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Yap: Global Irony Alert

There’s a stunning opinion piece in today’s editions of The Wall Street Journal by our good friend Neil Mellen, president of South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG). For those of you who don’t know Mellen, in addition to fighting for free market reforms on behalf of South Carolina school children…

There’s a stunning opinion piece in today’s editions of The Wall Street Journal by our good friend Neil Mellen, president of South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG).

For those of you who don’t know Mellen, in addition to fighting for free market reforms on behalf of South Carolina school children (and their parents) he’s also been fighting on behalf of future generations in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).

Wait … where? The FSM are a string of South Pacific islands where Mellen previously served for three years as a Peace Corps volunteer. In fact his charity – Habele – currently provides K-12 tuition scholarships for low income students, particularly those living in the country’s most remote outer islands.

Anyway, Mellen’s article (a must read) delves into the fascinating transformation that’s about to take place on the island of Yap – one of the larger Federated States. Specifically, he explores how “Communist” China is about to bring free market capitalism to the isolated island.

Of course what’s really interesting about this story isn’t what China is bringing to Yap … it’s what is being replaced: American socialism. Wait? Isn’t China the communist nation? And isn’t America the “land of the free?” Not in this case. Specifically, a Chinese resort development planned for Yap would replace a bloated public sector bureaucracy that has been funded for decades via grants from the United States Department of the Interior (USDOI).

“The many billions of dollars sent to Micronesia in direct foreign aid was intended to finance the development of economic and political systems across these remote islands and atolls,” Mellen writes. “The Micronesians have instead used the aid to feed a government bureaucracy that mirrors the worst excesses and inefficiencies of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the agency that controls most of the aid. The sad result is a huge, U.S.-funded Micronesian public sector that crowds out economic development. This has ensured the perpetual dependency of the people, like the Yap islanders, on the state and federal government of the Federated States of Micronesia.”

Wait … so as part of its efforts to spread freedom and democracy around the globe, America has instead wound up exporting dependency? And now this failed bureaucratic puppet state is about to be overrun by Chinese capitalism?

That’s pretty much it …

“The U.S. could have spent the past seven decades working with Micronesians to develop modern property rights and an adherence to the rule of law,” Mellen adds. “Washington could have given them the tools to envision and pursue the political and economic future of their own design. Instead the U.S. has devoted itself to keeping the lights on in countless cinder-block government buildings and handing out cheap perishables such as rice and Spam.”

Wow … what an indictment of the “Land of the Free.”

Why does this matter? It’s geopolitics, baby. Rather than establishing a strong, pro-free market ally in one of the world’s most strategically significant locations, America has chased good money after bad on Yap – and now that the spigot is turning off (U.S. aid expires in 2013) the area is about to fall outside of our nation’s sphere of interest.

In fact that low, rumbling sound you’ll hear rippling across the Pacific Ocean in the next few years will be Chinese bulldozers collapsing those American cinder-block bureaucracies.

Coming soon to a continent near you, right?

Anyway props to Mellen … we wish him the best of luck as he continues his efforts to forge a brighter future for the children of Yap and the children of South Carolina.

Hopefully lawmakers in the Palmetto State will take the time to examine this piece within the context of their third world, dependency economy … but that would probably be asking too much of them.

***

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14 comments

Duh! April 2, 2013 at 3:28 pm

This is like reading “The Ugly American” by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer all over again. Giving out “stuff” is not “development” and Americans should not be surprised that it does not make the world’s poor like us.

Reply
Duh! April 2, 2013 at 3:28 pm

This is like reading “The Ugly American” by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer all over again. Giving out “stuff” is not “development” and Americans should not be surprised that it does not make the world’s poor like us.

Reply
Harold Bloom April 2, 2013 at 3:46 pm

The WSJ published a page-one article yesterday about the Chinese newfound appetite for James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake,” part of which has just been translated into Mandarin.

###
“Finnegans Wake” Is Greek to Many; Now Imagine It in Chinese
Translation of Joyce Novel in Works for Years Sells Well to Readers Craving a Challenge
###

Ms. Dai spent eight years translating into Chinese the 1939 James Joyce novel that the author’s own brother described as “unspeakably wearisome.” She endured low pay, a skeptical husband and the continued demands of her teaching job. That is on top of deciphering sentences like this:

“Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.”

