On his 110th birthday, Prof C.K. Jen gets hometown honor

This piece first posted on Asia Times.

The crush of travelers for the week around China’s National Day on October 1 broke previous records again. This time, my wife, May, her younger sister, Linda, and I were part of the bustle. We took a three-hour, high-speed train from Beijing westward to Taiyuan and then drove south for three hours to Qinyuan to participate in the ceremony honoring the memory of Professor Chih-Kung (C.K.) Jen, my father-in-law.

Jen, also known as Ren Zhigong in pinyin, was born in one of the 1,000 plus villages that make up the Qinyuan County in southern part of Shanxi province. After elementary school at the local village, his father arranged for Jen to live with his uncle in Taiyuan, the provincial capital, in order to obtain superior quality of schooling.

When Jen turned 14, Tsinghua Preparatory School in Beijing, where he would study for 6 years, accepted him. When he was 20, the school used funds from the Boxer Indemnity to send him to America for further education. Within five years, Jen received his Bachelors from MIT, Masters from Penn and PhD from Harvard, either in electrical engineering or physics.

High School of Qinyuan and reflection on Qin river. Photo: George Koo

Returns to China to begin teaching at 27

After touring some of the higher institutions of learning in Germany, Jen returned to Beijing to begin teaching. On the day of his wedding, July 7, 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge incident took place between the Japanese troops and the Chinese soldiers guarding the bridge, which marked the beginning of China’s war with Japan. He barely made it through the city gate and back into the city of Beijing for his own wedding.

Shortly thereafter, he and his new wife had to abandon everything in their new home and make hasty plans to depart from the soon-to-be occupied Beijing. They made the long cross-country trek to join the faculty, first in Changsha and then on to the newly-formed Kunming, formed when the then-three most prestigious schools in China combined out of necessity.

The three universities were Peking University and Tsinghua University from Beijing and Nankai University from Tianjin. In order for China to continue to train its youth, these universities were asked to move south and combine forces. Thus, the awkwardly named National Southwestern Associated University was established in Kunming. Xinanlianda in Chinese was a more elegant and a better known name.

This university began with bare ground and farmers’ barns and homes on loan, operated under extreme hardship and faced regular bombing runs by the Japanese warplanes.

Yet in its eight years of existence from 1938 to 1946, the university accepted around 8,000 students and graduated slightly less than half.

Among the graduates were the first two future Chinese recipients of the Nobel Prize in physics, T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, and many of the most influential scholars and intellectuals China has ever seen.

Jen’s role was to serve as the director of the Radio Research Institute, which came with a laboratory. From his memoir, he said of those War years in Kunming, where he was mugged and robbed twice, “my life was quite adventurous and probably the happiest period of my life, although the material environment was the hardest.”

He probably spoke for all the students and faculty who were tested by those challenging years.

The bronze bust of C.K. Jen unveiled during his 110th birthday. Photo: George Koo.

Leads first group of Chinese American scientists to China

In 1972, after Nixon went to China, Jen, at the time the deputy director of the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, immediately set about organizing a group of Chinese America scientists and academicians to visit China.

When this first Chinese American group arrived in Beijing, it was a news sensation. Premier Zhou Enlai greeted this group at the Great Hall and held a five-hour long conversation that kept the group past 2 am. Jen was to be remembered as the leader of the first group of Chinese Americans to visit China.

Between 1972 and 1986, he visited China nine times including two visits to his ancestral village. Each time, he spent roughly six months giving lectures at various universities. He spoke not only on his scientific specialty but also on the latest topics in physics. He saw that scientific knowledge in China had fallen badly behind the West and he wanted to help the Chinese catch up.

He took full advantage of his personal meeting with Deng Xiaoping to put an emphasis on teaching science in China and urge Deng to revive the physics department at Tsinghua, a wing that was disbanded during the Cultural Revolution. The department soon resumed classes and the faculty continued to express their gratitude for Jen’s energetic advocacy.

