the Japan–Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarians' Union, Keizo Obuchi, who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1998 to 2000 and contributed significantly to the relations of Japan and Vietnam on 14 May 2000, the Vietnamese President Trần Đức Lương signed Decision No. 215KT/CTN on 2 June 2000 which awarded him the Order of Friendship. On 25 March 2000, the Vietnamese journalist Trần Khuê wrote an article "Dân chủ: Vấn đề của dân tộc và thời đại" where he harshly criticized ethnographers and historians in Ho Chi Minh City's Institute of Social Sciences like Dr. Đinh Văn Liên and Professor Mạc Đường who tried to whitewash Japan's atrocities against the Vietnamese by portraying Japan's aid to the South Vietnamese regime against North Vietnam as humanitarian aid, portraying the Vietnam war against America as a civil war. changing the death toll of 2 million Vietnamese dead at the hands of the Japanese famine to 1 million and calling the Japanese invasion as a presence and calling Japanese fascists at simply Japanese at the Vietnam-Japan international conference. He accused them of changing history in exchange for only a few tens of thousands of dollars, and the Presidium of international Vietnamese studies in Hanoi did not include any Vietnamese women. The Vietnamese professor Văn Tạo and Japanese professor Furuta Moto both conducted a study in the field on the Japanese induced famine of 1945 admitting that Japan killed 2 million Vietnamese by starvation. In December 2003 saw the establishment of the Vietnam–Japan Joint Initiative, which was created to make Vietnam more business-friendly for Japanese businesses. Japan is Vietnam's single biggest donor country. In 2007, it pledged $US890 million in aid for the country, a 6.5 percent increase from the 2006 level of $US835.6 million. Vietnam and Japan have opened a centre for research into rare earth minerals to challenge China's monopoly of supply. The elements are crucial for many modern technologies, including computers, TVs and wind turbines. In 2010 Japan and Vietnam signed an agreement to co-operate in the exploitation of the minerals. Vietnam is reckoned to be in the top ten in the world in terms of rare earth reserves. Now the two have opened a jointly financed technology centre to help to process and separate the ore with the rare elements then shipped to Japan. The Official Developmental Assistance (ODA) pledged for 2011 by Japan reached 1.76 billion US dollars, which was four