Imagine someone you knew. A high school girl on her way to Tainan's Girls High School was captured by a uniformed Japanese military police and was sent to the battle front to serve the Japanese army as a sex slave, being raped day and night for 1095 days - nightmares carved in the girl's memory, painful and unbearable. This happened during WW II. She committed suicide three times with cleaning agents but was unsuccessful. After the Japanese surrendered, she was sent back to Taiwan, but she was shamed and rejected by most of her own people. She finally built up her courage to demand justice from the Japanese government, demanding a sincere apology.  But she received none. Now she is over 90 years old and is still fighting for her justice and dignity as a human being. You could watch her story in a video interview, but Xiao Tao 's story is just one of perhaps 200,000 'comfort women' whom the Japanese Army through the authority of the Japanese Government systematically forced into the cruelest and most inhumane sex slavery. This did not just happen to Asian women, as evidenced by a Dutch woman, Jan Ruff-O'Herne's testimony to a U.S. House of Representatives committee.

Yes! Atrocious crimes often were committed during wars, but justice ultimately should prevail. After a war was ended, the war criminals should have been punished and their government should have apologized and their fellow country men and women should have shown remorse and accepted the guilt. The historical facts should have been passed down to their future generations so everyone would remember the shameful past and would never repeat it again. No! Not the Japanese government, it denies the atrocious war crimes had ever happened during WW II despite of volumes of photographic and video evidence. The Japanese authority denies 'comfort women', 'massacres', 'chemical and bacteria weapons experiments on human', 'live human for surgical experiments', and ruthless 'speed contests in slaughtering of innocent people'. The Japanese government denies them all. The Japanese officials only make veiled and half-hearted apology and they twisted the facts and whitewashed the history in their national textbooks. This is done not just to their war crimes in China, but also to the war crimes in Korea, Philippines, Singapore, and many other Asian nations.

Why?! You may ask. After the ending of WW II, Hitler committed suicide, the Nazi surrendered and the post-war German government accepted the guilty verdict and apologized to the countries the Nazi army invaded. The German authority builds memorial monuments for the victims (including the holocaust) on its homeland and pays tribute to war memorials everywhere showing sincere remorse. The post-war Japanese government, however, behaves entirely differently which angers all of the countries Japan invaded during WW II. The Japanese Prime Ministers, knowing the consequences of their words (lacking sincerity in accepting the war responsibility and making an apology) and deeds (worshipping the Japanese war criminals instead paying tribute to the war victims slaughtered by the Japanese Army), yet repeatedly made inaccurate, inflammatory and insincere remarks concerning the war history and war crimes. This year as the world is commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Ending of WW II, some efforts are also made to raise the public conscience about the ‘Comfort Women’ issue.

For example, a local news in California reports: “Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka, the sister city of San Francisco, feuds with supervisors of San Francisco, in objecting the establishment of a memorial of comfort women”. Led by supervisors, Jane Kim and Eric Mar, the board passed resolutions to condemn Hashimoto's objection and to build a memorial similar to the one already erected in Glendale and Rohnert Park in California. In March this year, two comfort women statues were being erected in a South Korean city, Pusan. The project was jointly promoted by the South Korean Civic Group and the Association of Chinese Living in the U.S. The purpose of the memorial statues is to elicit genuine remorse from the Japanese authority. Unfortunately, so far only the remarks like Hashimoto's statements: "Comfort Women were necessary to maintain discipline in the Army" and "the Japanese Army was not the only army committed war crimes" were heard, which, of course, infuriate the war victims and the public, even some caring Japanese citizens.