At the dedication of his bronze bust at the corner of the town square on the occasion of his 110th birthday, C.K. Jen was remembered as the native son who became an accomplished scientist with an international reputation and loved his motherland. His life story was told on display boards around the bust, intended to inspire future generations.

The idea of honoring my father-in-law came from another remarkable young man, also a native son. As a boy, David Wei heard stories about Jen and one day it occurred to him that honoring him would be a good way to inspire younger generations. He talked to his two close friends into agreeing to jointly fund the memorial. He contacted me for the Jen family’s support and access to the family archive. Then he convinced the leaders of the county of the merits of the project.

David had been a major contributor to the growth of Qinyuan’s economy. Until he came along, the Qinxin Group had been making high quality coke from the rich coal deposits but did not have anyone to sell the final product. Within the first week of his joining the company, he sold out the inventory and proceeded to book annual standing orders from steel mills around the world that justified a succession of plant capacity expansions.

C. K. Jen’s daughters May and Linda (left) with some schoolchildren and their teacher. Photo: George Koo.

The Qinyuan County today

Today’s Qinyuan County covers nearly 1,000 square miles, virtually all consisting of steep hills and mountains with deep gullies. Elevation runs from just under 1,000 meters to just over 2,500 meters. Less than 9% are considered arable farmland, all on sloping terrain. About two thirds of the county consists of forests, known for a wide variety of medicinal herbs, amazing assortment of wild mushroom and game. The population of the county is under 160,000 and about 90% live on the farmland.

We were surprised by what we saw, namely lush green forested mountainsides and blue skies. Being the headwater source of three rivers, Qinyuan also did not lack water. Mayor Lian explained to me that Qinyuan had been following the dictum from the central government in not allowing any polluting industries. Qinyuan’s only industry is extracting the coal from the mine and converting it into coke. Tailing from the washing and gas from the conversion are captured and burned to produce electricity. The residual ash has been used in cement for building material.

During WWII, Qinyuan was bitterly contested between the PLA and the Japanese. For two and half years, the two sides fought to a virtual standstill. The civilians paid the price. Periodically, the Japanese troops would wage a “three all” campaign. The troops would sweep into a village and loot all, burn all and kill all. That’s the reason when we visited the ancestral home in the Hexi village, our hosts could only show us a partial wall and one remaining doorway.

Happily, those evil days are long gone. Today Qinyuan is enjoying an economic boom but without the usual accompaniment of dirty air and dirty water. I am not familiar with the criteria for a model development in China but Qinyuan should qualify.

Qinyuan’s Vice mayor Sun at the unveiling ceremony of C.K. Jen’s bronze bust. Photo: George Koo.

Book Review on Chiang and Mao

This book review first appeared online in Asia Times.

Ruling a Quarter of Mankind is political science professor Paul Tai’s comparative analysis of the personalities of Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong — two most important figures in China’s modern history — based on meticulous research.

Tai drew not just from western sources, but from more than twice as many Chinese sources from both sides of the Taiwan straits. He also laboriously reviewed Chiang’s voluminous diaries covering nearly every day of his life for 55 years. The end result is a highly readable narrative.

The book is not just about comparing the leadership qualities of Chiang, who took overall control of a fragmented and virtually disintegrated China and united it to resist the invasion of Japan’s imperial troops, and Mao, who seized control of a consolidated China from Chiang after WWII.

Woven into Tai’s story are numerous facts and anecdotes involving other major figures, some from inside China and some from the global arena who played critical roles in the struggle between Chiang’s KMT and Mao’s CCP.

Written in elegant yet gentlemanly non polemic style, Tai’s book is one of those rare scholarly treatises that is easy to read and fascinating for anyone interested in understanding how today’s China came to be and the key roles played by Chiang and Mao. Because he drew heavily from Chinese sources, Tai’s book presents a more complete presentation of the birth of modern China than heretofore available from western sources.

