Good morning, and welcome to the Global Situation Report for Friday, 28 June 2024.
- GREATER CHINESE INFLUENCE OPS INBOUND: Xi Jinping gave a speech this morning on his vision for how China will influence the world going forward.
- Xi’s concrete promises included giving the “global south” 1,000 scholarships, 100,000 training opportunities, a Renminbi investment in foreign agriculture worth $10 million, and importing more than $8 trillion worth of goods from the global south by 2030.
- Xi also promised China would continue “opening up” to the world and establish a market economy.
Why It Matters: Deng Xiaoping’s “opening up” established a concern that the world would break China away from the Marxism that helped it end the Century of Humiliation, plunging China back into humiliation. Xi’s promise of an even greater opening shows that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is confident it can continue to export Chinese communism rather than have external ideas infiltrate China. We are likely to see an increase in Chinese influence across the world using low-level officials and “development meetings” with their targets. Historically, the International Liaison Department of the CCP accomplished this with revolutions if they could not peacefully capture institutions. – J.V.
- Global Rollup
- “This is a clear manifestation of the sluggishness, rigidity, and lack of vitality in the American political machine,” Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times in reference to the U.S. Presidential debate.
- Japan and the Philippines will hold their second “2+2” meeting between Foreign and Defense Ministers on July 8th. Yoshiaki Wada, a Liberal Democrat member of the Japanese House of Representatives went on record ahead of the meeting to say that Japan and the Philippines are in the same boat and that Japan stands ready to send necessary assets to the Philippines.
- North Korea is sending engineering and construction troops to Ukraine to assist in the Russian rebuilding efforts, according to South Korean media. In response, the U.S. Department of Defense said the North Korean troops would be cannon fodder.
- The U.S. Embassy in Beirut issued a reminder yesterday that southern Lebanon remains under a “Do Not Travel” warning and that the U.S. cannot protect citizens in the event that armed conflict breaks out. The USS Wasp Amphibious Assault Ship is en route to the Eastern Mediterranean for a scheduled deployment to deter further escalation. (The Wasp’s deployment is related to the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict but could be pressed into a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation if the situation deteriorates. – J.V.)
- Panama recorded 195,817 crossing the Darien Gap into Panama for the year as of 27 June and expects to hit 200,000 before the end of the month. The National Migration Service estimates that 19,600 of the recorded migrants were from Asia, and 5,508 were from Africa. The Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations expects more than 800 thousand people of different nationalities will cross the border between Panama and Colombia this year and head to the U.S. and Canada.
THAT’S A WRAP: This does it for today’s edition. Thank you for reading. If you know folks who would also like to receive this email, would you please forward it to them? We appreciate you spreading the word. – M.S.