A couple of other events related to the comfort women are also noteworthy. Ms Kazuko Yokoi, a daughter of a WW II Japanese War Criminal, courageously and admirably performed in a one-woman show in New York City, this September (and earlier in Bay Area of San Francisco this year) about the experiences of comfort women. The show, named Hitoma (meaning Seeing Is Believing), sifts through the consequences and legacy of the Japanese sex slave program in WW II. Featuring the stories of Korean women and Chinese women, their children, Japanese men and testimonials of comfort women survivals, the show offers a different perspective, broken away from the consciousness of the Japanese public. Another Art Show, named 'Intimate Transgression' cosponsored by the Asian-Pacific Center in Flushing, NY, curates art pieces to portray and remember Comfort Women. It is so appropriate that these art shows are exhibited in a year that all over the world are commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Victory of WW II in one form or another. We hope these art images and activities can awaken people's conscience to recognize that there was indeed 'Comfort Women', some still alive living in pain and shame. There are some Japanese like Kazuko Yokoi who are not ignorant or insensitive to the atrocious facts in the war history. But sadly, the Japanese authority still refuses to accept the truth and still consciously to fool the Japanese youth.

How can anyone justify Japan's official response to the Comfort Women issue? By reading through some historical reports about the Japanese Imperial Army, I could piece together the following scenario: When the Japanese had a piece of Shanghai (joining seven other Western nations) in 1932, there were too many rape cases in Shanghai involving Japanese soldiers. The Japanese commander then sent request to Nagasaki city to send prostitutes (Ianfu) to Shanghai which eventually evolved into a government coordinated effort to offer “comfort women” to raise the military moral. When Japan later obtained control of Korea, the program became a systematic process from "recruiting" (kidnapping and luring) to "military support operation" (installed at military bases even moving with the army with strict freedom control and medical examinations to reduce venereal disease). As the Japanese aggression progresses, so expanded the comfort women program. Hence hundreds of  thousands of women like the above Taiwan girl were captured and sent to other countries as sex slaves to serve the Japanese army; the comfort women had no way to escape in a foreign land.

The Japanese army might have started the comfort women program with Japanese prostitutes, but that is no excuse for the Japanese authority to justify the inhumane program or to stubbornly deny the Comfort Women issue involving other Asian countries. With further studies, I venture to offer the following logic for explaining the Japanese authority’s behavior towards the ‘Comfort Women’ issue:

1. The post-war Japanese authority is essentially controlled by the descendants of the Japanese war criminals (Thanks to the generosity of the U.S. occupation command in Japan)
2. The militarism never went away in Japan despite of her peace constitution; restoring Japan's Imperial glory is still deep in the minds of powerful Japanese politicians such as Abe Shinzo and Toru Hashimoto.
3. Honoring the Imperial Army and its mission to conquer the weak nations justifies all efforts (including using comfort women) to support the Imperial Army. The desire to restore the honor of the Japanese Imperial Army mandates continued denying their past war crimes.  
4. A belief of sending prostitutes to serve soldiers as a patriotic act is used to justify forcing innocent women to serve the Japanese army as sex slaves as “necessary” military support.
5. All the denials are rooted in the philosophy that the Imperial army’s honor and spirit must be restored in order for Japan to become ‘normal’ again. The Japanese authority hence decides that they will not allow anything to shame the Japanese army.

The above is just one scenario, perhaps, there are other interpretations. I urge people to have an open dialogue to help the Japanese authority to reconcile with the war crimes like the Germans have done. The world would have a brighter future.   

If one would search for think tank organizations on foreign policy, defense, security and international relations in the U.S., you would find over hundred institutions listed under the search subject. Some think tanks have a sizable subscription group for their publications, an indication of influence of their opinions on the subject matters. For example, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was reported to have 4900 members. Another example, Jamestown Foundation's China Brief claimed 8000 subscribers. These numbers may represent a significant group of 'keenly interested experts' on foreign affairs but the numbers dwarf from the majority of citizens in the U.S. who should be aware of how their country shapes her foreign policy. It is important to note that it is the mainstream media that is really influential in shaping up the citizen's perception and opinion about a foreign nation. How does the government work with think tanks and mainstream media together to inform the general public, do you know?