Chiang, being five years older than Mao, began his rise to power earlier, first being appointed the head of the Whampoa Military Academy, China’s first West Point-like institution. Many of the Academy graduates trained by Chiang became the core team of officers under his command later.

From Guangzhou, Chiang proposed and led the Northern Expeditionary force with a modest sized force to unify a country riven with warlords. En route to Beijing, at the time the nominal capital of China, he defeated regional warlords having forces much larger than his and convinced others to join his command rather than to oppose him. His success amazed the nation and by late 1920s, Chiang secured his position as a national leader.

Chiang, the unifying force

His indispensable role as one capable of leading the nation against Japanese aggression was evident from the aftermath of the Xian Incident in 1936. He was held captive by the two generals under his command that rebelled against him. The two generals invited Mao’s CCP to the confab in order to jointly persuade Chiang to stop fighting each other and to unitedly fight the Japanese. Even Mao realized that Chiang was the only national leader capable of uniting all the Chinese factions against the invading Japanese.

Chiang’s strategy with Japan was to “trade space for time” with measured retreat and force the Japanese troops to expend blood and resources as they occupy increasing portion of China and as they move to the interior from northeast to southwest. After Pearl Harbor drew the US into the war, Chiang’s strategy was the obvious. American forces needed China to tie down the Japanese forces while the GI’s fought across the Pacific.

Chiang’s greatest contribution to modern China was to become Franklin Roosevelt’s trusted wartime ally. Roosevelt overcame Churchill’s disdain for Chiang and insisted on including Chiang at the Cairo conference and treating China as a great power thereby earning it a permanent seat at the UN Security Council after WWII. From the author’s point of view, China was a country in total disarray before the war, and it regained its sovereignty after the war because of Chiang’s leadership.

Chiang’s failings caused his “loss” of China. First, he valued loyalty over competence and ability. One victim of his bias was General Sun Li-jen, who was trained at VMI in the US and not at Whampoa. In Burma, Sun saved the fleeing British forces from the pursuing Japanese troops and became Stillwell’s favorite KMT general. Once he followed the KMT retreat to Taiwan, his payback was house arrest because Chiang feared Sun as America’s designated leader to replace him.

General Xue Yue was another case. He was known as the defender of Changsha and the only KMT general to consistently check and defeat Japanese advances. Claire Chennault was a sworn brother and called Xue the “Patton of Asia.” After following Chiang to Taiwan in 1949, he lived to a ripe old age of 101 in “leisure” and was only given honorific types of postings. He was Chiang’s student at Whampoa but fell out of the inner circle when he vocally supported national unity to fight the Japanese after the Xian Incident.

During the civil war that ensued after WWII, KMT generals trusted by Chiang got preferential treatment and the troops suffered from jealousy and poor coordination among their commanders. This was a critical flaw that led to their rapid disintegration on the battlefield.

Chiang’s second failing was his lack of comprehension and appreciation of the importance of financial discipline. He did not care about amassing money to his personal account but regarded the printing press of the central bank as his to use freely. He would send bundles of cash along with arms to sway warlords to his side. He also sent cash awards to his line officers to ensure their loyalty.

Tai observed, “He (Chiang) considered his under-the-table monetary operations entirely legitimate and necessarily secretive. Such perception of the fusion of power and money is perhaps one factor accountable for the widely known corruption in his regime.”

Post WWII, keeping Chiang’s government afloat depended on keeping the printing presses running leading to runaway inflation. Coupled with his inconsistency in dealing with corruption, the outcome was disastrous. Execution with a bullet in the head was levied on lower rank and file but he was more lenient with senior officials in his inner circle who committed more egregious offenses. The uneven treatment led to the widespread belief that corruption was acceptable. Rampant inflation mixed with endemic culture of corruption accelerated his loss of power and hastened his retreat to Taiwan.

