Ah so
A minor point, but "Ah so [desu ka]" is Japanese, so a Chinese would take umbrage at its use in a Chinese phrase. I think, though I'm not an expert, that a Mandarin Chinese would say 哦，我明白了 (O, wo ming bai le), before dumping our dollars.
The problem is simple, but the solution probably doesn't exist. The problem is that we want to be everyone's friend in Asia, but everyone in Asia doesn't want to be everyone else's friend. We want to be the friends of the Japanese, and the Koreans, and the Chinese, and the Taiwanese, and the Vietnamese, and the Malaysians, and the Singaporeans, and the Indonesians, and the Filipinos, but the Japanese and the Koreans have been at it off and on since the 300s, and the Japanese and the Chinese since at least the 1200s, and the Chinese and the Vietnamese at least that long, and the rest of Asia looks down on the Filipinos, and the Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia and the Philippines want to "convert" the rest of Asia into a Pacific version of North and West Africa...
...and we just want to be everyone's friend. Can't happen. Whatever sides we choose, the other sides will get angry at us, and if we try to remain neutral, then every side will get angry at us. And as for trade, the Asians are where the Europeans were 200 years ago: trade, for them, is a form of hegemonic projection--they don't trade in order to create mutual benefit, they trade in order to establish economic domination. It doesn't always work out in their favor--Japan overextended itself economically in the 1980s and are still paying the price, and China is overextending itself in this decade and will likely pay a similar price--but you have to know your adversary in order to avoid being overcome by your adversary, something a Chinese thinker taught us a few thousand years ago.
“Ah so”...
Yes, somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I was doing that wrong. Dr. Horner, one of my Japanese history professors (many years ago), made it clear that the various cultures did not mix well.
And, thank you for your well-made points. Peace thru strength seems to be the answer. Will we re-learn the lesson before it is too late?