Handpicked communist president from Cuba visits Communist China and celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations between the two regimes.

A long relationship that began while Cuba had normal diplomatic relations with the United States.

Diaz-Canel met with Xi Jinping earlier today.

 

Castro regime president Miguel Diaz-Canel met in Beijing on November 25, 2022 with president for life Xi Jinping.

The relationship between the two dictatorships stretches back 62 years, and began while the United States had a policy of patience and forbearance at the time believing they could maintain normal diplomatic relations with Havana. They were wrong, and the relationship between Beijing and Havana has grown closer since 1989.

President Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, exchanged congratulatory messages with Raul Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, and Miguel Diaz-Canel in September 2020 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two communist dictatorships.

In September 1960 the Cuban government diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two regimes would collaborate closely together. 

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Chairman Mao Zedong dining in 1960

Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

This was at a time that Havana still had normal diplomatic relations with the United States. Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States were severed on January 3, 1961.

Relations between China and Cuba cooled in 1964 when the Castro regime sided with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet  split, but warmed again in 1989 following the Tiananmen Massacre. The Castro regime was one of the few governments to support the massacre, and the Castro regime had distanced itself from the Soviet Union viewing Perestroika and Glasnost  as existential threats to their rule.

Chinese Premier Li Peng and Fidel Castro in Havana in 1995

Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union provided Havana with expertise in biological warfare and biotech that had been denied the Chinese due to the above mentioned split. The Castro regime beginning in the late 1980s began offering that knowledge to their counterparts in Beijing and signed a  formal agreement to produce monoclonal antibodies in 2002.

The two regimes worked closely together during the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019.  Above is a video presentation given in April 2020 on this relationship.

At the United Nations Human Rights Council on July 1, 2020 the Castro regime took the lead in backing the new security law in Hong Kong that effectively ends autonomy there.

Diaz-Canel doubled down on Havana's alliance with Beijing during this visit to mainland China.