China strengthens trade, political ties with Cuba

Posted on Tuesday, 09.15.09
TRADE AND POLITICS
China strengthens trade, political ties with Cuba
In a series of deals, China is working to deepen its relationship with
Cuba. Trade between the two countries is estimated at more than $2.5
billion.
BY TOM LASSETER
McClatchy News Service

BEIJING -- Why is the world's third-largest economy spending hundreds of
millions of dollars in Cuba, an impoverished island with few natural
resources and a history of making things difficult for foreign investors?

The answer is simple: China is the world's third-largest economy.

A series of deals from Beijing to Havana are partly in line with Chinese
economic expansion across the world -- trade between China and Latin
America grew from $10 billion in 2000 to $140 billion in 2008 -- but
there's also a nuanced political bond between the two that seems to go
beyond cash.

The growing relationship suggests that China's financial clout has put
it in a position to cultivate something like client states, in the case
of Cuba at least, among smaller countries that receive relatively large
amounts of Chinese funding and in return toe the line when it comes to
issues such as Beijing's controversial policies toward Tibet and Taiwan.

When a Chinese legislative delegation flew to Havana earlier this month,
among the reported $600 million in aid and loans -- a figure reported by
the Agence France Presse wire service that officials in Beijing wouldn't
confirm -- were promises to update Cuba's traffic signal system and
dispatch technicians to a vegetable canning factory.

GETTING INVOLVED

Since becoming China's president, Hu Jintao has visited Cuba more times
-- twice -- than any other Latin American country, including oil- and
soybean-rich Brazil and Venezuela. It's a very close level of
involvement for a country that hasn't been of much strategic importance
since the Cold War ended.

``We are old friends,'' said Wang Youming, an analyst at the China
Institute of International Studies, a foreign ministry policy institute.

COMMUNIST NATIONS

Wang referred not just to the fact that China and Cuba are among the
last communist nations still standing, but also to what Beijing
considers important public backing from Fidel Castro and his younger
brother Raúl on Taiwan and Tibet.

Trade between the countries is often cited as being more than $2.5
billion, but that's peanuts for a powerhouse such as China.

``The political returns are the most important,'' Wang said. ``Cuba has
provided consistent support for China's international stance, especially
with the Taiwan issue.''

China claims Tibet and Taiwan as parts of its domain, and has bristled
at Western support for what it calls separatist movements in both
places. Cuban officials have said repeatedly that they share China's view.

The Chinese government ``sees questions like Tibet, Taiwan . . . to be
of the highest strategic import,'' said Daniel Erikson, a Latin America
expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a nonpartisan research center on
Western Hemisphere affairs. ``The fact that Cuba is always on their side
in these issues is crucial to China.''

There are, of course, financial considerations -- China is now Cuba's
second-biggest trading partner, and there are hopes in Beijing that as
Havana opens its markets, Chinese companies will get a big chunk of
industries such as cellphones and consumer goods. China has made a $500
million deal to invest in Cuban nickel, a key component in the steel
needed by China's construction boom.

Cuba also gives Beijing a vantage point for the rest of the Caribbean
and a source of informed counsel in a Latin American neighborhood where
some governments have turned left in recent years.

U.S. IN MIND

As much as Beijing has advanced in Cuba, though, it won't pursue matters
there at the risk of its far more lucrative economic ties with the
United States, according to observers in Beijing and Washington. That
approach mirrors China's dealings in places such as Venezuela, where
President Hugo Chávez regularly hurls invective at Washington.

``They will seek as much political and economic advantage as they can
get without jeopardizing their relationship with the United States,''
Erikson said in a phone interview.

Mindful that America has maintained an embargo against Cuba for more
than 45 years, Chinese officials have been careful to avoid any
connection -- rhetorical or otherwise -- to flare-ups between Havana and
its northern neighbor.

``China does not want to get itself involved with the bilateral
relationship between Cuba and the U.S.,'' said Jiang Shixue, a senior
analyst and administrator at the government-funded Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences who's a previous deputy director of its Latin America
studies program. ``China wants to do business. If you put economic
cooperation and political interference in the same basket, things will
be terrible.''

Beyond those sensitivities, Jiang said, there's no reason why friends
can't make deals.

Tom Lasseter, McClatchy's Moscow Bureau Chief, is on temporary
assignment to Beijing.

China strengthens trade, political ties with Cuba - Front Page -
MiamiHerald.com (15 September 2009)
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