Taking On China In The Pacific: Target Corruption Or Don't Bother

2025-09-15 07:02:11

(MENAFN- Asia Times) I spent many years investigating corruption in Asia. But it's the same everywhere.

It destroys economies, societies, and the citizens in them (other than the relative few in on the racket).

It's also part and parcel of China's operating manual, and a weapon of war. China makes adept use of local corruption – sometimes even creating it, but always capitalizing on it to create pro-China constituencies that promote and defend Beijing's interests in a target country.

And that provides broader openings for Chinese political warfare and subversion and, if necessary, its waging of kinetic war.

And it's not just so-called third world countries.

Take a look at Washington, DC.

Ask yourself: How is it that Chinese-origin fentanyl has killed well over half a million Americans since 2013 – and Beijing has suffered no punishment from the US Government?

In Washington's case it's corruption wrapped up as statesmanship.

Read Peter Schweizer's Blood Money : Why the powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans and his other books. Best-sellers, they lay out a prosecutor's brief. And nobody sues Schweizer. That says it all.

But let's head back to the Pacific and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas (CNMI) .

CNMI is a US territory and its people are US citizens. It is also strategic terrain where the US military is repositioning itself, to include building new airbases and facilities on the CNMI island of Tinian. CNMI is the closest land to US bases on Guam – only 60 miles away. It's an eight-hour flight west of Hawaii and a three-hour flight south of Tokyo.

China is keen to have influence and a presence in CNMI – and weaken the commonwealth's ties with the US – and it has made considerable progress.

Chinese-linked corruption in CNMI didn't just open the door in CNMI, it blew a hole in the defensive wall of the US, including being the only part of the US where Chinese can arrive without a visa.

Chinese casino money spread far and wide in CNMI's political class

The former Chief Justice of CNMI's Supreme Court once despaired that the territory seemed to have the highest per capita rate of official corruption of any place on earth.

Starting in the 2010's a Chinese casino run by Imperial Pacific International (IPI) moved tens of billions of dollars through a handful of tables in a small casino duty-free mall while spreading cash all over the island – to include politicians and officials. Such casinos don't operate without Chinese Communist Party backing.

Then-governor Ralph Torres's family reportedly made a fortune signing overpriced leases with IPI.

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