I'm John Batsworth, my friend and colleague Cleopascal of the Foundation for the

Defense of Democracy.

We're speaking of Oceania and three particular states in Oceania that are

independent and sovereign and yet have entered into security arrangement with

the US in the event of conflict in the because the Belicocacity increases out of Beijing.

You mentioned Kiribati before having to do with the Soviet Empire.

I note how ironic it is that Kiribati is now said to be vulnerable to Chinese influence.

Is that the same in the marshals or the Micronesia or Palau, are they vulnerable to Chinese influence peddling?

Yes, there's been enormous, in all three enormous efforts by the Chinese.

So in the case of Marshals in Palau, they recognize Taiwan, which gives them a layer of security.

It means they don't have a Chinese embassy in those Chinese embassies.

Function is, of course, influence operation bases and spy bases.

But what you're seeing on the ground is in the case of

Palau the Chinese deliberately built up the tourism sector sent in Tunt went

from almost zero Chinese tourists over 50% of the tourist market being Chinese. and then pulled

pulled all of the tourist market being Chinese and then pulled all of the tourists out all at once

and explicitly said the tourists wouldn't come back unless Palau derecognized Taiwan.

Palau, their leadership stood up to them in that case, but they have an election coming up in November and the

pressure on the ground is very high.

They've now got daily flights coming in from Macau.

This is a country with a population of 18,000 people and the amount of Chinese money going in in order to try to influence things is very high.

Same in the Marshall Islands.

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