https://www.scmp.com/rss/10656/feed Tom Plate is a university professor and a veteran columnist focused on Asia and America. This Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University has orchestrated live interactive seminars with major universities across Asia, as part of the LMU’s path-finding Asia Media International Centre. He is also the author of 13 books, including the bestsellers “Confessions of an American Media Man” (2007), four volumes in the “Giants of Asia” series, and three In the 'Tom... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com At the end of the semester, for me – a typical worn-out university professor – a measure of peace and tranquillity against the raging insanities of our time can be found in a little quiet time in my library. It’s almost a ritual now: holding a sort of seance with my books, huddling with these silent but highly informative old pals, maybe opening marked pages, reading aloud a little, but always underneath weighing which ones to put into the next China course I will teach. Had my just-ended... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3219090/using-theory-guide-us-china-relations-could-be-recipe-disaster?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3219090/using-theory-guide-us-china-relations-could-be-recipe-disaster?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 02 May 2023 17:00:11 +0000 Over the decades, even during rare warmish breaks in the tundra of US-China relations, I do not think I ran across a single American foreign correspondent who claimed that their Beijing posting was an easy job. The other day, while thoroughly enjoying former CNN Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy’s new book, Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic, it came to me that in one way or another I’d crossed paths with more than a few American foreign... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3215927/us-pandemic-dogmatism-about-china-must-end-it-leads-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3215927/us-pandemic-dogmatism-about-china-must-end-it-leads-war?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Apr 2023 19:00:10 +0000 Geopolitical commentary can be invaluable, but not all analyses return good payback for your time and attention. Commentary that is done quick on the draw can lack perspective and twist in the wind; even those drawn from deeper wells can take too long to surface. Then there is a brand that says it knows what it thinks without knowing much at all. Rare is the public intellectual who is able to be quick, deep and sharp, but that is George Yeo, who was Singapore’s foreign minister from 2004 to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3212630/looming-korean-nuclear-crisis-shows-worlds-need-deep-thinking-george-yeos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3212630/looming-korean-nuclear-crisis-shows-worlds-need-deep-thinking-george-yeos?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:30:09 +0000 Hot air propels not just balloons. Embattled US President Joe Biden and his battle-prone Washington – the American capital more divided, presumably, than that of President Xi Jinping’s Beijing – are due to clash anew this week at the US State of the Union address. Unlike the superficial serenity of a national party congress in Beijing, where delegates commune with the leader in respectful Confucian fashion, the cavernous House of Representatives, packing in both Senate and House members for the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/united-states/article/3209341/spy-balloon-has-darkened-diplomatic-skies-over-us-and-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/united-states/article/3209341/spy-balloon-has-darkened-diplomatic-skies-over-us-and-china?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Feb 2023 17:30:08 +0000 Is it conceivable that the risk-taking pilot of the Chinese Navy J-11 fighter that flew within metres of a US Air Force RC-135 over the South China Sea two weeks ago once swooned over a pirated version of the new Top Gun movie? The 2022 sequel to the 1986 original film, both starring Tom Cruise, has raked in more than US$1 billion and is streaking into new international markets. It’s an “America is super cool” film, as if only an American pilot could possibly be skilled enough to slip into the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3205377/amid-us-china-tensions-japan-must-choose-deft-diplomacy-not-top-gun-tomfoolery-ensure-peace?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3205377/amid-us-china-tensions-japan-must-choose-deft-diplomacy-not-top-gun-tomfoolery-ensure-peace?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 03 Jan 2023 16:30:08 +0000 Did you know that, in American-speak, a group of flying corvids is not called a “flock” but a “murder”? Right now, amid the warm Laguna area of southern California, whip-smart crows are already spreading their wings in anticipation of spring. They’re not armed with flight plans to dive-bomb people barbecuing in their backyards. Instead, these tradition-bound, family-oriented, hard-working survivors will soon be scoping out reliable food sources and supply lines with assertive aerial... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3202215/us-has-been-getting-china-all-wrong-two-decades?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3202215/us-has-been-getting-china-all-wrong-two-decades?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Dec 2022 17:00:10 +0000 Maybe the lady intel officer who sought to recruit me for a CIA operation involving Chinese espionage on the US West Coast didn’t look the part – though, then again, perhaps she did. Modest in dress, controlled in comportment, she sat with me in the back of a large steak restaurant in Los Angeles without once raising her voice. She told me she was proud to be “working for the President of the United States, that’s what we do”, and I believed her. She paid for everything (as she had for two prior... