China. Read all about it

Live from Saipan By Zaldy Dandan

Saipan — America’s rivalry with China is a major concern for the Asia-Pacific region, including the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. China used to be the CNMI’s second largest source of tourists, but the Covid-19 restrictions all but killed the China market.

Citing problems linked to birth tourism and illegal activities by overstaying Chinese tourists, some U.S. lawmakers are calling for an end to China’s visa-free entry to the CNMI. In response, the CNMI government and the first Trump administration came up with the Economic Vitality & Security Travel Authorization program, which imposes new restrictions on Chinese tourists visiting the CNMI.  

The program has finally been implemented, but as I write this, the cash-strapped CNMI government has not resumed its marketing and promotion activities in mainland China.

Moreover, the U.S. government has yet to reinstate the Annex VI exemption for the CNMI. 

Prior to the pandemic, there were direct flights to Saipan from multiple cities in mainland China. Now, there are mostly just charter flights from Hong Kong.

In March 2023, the late CNMI Gov. Arnold I. Palacios announced his administration’s “pivot” away from China while requesting direct federal aid to make up for the resulting economic losses. Over two years later, no such federal aid has materialized, even as the local economy continues its nosedive and more and more residents leave the islands.

Whether the CNMI should continue its “pivot” policy is a question that its new leadership, and ultimately the voters, will have to answer. That should be a no-brainer, but what do I know?

I’m aware, however, that many concerned island residents want to know more about China, including its increasingly problematic relations with the U.S., especially now under the leadership of a transactional but unpredictable president like Donald Trump.

What I also know is that there are several books worth consulting if you’re tired of the water-cooler talk of the instant geopolitical pundits in our midst, some of whom think China Airlines is an airline of China and that Taiwan is an “ally” of the U.S.

Here’s my list:

1) “The Coming Conflict with China” (1997) by Richard Bernstein & Ross H. Munro. This slim book spells out what is at stake if China dominates the Asia-Pacific region, beginning with an invasion of Taiwan. (Spoiler alert: not good for the U.S.)

2) “About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton” (2000) by James Mann. This meaty book reminds us that “China was America’s partner in fighting the Cold War; the United States secretly shared intelligence with Chinese officials and helped to arm the People’s Liberation Army. The United States chided countries like South Korea and Taiwan about human rights abuses, but it refrained from similar criticism of China.”

3) “Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World” (2008) by Margaret MacMillan. A well-told tale with an all-star cast. One of its themes is the following immortal quote from Lord Palmerston: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual.”

4)“On China” (2012) by Henry Kissinger. If you can only read one book about U.S.-China relations, this is it.  Kissinger explains “the conceptual way the Chinese think about problems of peace and war and international order, and its relationship to the more pragmatic, case-by-case American approach.

Different histories and cultures produce occasionally divergent conclusions. I do not always agree with the Chinese perspective, nor will every reader. But it is necessary to understand it since China will play such a big role in the world that is emerging in the twenty-first century.” 

I also highly recommend Dr. K’s 1994 opus, Diplomacy, which brilliantly demonstrates why conducting foreign relations and practicing politics are often the same thing.  (delete for print edition)

5) “The Epic Split: Why ‘Made in China’ is Going Out of Style” (2020) by Johan Nylander, a Hong Kong-based journalist. He focuses on “the greatest break-up the world has ever seen,” referring to the “disintegration of the relationship between the U.S. and China.” For Nylander, “It doesn’t really matter whether Donald Trump, Joe Biden or someone else sits in the White House. This conflict…runs deeper, and will continue to dominate the global political and trade landscape for many years to come. The fight has just begun.”

I’m quite sure that nothing in China’s history was more disastrous than the Communist takeover of 1949.

6) Dutch historian Frank Dikotter’s trilogy— “The Tragedy of Liberation” (2013), “Mao’s Great Famine” (2010) and “The Cultural Revolution” (2016)— is a deeply researched assessment of the early decades of Communist rule in China. They’re highly informative and uniformly depressing.

Dikotter also wrote “China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower” (2022), which covers the period from Mao’s death to the rise of current leader Xi Jinping.

7) If you want to be further depressed, see “The World Turned Upside Down” (2016) by Yang Jisheng, who offers a granular account of the Maoist madness known as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.”

8) For those interested in Mao himself, I recommend “Mao: The Unknown Story” (2005) by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, who depicted him as the psychopathic monster that he was; and the more judicious Mao: The Real Story (2007) by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine.

9) For a gossipier account, check out “The Private Life of Chairman Mao” (1994), written by his hapless personal physician, Li Zhisui.

10) “Deng Xiaoping’s Long War” (2015) by Zhang Xiaoming is about the not-so splendid “little war” that China inflicted on Vietnam, its erstwhile ally and fellow Communist nation.

11) “One Child (2015)” by Mei Fong recounts how a rocket scientist in China launched the world’s largest social experiment, whose unintended consequences now cast a long shadow over the nation’s future.

12) “Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order” (2024) is by Yuan Yang, a Chinese-born British journalist and a member of the Labor Party in Parliament. Her book explores the lives of four Chinese women who are grappling with the harsh realities of modern-day China.

13) I am particularly partial to “The Class of ’77” (2022), a memoir by Jaime A. FlorCruz, a Filipino student activist who visited Mao’s China in 1971 with other young radicals from the Philippines.    

Branded as “subversives” by the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., FlorCruz and his comrades remained in China, where they experienced the insanity of the Cultural Revolution while learning Mandarin and, in FlorCruz’s case, studying in China’s premier learning institution, Peking University, as part of the Class of 1977. He would later serve as the Beijing bureau chief of Time Magazine and CNN’s Beijing correspondent.

In 2022, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appointed FlorCruz as Philippine ambassador to China. 

14) For the literary-inclined, read Dai Sijie’s wonderful semi-autobiographical novel, “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress,” published in 2000 in French and in English in 2001. Set during the Cultural Revolution, it’s about two teenage boys who were sent to a remote mountain village for “re-education” because their parents were labeled class traitors. The first chapter alone is a delight.

15) For more varied and exquisite samples of modern Chinese literature, read “Granta 169: China,” a special issue of the British literary magazine published in autumn 2024.

We’re talking about a rich mix of fiction, essays, memoirs, poetry and photography from prominent and emerging Chinese writers and artists.

From Huang Fan’s poem, “Cup”:

A cup is an open mouth

   You kiss each day

   The water you drink is the river’s clear heart….

   At night, the cup brims with darkness

   You are the dawn it longs for.

 Zaldy Dandan is the editor of the CNMI’s oldest — and only remaining — newspaper, Marianas Variety. His fourth book, “If He Isn’t Insane Then He Should Be: Stories & Poems from Saipan,” is available on amazon.com/.

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