The author pointed out that Chiang learned his bitter lesson and once he settled down in Taiwan, he entrusted the running of the economy to technocrats and experts and the result was a long booming economy that put Taiwan in the ranks of the four little tigers second only to Japan. Tai suggested that Beijing’s policy makers might have benefited by following Taiwan’s experience. I think that might be a bit of stretch. (When Beijing began its economic reform under Deng Xiaoping, its officials held many exchanges and survey visits with Japan and Singapore to learn from their practices. Official exchanges with Taiwan came much later.)

Portrait of Mao not so sympathetic

Arguably, Tai’s greater familiarity of Chiang’s life from his academic studies and his careful reading of Chiang’s diary enabled him to form a more sympathetic portrait of Chiang. Despite his intention to be impartial and objective, Tai was not as familiar with Mao’s life. He relied heavily on the words of Li Zhisui, Mao’s longtime personal physician, and on the biography by Chang and Halliday. Both sources were quite critical of Mao. Inevitably, I think, his portrait of Mao was not as sympathetic.

Nevertheless, the consequences of Mao’s mistakes were colossal. Like Chiang, Mao was also illiterate in science and economics, but his ignorance did not keep him from making policies with disastrous outcomes. His campaign of backyard furnaces that consumed pots and pans made no sense, put the economy on negative growth and led to a famine that killed tens of millions.

Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution was designed to keep him in power but denied an entire young generation of proper education, and disrupted the functioning of the government and the national economy. His lack of respect for learning was particularly ironic and appalling. He actually thought the uneducated ruling class of workers, peasants and soldiers can take over and run the country.

His biggest mistake in foreign policy was to not object to Stalin’s directive to support North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. Mao gave up on his own plan to invade Taiwan at a time when momentum was all on his side and the US had given up on Chiang and would not have interfered with the PLA assault on Taiwan. By sending Chinese volunteers across the border and fighting the American-led troops, Mao created the stalemate that still stands today, i.e., a divided Korean peninsula and a divided China.

Mao’s place in history can be attributed to his brilliance as a military strategist, in particular, the practice of guerrilla warfare. He effectively dodged the superior forces of the KMT until after the Xian Incident when the two parties agreed to unitedly fight the Japanese. After WWII, his PLA again overcame the numerically superior force and better weaponry with guerrilla-based tactics to systematically cut the KMT forces to pieces. (Tai had a fascinating section describing Mao’s success in embedding his secret agents in Chiang’s command structure. Mao knew about a particular plan of surprise attack on his home base three days before Chiang’s commanders of the forward elements were given the plan.)

After his PLA consolidated the takeover of the mainland, Mao declared on Oct. 1, 1949 that China had stood up. This was a major psychological milestone for the people of China after a hundred years of humiliation in the hands of the western power. For the next quarter of a century until his death, Mao worked on strengthening China and boosting the national pride of its people. In 1964 despite the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution underway, China became a nuclear power by detonating its own atomic bomb.

In 1972, at Mao’s invitation, Nixon went to China as the first step to normalizing relations between the two countries. Nixon saw that admitting the nation of a quarter of mankind to the community of nations was necessary and inevitable. Mao too saw that Nixon needed help to extricate the Americans from the Vietnam quagmire and he represented an opportunity to strike a bargain. Out of the visit came the Shanghai Communiqué that must be considered an extraordinary document in the chronicles of world diplomacy. Indeed to this day, every US president refers to the Shanghai Communiqué as the tie that binds the two nations.

The author concluded that the two leaders were more similar than different. Mao was a visionary who saw China’s eventual place on the world stage. Chiang did not, perhaps because he had to focus on fighting for his country’s survival against Japan. At the end of WWII, Chiang strived hard on regaining China’s sovereignty. Mao completed the tasks that Chiang had left incomplete. Both were ruthless in seizing and keeping control. Both wanted a strong, unified China.

