Plenum Countdown; Orban in Beijing; Floods; PRC says “Volt Typhoon” a US op; Edible oil in fuel tankers

Summary of today’s Essential Eight:

Plenum Countdown – The Third Plenum starts in six days. The propaganda cadre are certainly raising expectations that this Third Plenum will be as important as the 18th Third Plenum in 2013. So far none of the details of the draft decision have leaked. In 2013 I was at a small dinner a few days before that Plenum where a prominent financier walked us through the highlights of the impeding meeting, and they had all the interesting stuff. That does not seem to happen almost eleven years later in this New Era. We are left with parsing through the propaganda paeans to Xi and his leadership of the Party and the country, manifested in several different series of articles and commentaries. So far investors have not been stirred by the positive propaganda energy, as the Shanghai Composite has retreated almost back to 2900. A People’s Daily column in the July 9 paper reminds us “in a complex domestic and international environment, with various ideological conc…

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