Dry Ice Factory

I suspect there won't be much money in it for anybody let alone the Yapese. Canberra is regularly visited by groups of 'official' Chinese tourists. As I understand it such groups are being rewarded for service to the government or private companies with a cheap trip to Australia. To keep prices down these tour groups are highly regulated, only going where the tour bus takes them, eating at designated restaurants, staying at designated hotels etc. A resort on Yap would work well for such reward tourism as every part of the process could be made as cheap as possible with the resort and the airline servicing it acting as a non-profit, government service to the private sector. I assume it would be a very insular operation, built by the Chinese, staffed by the Chinese, supplied by the Chinese because that's how they've handled infrastructure projects in Africa. If so then your mother is right about few locals profiting from the intrusion. More than that I think it's likely that the resort will significantly intrude on the island in various obvious ways; closed beaches, extended periods of aircraft noise, heavy bus traffic between the airport and resort, sewage and rubbish in general. The advantage of Yap to the Chinese being of course that it's less able to impose expensive restrictions on a resort once it's in place than richer nations.