What the administration is doing is playing pattycake with an issue that needed attention more than a decade ago. We kind of got sidetracked by the talk of a huge military buildup and never got back to addressing the issue until the whole world started hosting Chinese visitors.
On average, Chinese tourists are spending far beyond what they were expected to spend and are accepted all over the world as tourists.
The barriers that existed more than a decade ago don’t exist in 2011. The only reason we don’t have Chinese tourists yet is because of fear.
Fear exists in the United States because of the sheer size and capability of the Chinese military. I have no fear of the Chinese and can see that someday, we will have them coming to Guam in droves, maybe within five years.
We should have been getting huge numbers already, but the way Washington touts national security and promotes fear among the people is beyond me. We are the only nation on this planet with the ability to blow up the world many times over, and if we didn’t owe China the amount of money we do, we could probably do better and be friendlier with them than we have. We will be hosting Chinese on Guam once the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense get over their fear of change.
We are our own worst enemy when it comes to dealing with other countries. When they have something we want, we often try to find a way to get those resources and are sometimes willing to go to war with them instead of negotiating. That is yet another story.
FELIX AGUON
Quezon City and Guam
