrobe, and it’s at the cleaners. I may be making too big a deal over sartorial symbolism, but the sight of the Mao jacket fired up the shoe-hurling Turk in me. But that is as far as I or anyone should go. Let’s leave it at the shoe level.

This article ran in The Providence Journal on October 8, 2009.