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3197989/why-criticism-third-term-chinas-xi-jinping-rich-coming-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3197989/why-criticism-third-term-chinas-xi-jinping-rich-coming-us?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Nov 2022 17:00:14 +0000 To lose one’s sense of decency by raising the threat of nuclear weapons just once – here we’re talking directly to you, Mr Vladimir Putin – may be dismissed as a mere unfortunate slip; but to raise it more than once can suggest mindlessness, or madness. A measure of narcissism may be acceptable as a common human foible; but as a defining characteristic of a major global political figure, it is rarely without cost to others. Indeed, for the rampant egomaniac, prolonged reflection becomes... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3194777/how-us-not-just-russia-helped-bring-world-closer-nuclear-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3194777/how-us-not-just-russia-helped-bring-world-closer-nuclear-war?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Oct 2022 17:00:14 +0000 Last week, the last president of the Soviet Union departed this life at the age of 91, and it must be said now that a true giant is gone. But to recall the pleasure of having met and chatted with Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa (who passed away in 1999), as I did in 1992 in Los Angeles, is to be able to believe anew, that Russia is anything but a maddening tangle of Vladimir Putins and Joseph Stalins. So who was the more intelligent Gorbachev – sharp and boisterous Mikhail or queenlike and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3191491/lesson-mikhail-gorbachevs-legacy-holds-vladimir-putin-and-xi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3191491/lesson-mikhail-gorbachevs-legacy-holds-vladimir-putin-and-xi?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Sep 2022 17:30:17 +0000 A media system can filter your world-view not unlike the narrowest religion claiming to know what’s best about everything. Truly professional media platforms, especially if print-based, will aim to do right by you. By contrast, the powerful media institutions or systems that have the effect of shielding you from reality are an enemy. Their errors can cause serious damage. We’re not talking about miscues in the crossword puzzle but life-and-death stuff – nuclear war versus peace, for example. For... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3189717/us-media-must-lay-groundwork-peace-offensive-korean-peninsula?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3189717/us-media-must-lay-groundwork-peace-offensive-korean-peninsula?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Aug 2022 19:30:10 +0000 Can our world develop a collective mindset that allows it to stay calm even under extreme pressure? Anyone who tracked with growing alarm US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip through East Asia last week might well have asked themselves: but at what cost? The entourage of the US’ most accomplished domestic politician left behind few patches of peace and security and instead scattered seeds of disarray and doubt. Even the good people of Taiwan, the putative beneficiaries of Pelosi’s march to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3188147/nancy-pelosis-taiwan-trip-highlights-need-reset-global-thinking?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3188147/nancy-pelosis-taiwan-trip-highlights-need-reset-global-thinking?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Aug 2022 19:30:16 +0000 Today’s US-China relations are more akin to a rugby match than an elegant balletic pas de deux. Nothing illustrates this better than the Nancy Pelosi Taiwan caper. Sure, when it comes to the moralism of the average American politician, sensitivity to other political cultures is a pretty alien concept. But there was an easy way out before this affair got dicey. If only the government of the People’s Republic, albeit with an insincere grin, had put on a happy face over the proposed visit to Taipei... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3186473/if-pelosi-really-wants-peace-prevail-taiwan-shell-stay-away?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3186473/if-pelosi-really-wants-peace-prevail-taiwan-shell-stay-away?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 25 Jul 2022 17:30:16 +0000 You might well be starting to believe that the calibre of today’s political leadership isn’t what it used to be. Suddenly, the global field of play is cluttered with stunning individual wreckage. Political uncertainty rules, a war sparked by an invasion reveals our current degree of “uncivilisation”, and centrepieces of former grandeur crumble under pressure. What could be a more glaring example than the decline and fall of the polity of the United Kingdom? From a 19th-century global power to a... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3184840/asia-needs-leaders-calibre-singapores-lee-kuan-yew-navigate-messy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3184840/asia-needs-leaders-calibre-singapores-lee-kuan-yew-navigate-messy?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 12 Jul 2022 02:15:12 +0000 An unexpected invitation came via email last week that will prove either of no more import than any of the other stuff in my inbox, or instead a tea leaf to be read and analysed with care and an open mind. It was an invitation to join an unofficial “exchange of views” with “some scholars” regarding “mainly Sino-US relations” over lunch at the large People’s Republic of China consulate building in Los Angeles. I will not take the invitation lightly. In years past – notably during the era of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3183182/thaw-china-us-diplomatic-relations-we-can-only-hope?