Professor Tai’s study on Chiang and Mao, the subtitle of his book, is an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to understand today’s China. His treasure trove of bibliographic references will enable anyone to explore further any aspect of the early days of China as a republic.

Celebrating the closure of the comfort women issue is premature

This blog was first posted in Asia Times.

Japan’s Prime Minister Abe got a belated Christmas present from South Korea—some might say the exceptional deal of seven decades since the end of WWII—when the Korean government agreed to formally end any further reference to the sexual slavery Japan enforced on the Korean women during WWII.  Thus, the book on the suffering of the Korean people in the hands of Japan’s imperial troops during the War and 30 years of brutal occupation before the War can be closed and the two countries can look ahead.

South Korea’s president Park accepted a verbal apology from Abe by telephone with the specific proviso that there would be no formal documentation of the apology in print that would benefit the posterity. The apology was accompanied by one billion yen compensation taken from Japan’s government budget, which because it did not come from private donations, was to pass as an official and formal apology. The disposition of the one billion yen was vague and not specifically designated as compensation to the surviving victims of Japan’s sexual slavery.

Japan did require that the statue commemorating the suffering of Korean comfort women be removed from its present location in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. So, I suppose part of the billion yen could be used to relocate the statue so that Japan need not face daily reminders of their shameful past.

Some quarters in Japan praised Abe for his courage in “breaking” with the past. Other supporters belonging to the right wing of the LDP were incensed that Abe made any sort of concession at all and suggested that only seppuku can expiate Abe’s disgrace.

Promptly the day after the agreement with South Korea was announced, Abe’s wife went to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine to pay her respects to the tablets memorializing the war criminals. She even posted selfies of her visit to make sure her appeasement to the right on behalf of her husband did not go unnoticed.

So much for the supposed sincerity of Japan’s apology.

According to various polls, the people of South Korea like Abe even less than they like the North Korea leader, Kim Jong-un. The puzzle then is why President Park so quickly came to terms with Abe. As recently as last November she was not willing to meet Abe much less discuss the conditions that would lead to the agreement. The only logical answer is that she felt heavy pressure from Washington.

Getting South Korea to forgive and forget about the sexual slavery issue might be a diplomatic win for Abe but is an even more important development for Obama. According to his worldview, Obama needed a solid alliance in northeast Asia as part of his pivot to Asia.  However, whether the tie between South Korea and Japan can withstand facing China remains to be seen.

Not that China is likely to challenge the link up based on military force. But as Asia Times reported on “China hits India where it hurts,” China builds its international ties with economic inducements. The piece was referring to China’s development with Nepal, “…so as to achieve mutual benefits, win-win results and common development, and elevate the long-lasting and friendly China-Nepal comprehensive cooperative partnership to new levels”.

China’s approach with Nepal is typical of China’s diplomacy with any country—namely, butter in the form of mutually beneficial economic advantages rather than guns. This approach as applied to South Korea has meant bilateral relations of ever-closer economic ties and increasing frequency of cultural and people exchanges.

Two years before South Korea concluded the Free Trade Agreement with China (in 2015), the bilateral trade with China already exceeded the total trade South Korea had with the U.S. and Japan, their No. 2 and 3 partners in trade. With the large volume of trade, it made sense for the two countries to enter into currency swap agreements so that the trade transactions can be settled in their respective local currency and by-pass the need to pay in dollars. In Korea today, the renminbi has become the only currency other than the dollar that is freely convertible into the won.

About 40% of all the foreign students studying in China come from South Korea, more than from any other country. Second only to the “American Dream,” the “China Dream” has become an appealing career option for many young aspiring Koreans that did not go to America to study.

In light of S. Korea’s “lopsided” (according to Foreign Affairs) economic dependence with China, the Obama administration should consider whether South Korea would act against its own self-interest and side with Japan on any dispute between Japan and China.

Since Obama “won” the Nobel Peace Prize even before he was sworn into his first term, his foreign policy decisions were on many occasions mistaken because he chose the inferior fork on the road. Deciding to rely on Japan, as an ally to counter China, is one of these.

