By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 8 2004 (IPS)

The Cuban government is attempting to strengthen and expand trade with China, this country’s third-largest trading partner after Venezuela and Spain, while preserving the distance between its own brand of socialism and the giant Asian country’s “market socialism”.

Havana’s strategy is not only aimed at boosting cooperation and trade flows, which in 2003 totalled 357 million dollars, but at attracting greater investment from China as well.

Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Investment and Cooperation will present 41 proposals for joint ventures at the 8th China International Fair for Investment and Trade (CIFIT), one of the biggest such events in Asia, which runs Wednesday through Saturday in the southeastern port city of Xiamen.

According to the organisers, the fair, sponsored by China’s Trade Ministry and the Xiamen city government, is aimed at promoting cooperation and trade between China and the rest of the world.

The host city is one of China’s leading special economic zones, and is one of the main international business areas in Asia.

Cuba is exhibiting a varied sample of its main export products in the fair, and representatives of more than 30 state enterprises are taking advantage of the occasion to seek out new business opportunities, sources at the Ministry of Foreign Trade told IPS.

Some of the proposed projects are targeting medium-sized businesses, but others require large amounts of capital, the director of the Investment Promotion Centre, Anaiza Rodríguez, said in an interview with Cuba’s weekly business magazine, Negocios.

Rodríguez said there are already 10 joint ventures operating, six in Cuba and four in China, as well as three “cooperative production contracts”.

The four joint ventures in China are in the pharmaceutical industry, high-tech medical equipment, genetic engineering and biotechnology, including a company dedicated to the joint development, production and marketing of products for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases.

The Biotech Pharmaceutical Ltd Corporation is presently building a modern production plant in the Beijing Development Zone, one of China’s most important.

Although Cuba’s trade with China exceeded 600 million dollars in 1990, it had declined to 268 million dollars by 1995, largely due to the drop in this Caribbean nation’s sugar production.

Up to 1990, Beijing was buying more than one million tons of sugar a year from Havana.

In the past few years, China’s imports from Cuba have expanded to include nickel, biotechnology products, fresh citrus fruits, processed citrus products, steel, coal and tobacco.

Yang Shidi, economic and trade adviser in the Chinese Embassy in Havana, told the Negocios magazine in Cuba that bilateral trade amounted to 254 million dollars in the first half of the year, representing a 28 percent rise on the same period last year.

In addition, trade between the two countries is more balanced than in the past, with China exporting 139 million dollars worth of goods to Cuba and importing 115 million dollars.

Of the total trade balance in 2003, Chinese exports to Cuba stood at 236 million dollars and Cuba’s exports to China at 121 million dollars, said Shidi, who added that this Caribbean island nation is one of his country’s most important trading partners in Latin America.

The products that China imports from Cuba include tobacco, biorat (a biological rat poison), interferon (a drug that stimulates the immune system), high-tech medical equipment, vaccines and seafood.

Among Cuba’s most significant imports from China were a shipment of more than one million TV sets, the machinery for manufacturing bicycles, and telephone terminals to upgrade Cuba’s telecommunications system.

Since the late 1980s, China has revived cooperation with Cuba by granting soft government loans and donations, mainly for education and agriculture.

In 2003, China’s communist government gave Cuba a nine million dollar development loan, and it recently added the island to its list of official tourism destinations.

China could become an important source of visitors for Cuba’s growing tourism industry. The World Tourism Organisation reports that 17 million Chinese tourists travelled abroad last year.

Cuba and China established diplomatic ties on Sep. 28, 1960, but bilateral relations have been chilly at times, depending on each nation’s position within the former socialist bloc.

Analysts said the 2001 visit to Havana by then Chinese president Jiang Zemin and Cuban President Fidel Castro’s 2003 trip to Beijing confirmed that ties are now based on a footing of mutually advantageous trade interests and shared political values.

But while China’s economic model is an important reference point for Cuba, local authorities here underline that Cuban socialism must follow its own route, based on the preponderant role of the socialist state enterprise and the tendency towards centralisation.

Excerpt: