Betty’s return to the propaganda push

By Mabel Doge Luhan

It’s wonderful being the best at something! I slip my shuffleboard scorekeep a few Andy Jacksons to ensure I win every match. Indeed, I follow Mainland China’s founding proverb: “Cheat when you can.” (能騙就騙.) (Please also see: https://twitter.com/serpentza/status/1704198183214264346)

And Betty Bai’s December 12th Letter to the Editor of the Saipan Tribune may have succeeded at being the most awful thing the Tribune has ever published — and that’s saying a lot!

The last time Betty Bai wrote a letter to the editor, it was all the way back on June 3, 2008, when her letter to the Marianas Variety (“Impudent Tongues”) spread the CCP-created lie that Falun Dafa members are against helping earthquake victims — a lie that was created specifically to encourage violence against Falun Dafa members in New York City:

https://www.google.com/search?q=flushing+incident+earthquake+falun+gong

Like Kanye West (but not as well-grounded in reality), Betty took fifteen years to drop a worthwhile sequel to that letter, and did she ever!

As Editor of the Saipan Chinese News — an independent news organization and definitely not a Communist Party propaganda vehicle, nor a front for espionage and transnational political repression — Ms. Bai must be quite in the thick of things in regard to current affairs.

Yet Ms. Bai’s letter is partly untruths, and the other part, things that aren’t coherent enough to be untruths. Let’s go through it (direct quotations from Ms. Bai’s letter, as printed in December 12th 2023 Saipan Tribune):

“The discretionary parole program for Chinese tourists has been disordered and confused in past years.”

This assertion has zero explanation or evidence.

“Rumors of the cancellation of the program have already been going around for many years.”

Right. The output of the Saipan Chinese rumor mill does not make the program disordered or confused. Although relying on information from the Saipan Chinese rumor mill, as Ms. Bai seems to be doing, would indeed make a person disordered and confused! So she is sort of half-right on this one.

Buckle your laugh belts for this zinger though:

“According to Marianas Visitors Authority, the China market made up over 40% of the CNMI’s tourism industry pre-COVID-19. Therefore, we can conclude that the government will experience a shortfall of about 40% in tax revenues when a China market exit occurs.”

In Mainland China, of course, the official mouthpieces put out “facts” and “logic” like this all the time, and it’s illegal to challenge it. So they get lazy and don’t logic-check their own writing. Unfortunately, the CNMI isn’t Mainland China — not yet, anyway. And this pseudo-argument is so bad that it’s flabbergasting that a supposed “newspaper editor” actually wrote it down and asked the newspaper to publish it under her name.

“In regards to the controlling of illegal immigration, in terms of population and geographic area, the CNMI is puny relative to the size of the U.S. mainland.”

And? Does that mean that immigration doesn’t matter in the CNMI? Ms. Bai may be unaware of the fact that in America, every jurisdiction matters. Unlike the case in China, we don’t allow rampant lawlessness in any place that’s far out of sight of the central government.

“The Saipan Chamber of Commerce, Hotel Association, and some CNMI lawmakers, collectively propose ideas and solutions.”

And you know something is a profita— I mean a good idea when it’s supported by the tourism industry, the biggest hotels, and the worst legislators. Again, there may be a misunderstanding here, because in America, we have government for and of the people — not for and of the most well-connected businesses.

“The CNMI, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean, sits at crossfire as tensions between the U.S. and China escalates.”

Did Manabat steal Betty’s articles and plural verbs? Also, the word “crossfire” implies some sort of two-way exchange. China is slaughtering its ethnic minorities, holding random foreigners as political hostages, invading other nations’ territory, and posting propaganda videos of blowing up the Presidential Office Building in the sovereign nation of Taiwan. And what has the U.S. done to China? Oh, right — the U.S. has banned the import of solar panels made by Chinese slave labor. It is indeed a bilateral crossfire. My bad!

“It is in the CNMI government’s best interest to persuade the distant, 7,801-mile-away D.C. policymakers about what the CNMI needs to achieve sustainable economic growth.”

Well at least Ms. Bai ends on a correct note! This is absolutely right! And Governor Palacios has been very much doing that: setting out a plan for sustainable economic growth not based on China.

As Deng Xiaoping wisely said in 1979: 少生孩子多养猪. (Have fewer children, raise more pigs!)

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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.