While most Americans are willing to forgive and forget Japan for its WWII atrocities—in truth, many are unaware of Japan’s dark past—people of Asia are unwilling to let Japan off the hook. Abe’s latest apology was a case in point. When Park announced the settlement, the people in Korea rose up on behalf of the surviving “comfort women” and strenuously objected on the grounds that Abe’s apology lacked sincerity, was deliberately vague and did not treat the victims with respect and dignity.

Japan’s response has been to complain that repeated apology has never been enough. After each apology, the critics find fault and demand another. Japanese officials would ask why Japan couldn’t be treated like Germany and not be subjected constant badgering for another apology. But the critics’ response has been that unlike Japan, the German’s apology was official and formal and they have always been ready to admit their collective guilt and never attempted to deny, recant or revise their history with the Jews.

After the Abe/Park agreement, the Korean American Forum of California (KAFC) also vigorously objected. One important objection raised by KAFC was that Abe’s apology needed to apply to victims of 11 nations and not just to the women of Korea. Thus, far from putting the history of WWII to bed, the people of Asia and anybody of conscience will not let Japan forget.

For Obama to pick Japan as an ally is to stand on the wrong side of history. It’s an undeniable fact that America has not always taken the principled high road. But to let Japan erase its past in the interest of expediency and perceived geopolitical advantage is to let the world know that the U.S. supports and condones heinous acts against humanity and could care less about the feelings of the people in Asia.

Obama has encouraged Abe to re-interpret Japan’s constitution and take on a more militarily aggressive stance. But surely a nation that will deny its past can’t be trusted to behave with honor in the future. Let’s hope Obama and the American people won’t have to rue the day Japan was encouraged to take up their sword again.

The world sees Uncle Sam in a hospital gown

This was first posted in China-US Focus and re-posted in Asia Times.

More than two centuries ago, King George III of England dispatched his emissary to China to call on the imperial court and seek an audience with the emperor. Lord McCartney, the envoy, was to urge Emperor Qianlong to open up China for increase trade.

England was weary of paying for Chinese tea, silk and porcelain with silver, the hard currency of the day. Qianlong looked at the samples of British products McCartney brought along as gifts and declined to open up China. The emperor didn’t think China needed the goods made with western technology that he regarded as mere gadgets.

Qianlong did not live long enough to see that he made a big mistake. Who knows what would have developed had he agreed to open China to free trade. Instead, the British unilaterally imposed their version of open trade by selling their opium grown in India to China for their silver.

Two hundred and some thirty years later, things have changed. The modern day version of China’s emperor, Xi Jinping, didn’t stay home to say no to the British envoy, but personally went to London to say yes to Great Britain. As much reported elsewhere, “yes” came in the form of tens of billion dollars of economic deals including the financing and building of a nuclear power plant.

On their end, the royal family and government leaders in London went all out, rolling out the red carpet and the royal state coach ride for Xi with Queen Elizabeth. I can’t recall any U.S. president accorded a similar honor in recent memory.

This could presage a long-term bilateral friendship but it was not born overnight. For the last 5 years Chinese investments in the U.K. has been increasing annually at a phenomenal rate of 85% per year. The accumulated investment of over $40 billion in U.K. makes up one-third of China’s total investment in Europe.

China’s investment in U.K. is expected to double and double again over the next decade. Obviously, Britain has benefited significantly by collaborating with China. The prime minister Cameron and Exchequer Osborne clearly understand that the economic future of the bilateral relationship will keep U.K. on the right side of history.

Professor Zhang Weiwei recently visited San Francisco at the invitation of the Committee of 100 to speak at the forum co-organized by The Commonwealth Club. The topic of the forum was how China and the U.S. can avoid conflict. Zhang said to the audience that bilateral trade between China and the U.S. is nine fold larger than China with U.K. Surely the potential benefits of bilateral collaboration would be that much greater than the case with U.K.

