'Old friends' Cuba, China strengthen ties

[Nonno]

" 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."

'Old friends' Cuba, China strengthen ties | McClatchy