Cuba & China

OPINION
JANUARY 2006

Cuba & China

BY WILLIAM RATLIFF
William Ratliff is Adjunct Fellow at the Independent Institute, Research
Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a frequent
writer on Chinese and Cuban foreign policies.

Why is economically successful China interested in the economically
failed Cuba? And vice versa?

C uba survived a decade of economic crisis in the 1990s after the
collapse of its Cold War support network, the Soviet bloc. Now the
Maximum Leader is building a new network, stretching from Caracas to the
People’s Republic of China (PRC), that he thinks will get him through
his economic foolishness in the years ahead.

Fidel’s affair with Venezuela’s volatile President Hugo Chavez is a
match made in Castroite heaven, but the relationship with China is more
complicated. Why is the enormous Middle Kingdom, with its explosively
growing economy, interested in an ancient dictator on a tiny Caribbean
island who is mindlessly bound to failed statist economic policies? And
vice versa?

In 1960, Cuba was the first Latin American country to recognize the PRC.
Still, relations were often hostile for several decades because only the
Soviet bloc could provide both sufficient economic aid to sustain
Castro's always-failing economy and a military shield against his chosen
enemy, the United States.

With the lapse in the Sino-Soviet dispute in the 1980s, Sino-Cuba
relations began to improve. In June 1989, the rapprochement fast-tracked
when Cuba strongly endorsed Chinese repression at Tiananmen.

Today Sino-Cuba links fall into three broad categories: political,
economic and strategic. Cuba benefits most from China’s often
overlapping political and economic support, while China wins most from
obtaining intelligence on the U.S. through the Cuban government.

Fidel and Raul Castro, and most other top Cuban leaders, have visited
China one or more times. Two Chinese presidents, most recently Hu
Jintao, in November 2004, and many other top Chinese leaders, have
visited Cuba. Besides pro forma calls for world peace and development,
the two governments support each other on such issues as condemning the
U.S. embargo of Cuba and supporting China’s 2005 anti-secession law
aimed at Taiwan.

Looking beyond Fidel, many other current Cuban leaders are fascinated by
the "Chinese style" economic reforms that Fidel rejects: political
control and market-oriented economic reforms.

Economically, Beijing is a pragmatic, quid pro quo ally. While China
looks to eventually receive significant quantities of nickel from Cuba,
in general Cuban exports to China are insignificant. But China is Cuba’s
third largest trading partner, behind only Venezuela and Spain. In
varying degrees, China supports Cuban education, oil exploration, nickel
mining, technological development and transportation infrastructure.

+++ Looking beyond Fidel, Raul Castro, the heir apparent, and many other
current Cuban leaders, are fascinated by the "Chinese style" economic
reforms that Fidel rejects. That is, maintaining considerable political
control but undertaking some serious, systematic market-oriented
economic reforms to escape perpetual economic malaise. +++

The payoff for China is a very welcome window from which to observe the
United States. Consider that Washington watches China from military
bases all over Asia, space satellites and surveillance planes, one of
which was forced to land on the Chinese island of Hainan in early 2001
and precipitated the first Bush Administration showdown with the PRC.
China, however, has no military bases abroad and no planes flying along
U.S. coasts.

Also consider that while the U.S. complains about China's military
modernization and possible future aggression abroad, China has solid
evidence of actual U.S. military aggression against sovereign countries,
whether Americans approve the actions or not, by Bill Clinton in
Yugoslavia in 1999 and George Bush in Iraq in 2003. Add to that the
sophisticated arms Washington sells to Taiwan, an island both Beijing
and Washington (and Taipei, until recently) consider part of "one China."

U.S. officials will not talk seriously about Sino-Cuban strategic
issues, though they do say China is involved in developing capabilities
in intelligence, cyber warfare and communications that may affect the
region. Sometimes citing unevenly reliable press reports as evidence,
the specific areas of concern seem to be Lourdes and Bejucal, both near
Havana.

Lourdes, for decades the largest Soviet overseas espionage base, now
seems to be mainly a new University of Information Sciences (UCI). Hu
Jintao visited the campus in 2004 and said that most of the thousands of
computers there are from China. The unanswerable questions are what else
at UCI comes from China and what the PRC gets in return.

+++ Future Sino-Cuban relations will depend on unpredictable
developments in China, Cuba, the U.S. and beyond. +++

The base at Bejucal may have Chinese as well as Cuban agents, but at
least some of the published information is overblown. For example, a
widely circulated photograph of awesome golf-ball shaped radar domes,
allegedly at Bejucal, are in fact a U.S. facility at Menwith Hill
Station, UK.

Washington and Beijing have not ranted at each other since the Hainan
EP-3 incident almost five years ago. Why? Perhaps because both have
decided the current placement of surveillance networks is a tolerable
tradeoff for now in a dangerous, suspicious, imperfect world.

Future Sino-Cuban relations will depend on unpredictable developments in
China, Cuba, the U.S. and beyond. They could range from China's more
intensive use of Cuban bases and contacts in the Americas, particularly
under a post-Fidel authoritarian government, to Bejing deciding Fidel is
too much of an expense and embarrassment to support, particularly if
facilities in Cuba could be traded off in a deal with the U.S. on Taiwan.

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