China, Cuba sign bilateral agreements

China, Cuba sign bilateral agreements
Raúl Castro is working to attract foreign investment to jumpstart the
ailing Cuban economy
MAYE PRIMERA Miami 23 JUL 2014 – 16:14 CEST

Chinese president Xi Jinping arrived in Havana on Tuesday to sign 29 new
bilateral agreements in finance, biotechnology, agriculture,
infrastructure and renewable energy.

Beijing will finance a new terminal at the port of Santiago de Cuba,
according to the news website Cuba Debate. China and Cuba will also
cooperate on cyberspace issues.

On the economic front, Xi and Raúl Castro agreed on protocols to oversee
the quality of the tobacco and sugar that the island nation exports to
China.

Before the meeting at the Palacio de la Revolución, Xi visited historic
Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 87, and presented him with “the respect” of
the Chinese people.

“You are the founder of the causes of the revolution and the
construction of Cuba, and you are the founder of relations between China
and Cuba,” said Xi.

Xi and Castro were also expected to discuss the new conditions of the
Foreign Investment Law approved by the Cuban government in March. This
legislation, part of a government drive to jumpstart the ailing economy,
will allow foreign investors to bring their own workforce over to the
island to work on construction projects.

The Chinese president hopes to get a sense of Cuba’s progress on
economic reform, especially with regard to foreign investment, with a
view to reactivating old projects and launching new ones.

This is the fourth and last Latin American stop for Xi before returning
home. Before this, he was in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, where he
signed off on multi-million-euro loans and dozens of cooperation agreements.

The government of Raúl Castro hopes for similar treatment, but first
China needs to make sure that Cuba has done its homework.

Both Raúl and Fidel Castro have underscored the key role of Chinese
investment in regional development, especially when it comes to
exploiting the rich oil, mineral and freshwater reserves in Latin
America. “We face the challenge of working toward the industrialization
of our natural and agricultural resources, of increasing and
diversifying our exports, and achieving a more equal trade balance that
will reserve an important role for our ties with the People’s Republic
of China,” said Raúl Castro in Brazilia on June 17.

China has significant oil interests in Cuba, where it manages several
wells in the northern coast. In June 2011, then vice-president Xi
Jinping signed 13 energy and economic agreements with Havana, including
two projects to expand the Cienfuegos refinery and build a liquid gas
plant in partnership with Venezuela.

China is Cuba’s second-most-important trade partner after Venezuela,
with a bilateral trade volume of 1.4 billion dollars in 2013.

In the last 17 years, Raúl Castro has traveled to Beijing three times to
learn about the “Chinese experiment” of economic reform.

Source: China, Cuba sign bilateral agreements | In English | EL PAÍS –
http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/07/23/inenglish/1406124841_312333.html