If China and U.K. can collaborate, why not the U.S. was more or less his rhetorical posit. Zhang is Director of the Centre for China Development Model Research at Fudan University. As New York Timesreported, Zhang is a highly respected thinker in China and the leaders in Beijing follow closely his books analyzing China’s place in the world.

Indeed, a number of highly regarded observers of the international arena have suggested that the U.S. take a page or two from Britain’s book of diplomacy in dealing with China. After all, the U.K. has been playing the Great Game for a long time, even before McCartney’s visit to China. The U.S. has assumed the role of a world power relatively recently, since after WWII, and has much to learn that nuanced diplomacy is not a blunt instrument.

As a strange way of parlaying the positive feelings of Xi’s state visit to Washington mere weeks earlier, the U.S. follow-up response was to dispatch a missile-firing destroyer in South China Seas to within the 12-mile zone of one of the islands being enlarged by China and claimed as its territory. The U.S. position was that they cannot allow militarization of the islands and thus become a threat to freedom of navigation.

China’s position was that dredging and filling the island and erecting lighthouses to aid safe navigation did not constitute militarization. Other neighboring countries have been doing the same long before China began. Furthermore, in the long history that China has staked their ownership of the South China Sea, freedom of navigation has never been an issue.

South China Sea is a huge body of water with plenty of room for unimpeded sailing. China’s islands would become a threat to freedom of navigation only for ships intent on running aground. The U.S. had no legitimate basis for claiming that freedom of navigation was at risk.

In my view, the U.S. has taken unilateral military action acting like the bully in the neighborhood. What was their point in making this provocation?

Some say the U.S. naval exercise was to send a message to the Asian signers of the Transpacific Partnership that they have cast their lot with the right ally and that the American military will be there to protect their security.

On the other hand, America’s ongoing and rapidly spiraling out of control record in the Middle East does not instill anyone with confidence that the U.S. knows what it’s doing.

Shock and awe of Iraq by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld team created the power vacuum that opened the way for the IS radical state. With the possible exception of tiny Tunisia, the Arab Spring under the Obama/Clinton watch has led to millions of refugees on the run with some dying every day.

The present Obama administration has been on the sideline stupefied by the disintegration of Ukraine and has hardly been able to keep the Boko Haram from committing a litany of atrocities in sub-Sahara Africa.

The U.S. is clearly failing in its role as policeman of the world. Yet with unfathomable reasoning, America would compound the mess they are already in by taking the American brand of my-way-or-the-highway exceptionalism to South China Sea where there was no conflict—at least not until Uncle Sam came barging in.

The U.K. has seen the error in following Washington’s lead. Tony Blair, the prime minister who followed George W in invading Iraq, now publicly acknowledges his mistake and apologizes to the people of Britain.

Another clear departure from Washington by London was to ignore the White House urging and to lead a large contingent of developed countries in becoming founding nations of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, an idea proposed by China. U.K. opted for the opportunity to make economic investment over paths to conflict.

At the same time as Xi’s visit to U.K., Huawei announced collaboration with the University of Manchester to take graphene from the lab to commercialize into products for mobile applications. Manchester is the recognized world leader in graphene technology and they express delight in working with “a leading global technology brand”—a brand only recently rudely rejected by U.S. Congress.

Graphene is a space age material with as yet untapped potential in civilian and military uses. The mutual trust between China and U.K. is no mere window dressing. Needless to say, such collaboration with any U.S. entity would have been out of the question.

I asked Professor Zhang how China would implement their “one belt, one road” initiative. He said China would select the most reliable partners for the first round of infrastructure investments. Because the projects would be based on the win-win principle, both parties would be equally motivated to make sure the investments succeed. The success of the first series of projects would convince others not to miss out on other projects to follow.