China as a great nation seems to have too few think tanks known to the public in contrast to too many in the U.S. This apparent disparity does not reflect the effectiveness of the think tanks in each country. The overwhelming number of U.S. think tanks is actually creating too many theories, projections and policy recommendations (often with contradictory assumptions and conclusions) regarding China policy. To the American public, the think tanks create a confusing story of US-China relation and future prescription way above the common citizens’ heads. Magically, the think tank outputs (including government’s own think tank units) are 'processed' by the government to a ‘unified position’ and fed to the common citizens to absorb through mass media. Of course, the output of think tanks and mass media are also 'absorbed' by China and their 'think tank' professionals who must sort out who says what and who is influencing whom to their own government policy makers and the general public. Judging on the current US-China relation, it seems that these ‘processing and absorption’ steps in each country are creating serious disconnect with reality causing mistrust and worsening relation between the U.S. and China.

China is perceived as an authoritarian system, regarding foreign policy, based on the fact she has few think tanks expressing their opinions to the public. However, China must have enough think tank professionals to analyse and interpret all the productions of the U.S. think tanks. Their work may not all appear in the Chinese mainstream media but plenty do circulate in certain organic channels through the Internet. I do understand that when a government adopts a foreign policy, the process is never totally transparent to a common citizen, hence, I as well as many of my fellow citizens cannot understand how the U.S. Administration arrives at a fuzzy anti-China policy among all somewhat contradictory theories: "China Is a Threat", "China's Doomsday Is Near", "China Is Surpassing the U.S. In Missiles, Satellites and Laser Weaponry", "China's Navy Is Decades behind that of the U.S., Our Pacific Fleet Knows the Whereabouts of Every Chinese Vessel", ....Similarly, we also do not understand how China formulates a "Tai-Chi" style US policy in reaction to the various versions of 'China policies’. 

During the week of September 22 to 28, 2015, the Chinese President Xi Jin Ping is making a State visit to the United States. Xi's itinerary starts first in the State of Washington, meeting over 600 top U.S. business and industry leaders as well as non-federal government officials including state governors and city mayors. His key messages on China's policy in trade, investment and economic cooperation seem to be plain and simple – “China’s door is open and we want to collaborate…” However, you can hardly find any coverage in the mass media particularly American TV on Xi’s words trying to explain to the American people. Ironically, The Pope's visit is arranged just prior to Xi’s visit lasting the same duration so that mass media attention is directed nearly entirely to the Pope as if the Pope’s visit was deliberately used to 'low key' and silence the Chinese President's State Visit despite of the fact that China has announced the purpose of this State Visit as “to improve communication, increase cooperation, understand differences and collaborate on world affairs”. As a common citizen, one cannot help but wonder, must foreign diplomacy be conducted like a secret chess game no citizens are allowed to watch. Why isn’t Xi encouraged to address the joint Congress, American universities or even interviewed on CNN? We used to think that the communist regimes do not like foreign leaders to address their citizens for being afraid of getting a truthful message. Xi has given numerous speeches in Europe and Asia explaining his vision: Chinese Dream, One Belt and One Road (Ambitious Eurasian Co-prosperity Economic Development Plan) …. Why don’t we request Xi to speak up in America to the American people directly in his six-day State Visit? On Xi’s Seattle stop, China has agreed to purchase 300 Boeing planes worth probably ten years of Boeing’s business, why should this be limited only to a Seattle local news coverage? After Xi’s speech at the UN announcing China’s intension to provide more assistance to the developing countries, over 30 UN member country leaders lined up to shake his hands. The U.S. can claim credit for challenging and making China to engage more in world affairs, why not broadcast his speech through the U.S. mass media? 