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3183182/thaw-china-us-diplomatic-relations-we-can-only-hope?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:30:17 +0000 Major participants in the Russia-Ukraine war, whether involved directly or by proxy, lack agreement about when and how it must end. These varying perspectives result in an unseemly policy scrum, adding more confusion to this humanitarian tragedy. This obscene war, despite the many ways it presses hard on our conscience, is developing a second dimension of amoral abstraction. To be sure, the reality could not be more grim. Europe’s two largest countries are in a bloody war. The Russian army has... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3181488/no-one-china-included-wants-see-ukraine-war-going-nuclear?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3181488/no-one-china-included-wants-see-ukraine-war-going-nuclear?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:30:19 +0000 They must lead the unofficial geopolitical loyalty league worldwide. For if there is one country and people in the Asia-Pacific that has logged more miles through mud, jungle and desert to follow the US military almost anywhere, Australia is the one. Don’t the Aussies always answer the call? Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. It started back in 1951 with a three-way security treaty (including New Zealand) that continues today, and where or when it will stop, nobody knows. Certainly,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3179662/loyal-us-ally-australia-defending-taiwan-may-well-be-test-too-far?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3179662/loyal-us-ally-australia-defending-taiwan-may-well-be-test-too-far?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 31 May 2022 01:15:13 +0000 It’s just possible that a favourable diplomatic wind is forming that could alter the trajectory of the storm of war raging over Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe. Pushing this war out to sea might help clear the gathering clouds of world economic collapse. It could energise the humanitarian obligation to get Ukraine back on its feet and its exiled millions repatriated. And it could affirm not just within Kremlin circles but among the elite everywhere that military aggression is... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3177896/why-us-arrogance-not-russia-china-relationship-biggest-barrier?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3177896/why-us-arrogance-not-russia-china-relationship-biggest-barrier?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 16 May 2022 17:30:23 +0000 The topic of nuclear war is no joking matter, but I was rather tempted to cry out “Get me rewrite!” while dipping into my old book on the nuclear arms race. So much is changing now. My published tome had been premised on the nuclear-age dynamics between the US and the Soviet Union. But that was five decades ago; China is now included in the top tier. As times change, sometimes profoundly, so must our thinking and analysis, sometimes radically. Once, it was axiomatic ­that the use of nuclear... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3176240/threat-russian-nuclear-attack-shows-why-chinas-no-first-use-policy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3176240/threat-russian-nuclear-attack-shows-why-chinas-no-first-use-policy?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 02 May 2022 17:30:21 +0000 Ever since my first meeting with Lee Kuan Yew a quarter of a century ago, Singapore has remained in my mind as special. By the time of the founding prime minister’s passing at 91 in 2015, that assessment was going global; even in Hong Kong circles, where desultory governance and economic factors, especially housing, seemed to inspire spasms of exodus, Singapore seemed an honourable option. It was not always thus. There was a time when Western media barely noticed the island city state, and when... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3174623/singapore-reluctant-us-china-go-between-should-continue-be-useful?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3174623/singapore-reluctant-us-china-go-between-should-continue-be-useful?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 18 Apr 2022 17:00:22 +0000 I submit for your consideration an American political figure named Jerry Brown. He turns 84 this week but is somehow still flamboyant and relevant, if sometimes slightly annoying. I have not only grown to admire him but come to feel this lifelong politician is becoming an important world figure on the issue of China. His primary cause nowadays is America’s fraught relationship with China, and he has a great deal to say about this. Across the decades, his mind would spin new policy ideas like a... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3172999/us-china-relations-need-planetary-realism-avoid-geopolitical-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3172999/us-china-relations-need-planetary-realism-avoid-geopolitical-and?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 04 Apr 2022 19:15:22 +0000 It is imperative that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government continues to edge away from the bleak dark shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resettle itself geopolitically into a better place. While it would be presumptuous to offer a detailed plan of action on how to advance by retreating, nothing less is needed right now from China’s leader. China need not rush, of course, but it should not hesitate to separate itself from what clearly is wrong. Recalibrating its Russia policy might... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3171245/ukraine-crisis-calls-china-take-part-daring-diplomatic-intervention?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3171245/ukraine-crisis-calls-china-take-part-daring-diplomatic-intervention?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 21 Mar 2022 17:30:15 +0000 In global diplomatic circles, what is not uttered publicly can reveal more than that which is out in the open. Perhaps no one captured this with more spice and sauce than Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Périgord, the acknowledged French maestro of European diplomacy from the second half of the 18th century into the 19th. As he memorably proclaimed, “speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts”. Speech concealment is thus hardly unknown in current diplomacy but for the Chinese diplomat, having... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3169506/ukraine-invasion-china-may-be-worlds-best-bet-brokering-peace?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3169506/ukraine-invasion-china-may-be-worlds-best-bet-brokering-peace?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Mar 2022 17:30:26 +0000 Regarding the Ukraine crisis, suppose I were not the sunny optimist I try to be but, instead, a dark pessimist always anticipating the worst? Consider Russian President Vladimir Putin. Just try to stay optimistic after reading the depressing but immensely useful book, Mr Putin: Operative In the Kremlin. More than 500 pages, published by the Brookings Institution years ago, the book by Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy is a sprawling portrait of evil. As such, it caught the eye of high-level... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3167818/ukraine-crisis-there-reason-be-optimistic-about-peace?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3167818/ukraine-crisis-there-reason-be-optimistic-about-peace?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 21 Feb 2022 17:30:19 +0000 The Chinese tilt towards Russia is understandable enough. It is immensely satisfying to be able to tell American leaders that China will do what it wants to do, whether the arrogant West likes it or not. China is the big deal now – or so goes the talk in Beijing’s corridors of power – and the United States must learn to live with it. And if it can’t, then too bad: just like their predecessors over the centuries, Westerners are, after all, barbarians. To be sure, nothing said in public suggests... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3166093/chinas-tilt-towards-russia-beijings-best-long-term-interest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3166093/chinas-tilt-towards-russia-beijings-best-long-term-interest?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Feb 2022 19:30:26 +0000 Power is not always angelic. When the power to do something exists, it often gathers like a storm, ready to be unleashed. Power is also agnostic; it can be used for evil as well as for good. One thing is for certain. Without concentrations of power, not very much, for better or for worse, would ever get done. Consolidated power can tilt towards moderation or in the opposite direction. Governments that are locked and loaded are as likely to be as embarrassingly trigger-happy as they are to act... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3164490/power-game-ukraines-fate-will-be-shaped-decisions-russia-china-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3164490/power-game-ukraines-fate-will-be-shaped-decisions-russia-china-and?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 24 Jan 2022 19:30:24 +0000 I look back in anger. There’s no other way emotionally to cope with the sense that, ever since the exit of the Clinton administration two decades ago, relations with China have gone from “the good and the bad” to mostly bad. It’s not that the Clinton crowd had some magic touch – far from it. But, in spite of not having a fully thought-out overall policy towards a re-emerging China, they muddled through well enough and kept the bilateral diplomatic ball bouncing. They emphasised the positive with... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3162777/deteriorating-us-china-relations-threaten-asian-arms-race-its-time?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3162777/deteriorating-us-china-relations-threaten-asian-arms-race-its-time?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 10 Jan 2022 17:30:17 +0000 Do dead sculptures tell no tales? Perhaps they still do. Recently the Pillar of Shame statue in Hong Kong, long displayed, was removed from the University of Hong Kong campus by the powers that be. The sculpture had shaped the famous Tiananmen Square incident in terms of the bloody clash between soldiers and demonstrators. Last week, it was pointedly taken down and moved elsewhere, presumably not to appear in public for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, the Western news media has framed... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3161153/crumbling-us-has-no-business-telling-others-what-do-their-statues?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3161153/crumbling-us-has-no-business-telling-others-what-do-their-statues?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 27 Dec 2021 17:30:25 +0000 International peace and stability, more vital to survival than ever in our epoch of pandemic proliferation and climate deterioration, requires a collaborative and responsible community. What is urgently needed is a global ethic of helping out and digging in for the common long haul, rather than pointing fingers and declaiming reasons for feeling so utterly exceptional or piously superior. Grandiose moral judgments should be made only by nations that are themselves without sin – and there aren’t... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3159492/understand-us-china-conflict-start-recognising-its-animal-nature?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3159492/understand-us-china-conflict-start-recognising-its-animal-nature?