The U.K. obviously understands China’s win-win principle and has positioned to become China’s best partner in the West. Soon it will be obvious to other countries when it’s their turn to choose between being part of China’s economic collaboration or being part of the America’s global chain of military bases.

Uncle Sam struts around the world proselyting the merits of American exceptionalism thinking that he is wearing a full-body armor. The rest of the world just might see that it is only a hospital gown.

Abe's speech gets a failing grade

This commentary first appeared in China-US Focus.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s speech on the 70^th anniversary of the end of WWII proves that he is master of words that couldn’t be reduced to substance.

The past PM Tomiichi Murayama, in contrast, gave the 50^th anniversary speech that was 60% shorter, yet was met with more favorable reaction around the world.

The biggest difference was that Murayama expressed his personal “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology.” Abe acknowledged, “Japan has repeatedly expressed the feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology,” but made no personal connection to expressions of regret.

In Abe’s near 1700-word, rambling speech of regret, there were phrases here and there that might appeal to those listening intently for a breakthrough in Japan’s attitude about WWII. But the listeners would find no breakthroughs and plenty of fodder for objections.

He began his speech reviewing his version of history that led to Japan becoming the aggressor of WWII. In summary, the colonial western powers with their protectionist economic policy caused Japan to take “the wrong course and advanced along the road to war.” In other words, the West forced Japan into becoming the aggressor.

Abe barely acknowledged the comfort women issue, the one major issue that has bedeviled Japan’s relations with Asia and the one (of many) issue that Japan has not been able to come to grips with. 

Abe said early in his speech, “We must never forget that there were women behind the battlefields whose honor and dignity were severely injured.” Does that mean he was admitting that Japan forced young women and girls into sexual slavery and ruined their bodies and dreams of future?

Toward the end of his speech, he said, “We will engrave in our hearts the past, when the dignity and honor of many women were severely injured during wars in the 20^th century.” That was it, his total reference to the comfort women issue.

There was a paragraph of remarkable double talk that’s one heck of a head scratcher. He said, “We must not let our children, grandchildren, even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”

In practically the same breath, he then said, “We have the responsibility to inherit the past, in all humbleness, and pass it on the future.” Huh? Double huh? This is the kind of double speak that leaves plenty of room for future interpretations and misinterpretations.

He didn’t even make passing references to all the atrocities committed by the Imperial troops. His reference to Japan’s unpleasant past was as artful as Hirohito’s national proclamation in admitting defeat.

It has become increasingly obvious that Japanese politicians and government leaders need help in crafting a straightforward, mince no word apology that would be as effective as Willy Brandt’s act of contrition by kneeling before a monument in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto.

How should an apology sound that would finally put the history of WWII in the rear view mirror for the people of Asia and Japan as well? I have a version to propose to the leaders of Japan.

“To the people of the world, as the Prime Minister of Japan, I wish to apologize to you on behalf of Japan for all the wanton acts of war and brutal crimes against humanity that the Japanese imperial forces committed during World War II.

“I apologize for the destruction of property and killing of innocent civilians.

“I apologize for the rape and murder of women and for forcing young women of all races into sexual slavery in the military brothels that were organized by Japan’s military.

“I apologize for the biological and chemical warfare Japan launched in China and for the live biological experiments conducted on POWs and civilians.

“I apologize for the inhumane hardships that civilians and POWs endured in slave labor camps for the duration of the war.

“I urge all relevant Japanese organizations to quickly make amends to any survivors and heirs of the victims from the aforementioned atrocities.

“I solemnly swear that to ensure history is not repeated, the textbooks in Japan shall describe the unvarnished truth of the War in full and without distortion.”

My version of apology consists of less than 200 words, less than 1/3rd of Murayama’s and about 1/10^th of Abe’s. I’d wager less is more. A simply worded apology with clarity and absent of obfuscation would finally put the memories of WWII to rest.

Willy Brandt will be remembered for his act of reconciliation. A place of immortality awaits a courageous leader from Japan for an act of genuine atonement.