Nicholas Platt

Nicholas Platt was born in New York City on March 10, 1936, the son of the architect Geoffrey Platt and Helen (née Choate) Platt. He came from a family with deep roots in American public life. His maternal grandfather was Joseph H. Choate Jr., a prominent lawyer who chaired the Federal Alcohol Control Administration after Prohibition, and his great-grandfather was Joseph Hodges Choate, the lawyer and diplomat appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom by President William McKinley in 1899. Platt was reportedly inspired to join the Foreign Service by his great-grandfather's example.

Platt attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. in 1957, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and the Porcellian Club, and received an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1959. He later studied Chinese at the Foreign Service Institute and in Taichung, Taiwan (1962 to 1963), and became fluent in Chinese, Japanese, French and German.

Platt worked as a research assistant at the Washington Center for Foreign Policy Research before entering the U.S. Foreign Service in 1959. His first post was as vice consul in Windsor, Ontario (1959 to 1961). After Chinese language training he served as a political officer and China analyst at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong (1964 to 1968), then as China desk officer in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and as chief of the Asian Communist Areas Division of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1969 to 1971). From 1971 to 1973 he was deputy director and then director of the State Department Secretariat staff.

As one of the Mandarin-trained "China Boys," he was part of the advance team for President Nixon's 1972 trip to Beijing. In 1973 he became chief of the political section of the newly opened U.S. Liaison Office in Peking, then served as deputy chief of the political section at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo (1974 to 1977). Back in Washington he was Director for Japanese Affairs (1977), a National Security Council staff member for Asian affairs (1978 to 1980), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1980 to 1981), and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, including a period as acting Assistant Secretary (1981 to 1982).

President Reagan appointed him Ambassador to Zambia in July 1982; he presented credentials on August 31, 1982 and served until December 1984. He was then Executive Secretary of the Department of State and Special Assistant to the Secretary of State until February 1987. Reagan named him Ambassador to the Philippines in August 1987, a post he held until July 1991, through the democratic consolidation that followed the People Power Revolution. President George H. W. Bush then appointed him Ambassador to Pakistan, where he served until November 3, 1992.

After retiring from government he became the fifth president of the Asia Society (1992 to 2004), overseeing the 2001 renovation and expansion of its Park Avenue headquarters, the growth of its museum, performing arts and education programs, its first online presence, and new centers in San Francisco, Australia and the Philippines, the last opened with the Filipino business leader Washington SyCip. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, sat on the International Advisory Board of the Financial Times, and served the US-China Education Trust as an adviser from 2004 and chairman emeritus from 2022.

On June 28, 1957, Platt married Sheila Maynard at the Protestant Episcopal Church in Rhinebeck, New York. Sheila, a clinical social worker who worked in Islamabad during his posting there, was the daughter of the investment banker Walter Maynard and Eileen (née Burden), and a granddaughter of the banker and equestrian Arthur Scott Burden and the Hon. Cynthia Burke Roche. The couple were married for more than 60 years until Sheila's death in 2018. They had three sons: Adam Platt, a writer and longtime restaurant critic for New York Magazine; Oliver Platt, the actor, born in 1960 in Windsor, Ontario; and Nicholas Platt Jr., who worked in finance and financial publishing. The family grew to include nine grandchildren. Platt frequently spent his summers in North Haven, Maine.

Platt believed that diplomacy begins with understanding, a conviction his colleagues at the US-China Education Trust cited as central to his work. He argued that educating Americans and Chinese about one another was a strategic imperative for peace and stability. At the Asia Society he championed the arts as a vital means of fostering dialogue between the peoples of Asia and the United States, and he described Asia and Asians as having been placed "in the middle of American life" by war, trade, technology, investment and immigration.

Platt is remembered as one of the pioneering American China hands who helped turn the 1972 Nixon opening into a lasting relationship, beginning with his service at the first U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing. His memoir China Boys is a firsthand account of how U.S.-PRC relations began. At the Asia Society he guided a period of dramatic institutional growth and helped make it a global network, and Asia Society Philippines credits him with founding its presence there. Kevin Rudd, the Asia Society's later president, called him "a distinguished American who was committed to public service."

Platt wrote China Boys: How U.S. Relations with the PRC Began and Grew (2010), a memoir of his years as a young China specialist, the Nixon visit and the early Liaison Office in Beijing. His home movies of the American arrival in China in 1972 were later shared by the Asia Society. He recorded oral histories with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in 1994 and 2005, now part of its Frontline Diplomacy collection, and spoke widely on U.S.-China relations at universities and foreign policy forums.

Nicholas Platt died on the morning of Thursday, July 23, 2026, at the age of 90. His death was announced on July 27, 2026 by his son Oliver Platt on Instagram, who wrote that he and his brothers Adam and Nick had lost their beloved dad. The place and cause of death were not made public. The Asia Society published a tribute on July 28, 2026, followed by the US-China Education Trust, Asia Society Philippines and APA Justice. He was predeceased by his wife Sheila in 2018 and was survived by his three sons and grandchildren.