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 13 Dec 2021 17:30:21 +0000 Can it be that fresh air is being permitted to enter US foreign affairs thinking? The other day, a critique of US policy towards China turned up on my computer screen that raised my hopes. It amounted to a reasoned plea for exactly the kind of strategic rethinking America needs to put together soon. The essay called for junking the moribund approach of confrontation and containment and re-pivoting to Asia with a calibrated appreciation of China’s growing stature in 21st-century geopolitics. It... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3157733/all-hope-not-lost-us-china-relations-despite-tensions-and-tepid?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3157733/all-hope-not-lost-us-china-relations-despite-tensions-and-tepid?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 29 Nov 2021 17:30:13 +0000 If fine oratory is a valuable art form, it is nonetheless becoming a lost one. Beware the mere glitter of charisma alone. In a politician, it is often no more than wrapping paper around a thin gift box of costume jewellery, but true orators can move mountains and nations. It might even prove a propellant of winds for reform in otherwise seemingly hopeless political storms. This takes us to former US president Barack Obama’s remarkable keynote address on climate change last week in Glasgow. In... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3156078/case-drafting-obama-help-heal-us-china-relations?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3156078/case-drafting-obama-help-heal-us-china-relations?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 15 Nov 2021 17:30:21 +0000 Russia’s Vladimir Putin is staying at home, as is China’s Xi Jinping – but on his way to Glasgow for the international climate summit, US President Joe Biden stopped for a chat with Pope Francis. The photo op was truly a sight for bored eyes. If Pope Francis is not easily one of our most charismatic leaders, who is? The plain Biden is a Catholic with a role-model wife, a wretched US Congress and rosaries in his pocket (it is reported). With the pontiff, he seemed entirely in his element: joking... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3154408/cop26-climate-talks-too-much-hot-air-cooler-heads-prevail?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3154408/cop26-climate-talks-too-much-hot-air-cooler-heads-prevail?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 01 Nov 2021 19:30:11 +0000 Perpetual inequality will only increase if we always look the other way. This is especially so if, as some predictions suggest, the global population hits 10 billion in 2050, with more than 5 billion in Asia alone. Just as the 2008 financial meltdown oozed over the world with volcanic heat and the 1997 Asian financial crisis unhinged otherwise stable economies, so the grinding dynamic of widening inequality threatens our humanity, sense of justice and psychic equilibrium. As the French economist... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3152731/can-asia-lead-global-fight-cure-poverty-pandemic-us-lags-behind?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3152731/can-asia-lead-global-fight-cure-poverty-pandemic-us-lags-behind?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 18 Oct 2021 17:30:09 +0000 US foreign policy since the September 11 attacks looks rather like an animal caught in the headlights of fast-moving contemporary history that won’t slow down for anyone or anything. If we can agree on this general picture, then we must also agree that no one American, whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump, can be blamed. US presidents of whatever political party or calibre inherit the ill winds of the past as well as coming storms. Since January 20, US President Joe Biden has made some mistakes,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3151104/us-foreign-policy-needs-script-rewrite-under-blinken-and-biden?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3151104/us-foreign-policy-needs-script-rewrite-under-blinken-and-biden?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 04 Oct 2021 19:30:15 +0000 Frustrations come with any occupation, and writing columns about Asia and America, as I have without stop for 25 years, is no exception. Asia is powerful and dynamic, and one size does not fit all. But, for me, no one subject has proven more elusive and more frustrating than the enduring topic of the two Koreas on their tensely divided peninsula. Outsiders should venture an opinion about this elongated legacy of the Cold War only with deepest humility. My initial take on the divided peninsula... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3149388/north-south-divide-only-koreans-themselves-can-find-way-out-impasse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3149388/north-south-divide-only-koreans-themselves-can-find-way-out-impasse?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:30:23 +0000 According to reports, Qin Gang’s public tone seemed fairly chipper on his arrival in Washington. Further, in the wake of his initial meet-and-greet with US officials, there surfaced new communications between the United States and China. Given the alarm with which many Westerners have reacted to Beijing’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, Qin was presented as if he had come from some Chinese peace and reconciliation commission. This is China’s new ambassador to Washington. The backdrop is that any sort... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3147688/euphoria-over-chinas-new-us-ambassador-justified-amid-dreary?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3147688/euphoria-over-chinas-new-us-ambassador-justified-amid-dreary?