The State visit of Obama to China in 2014 had accomplished a number of things, agreement in managing climate change, protocol of naval encounter, simplified visa requirement and tariff reduction. Xi’s visit to the U.S. are expected to realize a detailed Climate Change agreement, a protocol on airspace encounter and a government agreement on not knowingly supporting hacking on commercial entities, but the details of the above are not reported to the public’s satisfaction. The announcement on cyber hacking was an U.S. sought-after objective which was obtained after accepting some Chinese concepts of norms of cyber behavior. It is all good that State Visits can create beneficial effects; but the U.S.-China relation cannot be chartered by State visits, which are expensive and inefficient means for conducting foreign affairs between two great nations. Between the U.S. and China, we must increase contacts on all levels in various domains and promote cultural interactions to improve mutual understanding, regarding history, common elements and differences in social foundations, common benefits in economic development and national interests. The two governments must take more transparent steps to channel think tank work into governments’ policy making processes. For this purpose, the U.S. has an advantage of already having so many known think tanks, the problem is to develop a transparent process to debate and distill their intellectual work incorporating more citizens’ views not just the special interest groups and money hands,  for example, through true public discussion rather than political lobbying activities. Whereas in China, it is time to open up more public think tanks on political and foreign affairs. In today's Internet propelled communication age, opening up intellectual interaction on critical national and international issues is the quickest way to resonate with genuine public thinking and desire and to avoid misunderstanding and upheaval. 

The Brookings Institution, a highly regarded think tank in the United States has announced the opening of Brookings China while President Xi is visiting the U.S. Obviously; the Chinese government has given the green light to Brookings. I hope that this is a policy shift that will foster a public Chinese think-tank industry in the near future. Not only the intellectual endeavor in these think tanks is important for the benefit of the U.S.-China relation and other foreign affairs, but they also create very much needed job opportunities for intelligent knowledge workers for both Chinese and American citizens. Of course, to ripe the benefits of think tank activities, the governments need to delicately manage the transition between transparent think tank activities (research, open debates etc) to state-secret information processing (involvement of government agencies). For this objective, both the U.S. and China need to learn together. 

Sun Tze said, “knowing yourself and your adversary well, you will never fail in any encounter (with your adversary)”. When two nations have to keep secrets from each other, their relation cannot be at the best. Open exchange on the think tank level is a productive way of developing mutual understanding – “knowing yourself and your adversary well” and build a friendly and mutually trusting and beneficial nation to nation relationship. 

We wish Brookings China and other future Chinese think tanks a bright future. The world peace may depend on them!

John Glaser, Media Relations Manager, Cato Institute, in his recent article, “The US and China can avoid a collision course – if the US gives up its empire”, published in the Guardian, (5/28/2015) stated bluntly what many political analysts didn’t dare to say. Glaser has four years experience as an editor; five years experience as a writer/news reporter; also expertise in international relations; well published (CNN, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Washington Times, The National Interest, Reason, The Huffington Post, The American Conservative, The Daily Caller, Future of Freedom, Bleeding Heart Libertarians, and Young American Revolution) and appeared on TV/Radio (Voice of America, Al Jazeera, Russia Today/RT America, Free Talk Radio, The Scott Horton Show, Don Griffin Show St. Louis FM, among others). Granted Glaser has an anti-war background but anti-war is no more a sin than pro-war is heroism.

Evidently, Glaser in his professional work has well read in the field of international relations. He cites the following to support his conclusion: Harvard Professor Graham Allison: “in 12 of 16 cases in the past 500 years when a rising power challenged a ruling power, the outcome was war.”

Chicago University scholar John Mearsheimer, a theorist on hegemony: “China cannot rise peacefully.” Political scientists Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell: “Beijing sees America as the most intrusive outside actor in China’s internal affairs.” Foreign Policy commentator, Robert Kagan:  “US hegemony makes us safer and richer, but also that it bestows peace and prosperity on everybody else. If America doesn’t rule, goes his argument, the world becomes less free, less stable and less safe.” However, many political scientists dispute this claim. For example, in his book, Pathologies of Power, Christopher Fettweis wrote: “The international system, rather than cowering in obedience to American demands for peace, is far more “self-policing.” International relations theorist Robert Jervis has written: “the pursuit of primacy was what great power politics was all about in the past” but that, in a world of nuclear weapons with “low security threats and great common interests among the developed countries”, primacy does not have the strategic or economic benefits it once had.” Another International relations theorist Daniel Drezner contends: “the economic benefits from military predominance alone seem, at a minimum, to have been exaggerated”; that “There is little evidence that military primacy yields appreciable geoeconomic gains”; and that, therefore, “an overreliance on military preponderance is badly misguided.”