Her reward, to her great surprise, was success. Her translation of the first part of the book has become a modest but clear hit here in China. Chinese readers are now puzzling their way through Joyce’s rhythmic stew of English, Gaelic, Romance languages, puns and layered
meaning.

“It’s beyond my expectations,” Ms. Dai said. Local media even interviewed her 8-year-old son, she said, “though he has no idea what the book is about.”

A newly affluent nation that prizes black Audi sedans and Louis Vuitton handbags has made a literary status symbol of what may well be English literature’s most difficult work. Thanks in part to a canny marketing campaign involving eye-catching billboards and packaging, “Finnegans Wake” sold out the first, 8,000-volume run shortly after it was released in December. The book briefly rose to No. 2 on a bestseller list run by a Shanghai book industry group, just behind a biography of the late Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s modern-day boom.

Reply
Harold Bloom April 2, 2013 at 3:46 pm

The WSJ published a page-one article yesterday about the Chinese newfound appetite for James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake,” part of which has just been translated into Mandarin.

###
“Finnegans Wake” Is Greek to Many; Now Imagine It in Chinese
Translation of Joyce Novel in Works for Years Sells Well to Readers Craving a Challenge
###

Ms. Dai spent eight years translating into Chinese the 1939 James Joyce novel that the author’s own brother described as “unspeakably wearisome.” She endured low pay, a skeptical husband and the continued demands of her teaching job. That is on top of deciphering sentences like this:

“Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.”

Her reward, to her great surprise, was success. Her translation of the first part of the book has become a modest but clear hit here in China. Chinese readers are now puzzling their way through Joyce’s rhythmic stew of English, Gaelic, Romance languages, puns and layered
meaning.

“It’s beyond my expectations,” Ms. Dai said. Local media even interviewed her 8-year-old son, she said, “though he has no idea what the book is about.”

A newly affluent nation that prizes black Audi sedans and Louis Vuitton handbags has made a literary status symbol of what may well be English literature’s most difficult work. Thanks in part to a canny marketing campaign involving eye-catching billboards and packaging, “Finnegans Wake” sold out the first, 8,000-volume run shortly after it was released in December. The book briefly rose to No. 2 on a bestseller list run by a Shanghai book industry group, just behind a biography of the late Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s modern-day boom.

Reply
Observant April 2, 2013 at 4:33 pm

Don’t forget that China is also “developing” (one needs at least a peck of salt to accompany that verb) several of the African nations by building and equiping railroads that just happen to run from the center of the natural resource to a China-improved port.
To paraphrase the Big Bad Wolf: “The Better to steal your oil, minerals, and other natural resources” for the Chinese economy.
Payback Happens.

Reply
Observant April 2, 2013 at 4:33 pm

Don’t forget that China is also “developing” (one needs at least a peck of salt to accompany that verb) several of the African nations by building and equiping railroads that just happen to run from the center of the natural resource to a China-improved port.
To paraphrase the Big Bad Wolf: “The Better to steal your oil, minerals, and other natural resources” for the Chinese economy.
Payback Happens.

Reply
nobody April 2, 2013 at 6:35 pm

Yes, I suppose it is “fascinating” to destroy a unique way of life to make way for a Chinese casino. A more balanced take from the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324712504578131864269855132.html

Reply
nobody April 2, 2013 at 6:35 pm

Yes, I suppose it is “fascinating” to destroy a unique way of life to make way for a Chinese casino. A more balanced take from the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324712504578131864269855132.html

Reply
katlaurenscounty April 2, 2013 at 9:25 pm

kudos FITS. Decent opinion piece.

Reply
katlaurenscounty April 2, 2013 at 9:25 pm

kudos FITS. Decent opinion piece.

Reply
9" April 2, 2013 at 10:47 pm Reply
9" April 2, 2013 at 10:47 pm Reply
9" April 6, 2013 at 3:40 am

‘American socialism’ ? Are you a motherfucking idiot or what? It’s fun to read this shit,just to up my own self-esteem;kinda like,people-watching at ,Wal-Mart…You need to wake the fuck up,bitch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRPRicsHh8g

Reply
9" April 6, 2013 at 3:40 am

‘American socialism’ ? Are you a motherfucking idiot or what? It’s fun to read this shit,just to up my own self-esteem;kinda like,people-watching at ,Wal-Mart…You need to wake the fuck up,bitch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRPRicsHh8g

Reply

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