Good morning, and welcome to the Global Situation Report for Thursday, 03 October 2024.
- Global Rollup
- Thousands of Chinese companies are still exporting dual-use technology to Russia, despite the U.S. sanctioning 300 of them recently, according to Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to China. Burns added on that China shows no sign of turning away from Russia. (Thousands of Chinese companies remain under threat for sanctions. China will likely take any follow-through as a de facto decoupling even if the U.S. maintains a public policy of mere “derisking” while sanctioning the remaining companies. – J.V.)
- One hundred thousand U.S. student visas are granted to Chinese students each year, with a current total of 300,000 Chinese students in U.S. universities, according to Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to China. Conversely, “not even 1,000 U.S. students” are in China. Burns says that as the U.S. and China compete, “the last thing in the world we should do is to see our peoples disconnected from each other.” (The U.S. State Department appears to be unwilling to address the espionage and intellectual property theft potential by allowing hundreds of thousands of Chinese students into the United States. Just last night, five Chinese students were arrested for photographing national guard exercises with Taiwan last year. – J.V.)
- Vietnam announced plans to build a high-speed railway from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh without any foreign aid. (This particular rail route is almost identical to a rail project China is building through Vietnam to connect China to Cambodia. The announcement is almost certainly meant to hurt China and signal Vietnam’s growing dissatisfaction with them. – J.V.)
- Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres persona non grata and banned from entering Israel for not condemning Iran and Hamas. The U.S. State Department Spokesman Matt Miller described this as, “not productive at all.”
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.