Glaser’s conclusion is that the struggle for military and economic primacy in Asia is not really about our core national security interests; rather, it’s about preserving status, prestige and America’s neurotic image of itself. – pretty dumb reasons for risking war. The dire predictions of a coming US-China conflict may be wrong; China’s economy may slow or even suffer crashes and the US’s economic and military advantage may remain intact for a few more decades.  Both countries are armed with nuclear weapons. There’s little reason to think the mutually assured destruction paradigm that characterized the Cold War between the US and the USSR wouldn’t dominate this shift in power as well. So he concludes why take the risk, when maintaining US primacy just isn’t that important to the safety or prosperity of Americans? Knowing that should at least make the idea of giving up ‘empire’ a little easier. Glaser’s views are endorsed by a few commentators: ‘‘The US troops based abroad are not there to defend the U.S., they are there to keep the host countries to be pro-US.’’

After reading Glaser’s article, one comes away with the conclusion: It is not necessary to maintain an ‘empire’ and behave like an ‘empire’ in order to deal with a rising China! The U.S. military supremacy still leads China for decades, perhaps even longer if China could not maintain her rapid rise continuously for the next couple of decades. If we would examine this issue from the point of view of economics, the ‘empire’ strategy makes even less sense. Maintaining an ‘empire’ with military primacy is very costly. Under the ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy, rebalancing the U.S. presence in Asia calls for increasing more naval power to Asia Pacific, enhancing more military bases there and to sign up more military alliances with Asian nations. The U.S. has been relying on Japan to pay for the US troops stationed in Japan. This gives Japan a ‘leveraging right’ to act more on Japan’s interest rather than on the U.S. interest. For example, the U.S. maintains a neutral position on the sovereignty issue of the disputed Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan. The U.S. wishes Japan not to stir up the pot to provoke China by scheming to purchase those islands. However, Japan rather wishes to get her money’s worth by demanding the US-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty to cover those disputed islands specifically. Obviously, Japan’s behavior raises tension in the East China Sea and makes the U.S. ‘empire status’ strategy more offensive.

The local citizens’ opposition to the $8.6 billion relocation and renovation of a new US military base in Okinawa is another challenge to the ‘empire’ model. Insisting of maintaining a US military base against the Okinawans’ wishes in the name of Okinawan’s security concern is extremely difficult to justify. The recent pro-military expansion policy of the Abe Shinzo administration not only does not help the Okinawa military base issue, it also adds a dark cloud over the US ‘empire’ image. As far as Asians are concern, if the presence of American military were genuinely for maintaining Asia security, it would be welcomed. But it would not be accepted if the presence of the US troops would actually raise tension in Asia. This feeling is not only seen in the ASEAN nations but also shared by Australia. When the U.S. would shoulder all the cost of maintaining her ‘empire’ model, the hosting countries of US military bases and US military alliances perhaps would accept the model. But if the Asian nations were required to pay for those costs or coerced to purchase the second tier US military weapons, the ‘empire’ model became another matter.  The good Asian political leaders would be under the guidance of their people to re-evaluate the Asian security issue.

China’s rise may be perceived to be posing a threat to her Asian neighbors, but her trade relations with them also tell them they need China as much as China needs them. China’s recent assertiveness in dealing with her sovereignty (in East and South China Seas) was to a large extent triggered by her neighbors’ own initiatives, be it by open provocation (arresting fishing boats for instance) or sneaky occupation and land reclaim on nearby islands. It is natural that all nations are mouth-watering over energy and fishery resources around those small islands and their surrounding sea areas. However, there is easier and simpler win-win solution for getting those resources by collaboration. As a large country with rapid development, China is in the position to lead such collaborations. China’s ‘One Belt and One Route’ economic development strategy seems to pave a mutually beneficial way for Asian countries to work with China. There is hardly any reason for the U.S. to oppose that approach. On the contrary, it would benefit the U.S. to take an advanced developed country position to offer technological and financial assistance needed for the Asian development. It would be a far better ‘empire state’ image than coercing small nations to purchase her weapons and/or support her troops.