Thank you very much for everybody who has spoken, especially Jiang Jiang and Professor Steven Vogel, thank you.. As you know, my first foreign language was Japanese and English is my second foreign language. I’m very glad to be here even my English is not so good. Sorry.

Professor Vogel was my very, very good friend and teacher. At the moment of December 20^th, I suffered to learn that Professor Vogel has passed away. That moment, I think of his family and all the people who have been in contact with him for a long time. Shortly after graduating from the Japanese department of Beijing Foreign Language University in 1979, I began to study Japanese politics and its economic state. At that time, I read the book Japan as Number One. It was very beautiful, I think, and I read it all at once. This world-famous book unlocked the window for me to understand Japan, which made me respect the author of the book.

Ten years later, in the summer of 1990, during the Western countries’ sanction against China, three American experts on Japanese Studies including Professor Vogel and Professor Michael Mochizuki visited China and exchanged well with Chinese scholars for Japan studies for about 2 weeks. I had the honor of accompany them all the way from Beijing to Changchun and Shanghai. I have learned a lot along the way. I saw that every morning, Professor Vogel would go for a run and exercise. He always spoke in Chinese to me, because I said he will learn Chinese every time and every place in China. In Beijing, he focused on understanding Japanese-China policy and Sino-Japanese relations, and maybe this experience has been helpful for him to become the East Asia policy advisor at the time of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1995.

In Jilin University, he often told me that Chinese students learn English very hard, so that probably means China will be a beautiful and strong country. And at Changchun Airport, he taught me Japanese manners. I bought a Coca-Cola for Professor Vogel, and when we had to leave for the gate, Professor Vogel said no, no, no, you need to pick up the can and throw it into the garbage can. So he did it as he said. This was very strong shock to me, but I learned that it's very, very important. The Japanese sometimes do not say you should do this, but Professor Vogel clarified what you should do and what you shouldn’t do  in Japanese with me very clearly. That was very, very useful to me.

In 1997, I was funded by the Ford Foundation of the United States to become a visiting scholar in the United States, from November 1997 to March 1998. Thanks to Professor Vogel and his son, Professor Steven Vogel, I spent a very, very full and happy time in the Fairbank research center of Harvard University. I remember that maybe in 1997 before Christmas, another person and I went to the home of Professor Vogel where we enjoyed coffee even we were still not familiar with each other. One day, Professor Vogel told me that “tomorrow I hope you can get up early, because Harvard Business School has an important conference. If you want to go to there, I can pick up and let’s go together.” And the next morning, Professor picked me up with his car and we went to the conference together. He worried that I would get lost. Things like these brings me great power, actually. Professor Vogel was a very nice person, very kind, just like my father, or an old friend with whom you have a close relationship. And before I went back to China, he drank coffee with me and told me that his work was making China, Japan and the United States’ triangle relationship better and better. I said he had already done it.

Last year, when he saw the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations, he must have been very sad and probably eager to see the situation reversed. He seems to associate more with young people of China, Japan and the United States, and puts his hope on the young generation. Nowadays, the USA and China are getting together and helping each other for building a new relationship between each other to fight against COVID-19. China, Japan and the United States, those three countries should get together peacefully and make those relations more constructive.

Thank you very much. Professor Steven Vogel, I was just thinking that if we have some consensus, we could turn your home into a museum for your father, and we can go there again and again, get together and learn about your father forever. Thank you very much.