Ambrose M. Bennett
THE TRUTH of the matter is Ambrose M. Bennett is going to “tell-it-like-it-tis” as we say in my culture and the truth is that it seems the CNMI is now committed to China, America’s rival and even foe, over Japan which is our ally. I can see a lot of students, who are now adults, who didn’t master their academic history lessons in world history class on China & Japan. But only time will tell the story’s ending. I will be the first to say, “I pray we (CNMI) will be successful with this China venture.” HOWEVER, there are still some very serious questions yet to be answered and there are too many variables to predict a definitive outcome. For one, what will be the response of the Chinese Government for their citizens coming to the CNMI. Need I remind that the Chinese Government clearly stated “they are not going to allow their citizens to come to the CNMI to gamble” and we are about to put E-gambling in all the hotels, duh! Secondly, there is the very uncertain & unstable geopolitical arena of America’s & China’s relationship that can change at the drop of a hat literally. And third and finally, WHAT is the strategy for getting the full return of the Japanese that wasn’t even mentioned, which leads me to believe that it’s now China or Bust (NOTHING New). Now the very foundation that established our Tourism Industry is in peril — the Japanese market of our ally, which is sad for me to see as an economist.
However, there is cause for hope that the Chinese Government will not intervene and that the younger generation of Japanese may be more acceptable to mingling with the Chinese. But with China having a population of over 1-Billion & 3-hundred million, there is a great possibility for the CNMI to have an extremely large Chinese Tourism Market. However, if this is achieved, history has taught us that the Japanese ARE NOT going to come here in numbers and mingle with Chinese and for those who don’t learn the lessons taught to us by history, they are DOOMED to repeat the SAME mistakes! We just have to wait and see and pray for the best but prepare for the worst, which is why MVA needs to develop a NEW strategy for attracting tourists from China and everywhere else given the fact that MVA is NOT going to advertise in China.
Given MVA and the Business sector have committed the CNMI to China but won’t advertise in China because they can’t afford to open an office in China, I would like to propose and take this teaching opportunity to teach MVA “how to think outside-the-box to improve and accomplish their advertising goals.” There is a saying that people are often looking for a goldmine not realizing they are standing on top of it, which is what MVA may be doing with China if the Government doesn’t shut it down. China has a population with the potential to literally flood our streets with tourists from China. What MVA needs to do is to make a marketing improvement by creating a “Social Media Tourism Team” of a Chinese, Japanese, Korean and American. A team of this nature would be far cheaper and even far more effective than opening a single office just for China, as Social-Media Platforms combined are now even more powerful and more far-reaching than CNN literally.
In fact, by advertising through Social-Media the CNMI can finally start advertising our Cannabis Industry that has never got off the ground to the point of bringing in revenues, as it’s costing the CNMI over 200-thousand MORE a year to operate the industry than revenues coming in. The Legislature also needs to get busy and FIX some things so the Cannabis Tourism Industry can have a real chance to grow and thrive. There is cause for hope with China but we (CNMI) can’t just keep doing only ONE-thing like the EVS-TAP hoping everything else will just fall in place like we are doing by not advertising in China, as we need to do the work to make SURE everything falls in place to make it work FOR the People or it was all for NOTHING! Get busy and start advertising through Social-Media and pray things will work out with China and Japan somehow for the BETTERMENT of our Commonwealth.
One People One Direction.
Ambrose M. Bennett is an Economist who minored in Sociology, a Political Scientist, a retired teacher & former CNMI Board of Education Member, a James Madison Fellow (U.S. Constitutional Scholar), a Fulbright-Hays & lifetime Humanities Scholar who resides in Kagman III.
