This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Grant Newsham, Colonel Grant Newsham,

the United States Marine Corps retired. He's the author of When China Attacks,

about China's preparation for an attack soon enough against the Marines and everyone else in the Pacific,

chiefly East Asia, to conquer Taiwan and subdue Japan, the Philippines,

Australia, Indonesia, and the United States. We identified the island group closest into Hawaii,

Kiribati, and what the Chinese are doing there. This comes at the same time. Grant remembers the retreat from Chosen

Reservoir to the voice of America. We talk about that. In those days, preparing for the Chinese

attack was considered unnecessary. One general, O.P. Smith, prepared the first Marine Division to

withstand the assault. when half a million Chinese

soldiers came across the border and ambushed the Americans at Chosen Reservoir. The Chinese attack in

2026, 27, sometime in these next years, will also be something like an ambush. Are we preparing?

Grant doubts it. Here we discuss Kiribati or other islands to talk about. More of this tonight.

Thank you. Well, they're building a going to build an airfield on an island called Canton Islands,

about 2,000 miles from Pearl Harbor.

And as with all of these infrastructure efforts by the Chinese, these efforts to get presence

and influence, it's all under the cover of commercial economic development in these places.

But there's obviously a dual use to this. So Kiribati, they've pretty much subverted

the entire government. And now they're going to refurbish this old American field on Canton Island.

And the Americans actually have a treaty which should prevent this, but nobody's interested

in enforcing the treaty. And anyway, how are you going to do it?

Send in the Marines.

So the Chinese are playing the game very well.

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