Reportedly Cuba and China have signed a cooperation
plan to push forward construction projects under Beijing’s overseas
infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The Chinese Embassy in Cuba announced the agreement on its
website on December 26, 2021 saying that the deal was inked two days earlier by
He Lifeng, Head of China’s top economic planning agency, the National
Development and Reform Commission, and Cuban Vice Prime Minister Ricardo
Cabrisas.
The agreement implemented a memorandum of understanding the
two nations signed in 2018, when Cuba agreed to become a BRI participating
nation.
Under the agreement, the two nations aimed to work together
on projects in several key sectors, including communications, education, health
and biotechnology, science and technology, and tourism, according to the
Agencia Cubana de Noticias news agency.
The Chinese Embassy also stated that a timetable and a
roadmap had been proposed to implement the projects, without giving details.
China launched the BRI in 2013 in an effort to build
Beijing-centered land and maritime trade networks by financing infrastructure
projects throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. In
recent years, critics have denounced Beijing for using “debt-trap diplomacy” to
lure countries into its initiative.
Many countries have surrendered pieces of their sovereignty
after failing to pay off Chinese debts. For example, China Merchants Port
Holdings is now running Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease,
after the South Asian country converted its owed loans of US$1.4 billion into
equity in 2017. Seizing the port has allowed Beijing to gain a key foothold in
the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese regime has also sought to partner with countries
rich in natural resources—such as African BRI participants Ghana and Zambia—in
order to gain access to these raw materials to drive the Chinese economy.
It appears that China has its eyes set on Cuba’s natural
resources, as a Chinese researcher told China’s state-run media outlet Global
Times on December 26 that the BRI agreement was good because China and Cuba
“have strong economic complementarities.”
The researcher was quoted as saying that “Cuba is rich in
mineral and oil resources, and is a major source of nickel ore for China.” Cuba
has one of the world’s largest nickel deposits in the world.
China has been Cuba’s important energy partner. Chinese
companies have supplied wind turbines to Cuba’s wind farms and overseen the
construction of Cuba’s first biomass-fired power plant at Ciro
Redondo.
The US-based organization American Security Project, in
an article published in March, warned about Cuba’s energy dependency
on China and Venezuela as having “serious implications for hemispheric
security.”
In addition, the Chinese paramilitary has also
provided “counter-terrorism” training to the Cuban military and
police forces responsible for suppressing anti-government protesters.
In fact, China has an ambition that goes beyond just Cuba.
During a Senate hearing in March, Craig Faller, a retired admiral and a former
commander of the US Southern Command, warned that Beijing seeks to “establish
global logistics and basing infrastructure in our hemisphere in order to
project and sustain military power at greater distances.”
Faller told lawmakers at the hearing that China was on a
“full-court press” in order to achieve its ambition.
“I look at this hemisphere as the front line of
competition,” Faller said. “Our influence [in this hemisphere] is eroding. … It
is important that we remain engaged in this hemisphere.”
During a press briefing following the hearing,
Faller described the Chinese regime’s influence as “insidious,” “corrosive,”
and “corrupt.”
“Some examples include their pursuit of multiple port deals,
loans for political leverage, vaccine diplomacy that undermines sovereignty,
state surveillance IT, and the exploitation of resources such as illegal,
unregulated, and unreported fishing,” Faller said.
A month after Faller’s warning Stephanie Murphy introduced a
bill requiring several US federal agencies, including the State Department, to
put together a report for Congress. The report would assess China’s influence
in Latin America and the Caribbean.
One of the issues the report would examine is China’s
relationship with Cuba and Venezuela. Another is China’s efforts to exploit
natural resources in the region.
“It is critical for US policymakers to understand what China
is doing in the region and to have an effective strategy in place to counter
China’s aggressive conduct and to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable
for its actions,” Murphy said, according to a statement from her
office.
