Posted on 01/11/2022 5:00:49 AM PST by Kaslin
Is history repeating itself in Cuba? Is Communist China using its Belt and Road Initiative to turn Cuba into a dependent colony like it was under the former Soviet Union? Is Cuba about to become Communist China's first military base in the Western Hemisphere?
These are important questions. Why? Because the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear holocaust occurred in 1962 after the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, allowed his country to become a vassal state of the former Soviet Union. When Castro seized power in 1959 by overthrowing Cuban autocrat Fulgencio Batista, he promised the Cuban people an end to poverty, illiteracy and widespread public health problems. Unable to follow through on his promises, Castro turned to the Soviet Union for help.
In so doing, he allowed Cuba to become a virtual Soviet colony, dependent on its power-hungry, anti-American despot, Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was quick to use his iron-fisted hold over Cuba to move against the United States. He demanded Castro allow construction of a sophisticated signals intelligence site at Lourdes, Cuba, and bases, less than 100 miles from our shores, for ballistic nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States. When American reconnaissance aircraft revealed their presence, the world teetered on the edge of nuclear war for 14 days as President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev engaged in the most dangerous game of cat and mouse ever played.
Now, history appears to be repeating itself, but this time the aggressor is Xi Jinping, the totalitarian head of the People's Republic of China. Whereas Khrushchev was boastful and bombastic, Xi is cunning, devious and deceitful. He is wrapping the PRC's slimy tentacles around Cuba under the guise of economic assistance through its Belt and Road programs.
The innocent sounding Belt and Road Initiative is the PRC's strategy for gaining control of economically weak nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America by saddling them with debt they cannot repay. The PRC provides loans, primarily to poorer nations, for badly needed infrastructure projects. When, predictably, these nations cannot repay the loans, they become puppets of Communist China. Using Belt and Road agreements, the PRC gains not just influence over third-world nations, it gains control. The debtor nations find themselves in the same unenviable position as the person who borrows money from the Mafia and cannot pay it back. The Mafia owns him or her from that point forward.
On Dec. 26, 2021, the Chinese embassy in Havana announced He Lifeng, director of the PRC's National Development and Reform Commission, signed a Belt and Road agreement with the Cuban government. With this compact, Cuba became another on a growing list of nations surrendering their sovereignty to Communist China.
For an example of how the PRC uses Belt and Road agreements, consider what happened in Sri Lanka. When the Sri Lankan government was unable to repay a loan of $1.4 billion, the PRC seized the port of Hambantota and demanded a 99-year lease to operate it.
Although Communist China aims its Belt and Road agreements primarily at countries rich in essential minerals such as Cuba, one would be naive to believe all Xi wants from Cuba is minerals. Retired Admiral Craig Faller warned during a Senate hearing in March 2021 the PRC's objectives were to "establish global logistics and basing infrastructure in our hemisphere in order to project and sustain military power at greater distances." Faller described the PRC's intentions as "insidious," "corrosive" and "corrupt."
We agree with Faller. Xi is trying to pick up where Khrushchev left off but is smarter in how he goes about it. For Xi, step one is to economically colonize Cuba. Step two is to turn Cuba into a Communist Chinese military base in the Caribbean.
That's actually wrong. Castro promised democracy after Batista overthrew the previously elected president. Cuba's economy, middle class, literacy and health care were second only to the US in the western hemisphere and ahead of much of Europe at the time.
Not colonizing, but keeping the US busy.
True and Cuba was a net food exporter before Castro.
Any third world country needing a hands up China has targeted in it’s ‘China Expansion” and or “Belt and Road”.......sending it’s people to do most of the work they begin also helps keep their people employed...and they have loads of people they can afford to “export”.....which is a commodity for China.
There’s no way China could lockdown 20 million people over covid in their three major cities now and still keep their economy going without it’s investments worldwide.
Cuba cannot function without external subsidies. The USSR is no longer there, and Putin doesn’t seem that interested.
Who’s left? China.
Belt and Road is already starting to go sour with many countries.
Communists taking over communists. Popcorn. I wonder how Spanish sounds with a Chinese accent and vice versa. What would be the words to Guantanomeda in Chinese? What are they in English, anyway? Have a cigar!
Isn’t there a large petroleum deposit north of Cuba, south of Florida?
I would think this is a key objective for the Chinese.
It would be too bad if there was a big oil spill 70 miles south of Key West.
I heard on Hugh Hewitt that China is soon to collapse financially because of a corp named Evergreen. Like the U.S. in 2008. Poor people being locked up will start to starve.
Short answer is yes. CCP exploits every where that they can where we aren’t present, and often where we are - see Afcrapistan.
For China, it’s a game of Chess. Biden stumbles all around the board, knocks over the pieces and leaves his used depends on the board.
Colonizing usually means sending a lot of folks to live in the colonized area. Do we see a bunch of Chinamen living in Cuba?
The CCP wants to colonize the world with Han Chinese, then kill off the rest.
Cuba is just a small step along the way and a useful platform to colonize the US, using all the square mile of farmland and other holdings they have bought as places to begin.
ever have cuban fried rice????
havana chinetown is the largest group of Chinese outside of china...
Well I try not to listen from the standpoint of who is right or wrong...rather what each is saying, who they’re cozy with and where they visit in meetings etc. China’s a different beast than most....they always lie and maneuver themselves but make it sound as if they should be trusted, and that what they do is a good thing for all.....it never is and...they never should be trusted.
Their people are a commodity they utilize....and also monitor highly. The rural people always are worse off although China has begun to focus more in that direction than past decades.
Larger than Frisco, Chicago, or NYC? In Toronto’s China-town, last I visited years ago as a boy, you can get weird delicacies like 100-year-old eggs and salted plums.
That what have heard, don’t remember just when Chinese arrived in cuba
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