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Sep 2021 19:30:26 +0000 The agony in Afghanistan makes for many sorrows. Beyond the scenes of chaos at Kabul airport is the unseen anguish of all those US veterans back home who are dealing with various psychological and physical traumas and are now especially unproud of their country; of families who have unnecessarily lost sons and daughters; and of young Americans who might reasonably fear a future of more wars ending in anger. The tragic lesson of Vietnam – yes, America should have learned; the similar lesson of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3146003/afghanistan-and-beyond-china-must-learn-us-hubris-and-blunders?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3146003/afghanistan-and-beyond-china-must-learn-us-hubris-and-blunders?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 23 Aug 2021 17:30:19 +0000 In its quest for certainty about China and whether it is a moral threat or merely a robust competitor, the American consensus now claims to have taken the measure of China and is not in doubt. It would be better if it was. The Western mind might be creating something that doesn’t really exist. It is wrong to be so sure of things, 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume said. The sun will probably rise over the horizon tomorrow morning – but only probably, so don’t be so certain. Even... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3144354/why-us-certainty-about-china-threat-danger-itself?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3144354/why-us-certainty-about-china-threat-danger-itself?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 09 Aug 2021 17:30:19 +0000 Maybe the United Nations – fumbling, hopelessly bureaucratic, partly corrupt and so on – is in fact beyond redemption. Just forget about it: let it career down the slippery slope of mediocrity and geopolitical irrelevance and splash ignominiously into New York’s East River. Let’s just cut our losses and bail out before its collapse pulls the world into a deep and dark abyss. Maybe the UN was never going to save the world. Without the United States as a member, the League of Nations flopped... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3142513/who-can-save-waning-united-nations-not-us-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3142513/who-can-save-waning-united-nations-not-us-china?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 26 Jul 2021 19:30:18 +0000 There are always concerns about Japan, with its background of brilliant accomplishments and unforgettable aggression. Now that Japan is in the foreground again with the cheerless Olympics, who can be sure what is next? East Asia began its major transformation in the mid-1960s, when Japan’s wildly successful 1964 Tokyo Olympics proved an early marker of its emergence as an economic powerhouse. At that time, Mao Zedong’s China was still reeling from the Great Leap Forward that triggered one of the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3140757/why-japan-should-focus-making-friends-and-money-not-interfering?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3140757/why-japan-should-focus-making-friends-and-money-not-interfering?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 12 Jul 2021 20:00:05 +0000 Given the relentless Western media verdict of “China’s increasing assertiveness”, it might seem surprising that, across Asia, doubts about America’s own continental conduct proceed apace. Yet this goes little reported back in the US. Nonetheless, within some government and policy circles in Indonesia, Japan and Singapore – to mention just a few of which I am specifically aware – the Cambridge-New York-Washington crowd is seen to have lost its cool equipoise. The brains trust of the West is... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3138995/americas-knee-jerk-reaction-china-just-shoot-bad-guy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3138995/americas-knee-jerk-reaction-china-just-shoot-bad-guy?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 28 Jun 2021 17:30:18 +0000 A new report from a respected US think tank at least tries for a fair and sensible analysis of the China challenge. For this alone, given the almost rancid mood in the US about China these days, President Xi Jinping and his government are not going to get a fairer shake from America’s political-military establishment than the RAND Corporation’s China’s Quest for Global Supremacy. This is the background: last week, at the G7 talkathon (core members: the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3137196/why-us-cant-afford-overhype-china-threat?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3137196/why-us-cant-afford-overhype-china-threat?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 14 Jun 2021 17:30:00 +0000 We patriotic Americans usually call it Memorial Day weekend, but sometimes the barbecues and beer throw memory off base, as if the holiday on the last Monday of every May signifies no more than the winding down of a 72-hour party. On Saturday, US Vice-President Kamala Harris innocently, if lamely, tweeted, “Enjoy the long weekend” – and that was it. A storm of criticism, not all of it ill-intended or partisan, impelled a clarifying tweet from her on Sunday: “Throughout our history our servicemen... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3135442/us-china-tensions-america-all-too-experienced-war-must-take-stock?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3135442/us-china-tensions-america-all-too-experienced-war-must-take-stock?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 31 May 2021 18:30:15 +0000 It was quite a good romp. There in square five was Elliott, who helped run the college student newspaper way back then, now a professional psychotherapist. A few zoom squares away was lifelong friend, author and noted screenwriter Aaron. Then there was John, zooming in to the virtual reunion of the class of 1966 from what looked like his car or truck. This past weekend at Zoom reunion seminars at Amherst College, from which I graduated a long time ago, our discussion question was: what was the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3133739/chinas-rise-us-must-be-better-version-itself-accommodate-re?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3133739/chinas-rise-us-must-be-better-version-itself-accommodate-re?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 17 May 2021 17:30:16 +0000 Marvellously, sharp streaks of sunshine are starting to break through America’s Covid-19 cloud cover, but the fog over US foreign policy seems heavy. It involves India, China and Russia. Let’s start with India and employ the British poet W.H. Auden’s words – “the gates of hell are always standing wide open”. But, in India’s case, you have to fear that this South Asian giant, with its endless problems, looks more like a revolving door, perhaps with no way out. Sectors of the Indian population are... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3132061/why-us-foreign-policy-aimed-obstructing-china-wont-succeed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3132061/why-us-foreign-policy-aimed-obstructing-china-wont-succeed?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 03 May 2021 19:30:16 +0000 It is still true, even in this speed-freak era of AI and machine-learning, that international diplomacy needs governments to station quality representatives in foreign capitals, and for international organisations to listen and learn, soak up the ineffable atmosphere, and interact with real people, especially those with “issues”, and report back home. Long-distance artificial intelligence calibrations suffice for number problems and may work well enough for the Pentagon, but for the complex... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3130110/us-china-relations-good-versus-evil-world-view-does-no-one-any-good?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3130110/us-china-relations-good-versus-evil-world-view-does-no-one-any-good?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 Apr 2021 17:30:18 +0000 Perhaps no gloomier assessment of the China-US relationship can be made than to note that, were it to sink yet another notch or two, there would be no relationship at all. Like a Japanese garden so minimalist that removing one stone might vitiate its existence, the bilateral Sino-American relationship seems unnervingly close to bouncing off rock bottom. Decades after the Cold War with Moscow, with the shimmer of a potential conflict with Beijing over the horizon, the Pacific Ocean’s current... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3128364/us-china-relations-dont-let-taiwan-fall-prey-madness-either-side?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3128364/us-china-relations-dont-let-taiwan-fall-prey-madness-either-side?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 05 Apr 2021 19:00:16 +0000 The future is not always all that tough to predict: “Should both Pacific powers remain frozen in stereotype, high-level diplomacy may yield next to nothing, or worse”. That was my fearless view last month. It remains the view today in the aftermath of the Alaska summit where otherwise seasoned American and Chinese diplomats produced ditsy diplomacy for all the world to see.  The setting for the rhetorical snowball fight was a hotel conference room in Anchorage, where March temperatures even by... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3126411/lessons-alaska-summit-both-us-and-china-must-rethink-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3126411/lessons-alaska-summit-both-us-and-china-must-rethink-their?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Mar 2021 17:30:11 +0000 Minari is both the name for a celery-like herbal plant and the title of a wonderful new Korean-American movie that is stealing people’s hearts and winning major recognition. The plant is also a symbolic plot point that is as rich in the movie as the real-life herb is tart in taste. And this will take us to a much different point of diplomacy.  Korea itself is quite the head-turner nowadays, with its oversexed K-pop, gaudy parade of TV romcoms and award-winning films. Just like the wholly... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3124514/north-korea-nuclear-deadlock-minaris-central-message-love-should?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3124514/north-korea-nuclear-deadlock-minaris-central-message-love-should?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:30:10 +0000 America must understand that China is different, emphasised the late Lee Kuan Yew when some 25 years ago I asked Singapore’s iconic modern founder whether my new newspaper column on Asia, then in the Los Angeles Times, might possibly do some good. His counsel was to try hard to help America get its all-important China relationship right. He said it with urgency. For a quarter of a century now, I have taken his advice to heart. After all, Lee, anything but a communist, was strong-minded about... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3122605/us-must-ditch-its-cold-war-containment-obsession-china-not-soviet?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3122605/us-must-ditch-its-cold-war-containment-obsession-china-not-soviet?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Feb 2021 17:30:09 +0000 The late George Kennan became a diplomatic legend for advocating, while stationed in Moscow, a singular foreign policy idea that famously worked. It was called “containment”. Its steadfast observance by the US and its allies undoubtedly helped lead to the welcome collapse of the Soviet Union. So, now, for China too – containment anew? No: to the end of his years at Princeton, this deep thinker came to warn against simple slogans or faulty formulations that would never work for the complex and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3120988/china-us-relations-are-too-important-leave-xi-and-biden?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3120988/china-us-relations-are-too-important-leave-xi-and-biden?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Feb 2021 17:30:08 +0000