Presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hu Jintao (
The visit was the final stop on Hu's first Latin American tour, which also took him to Brazil, Argentina and Chile, where he attended an APEC summit.
Hu was welcomed at the Havana airport by Defense Minister Raul Castro, the president's brother and the No. 2 in the Cuban government. Hu then headed to the presidential palace for talks with Castro.
There, Castro, recuperating from a broken knee, welcomed the Chinese leader with a "Viva China!" from his wheelchair before inviting Hu into the government palace for private talks.
"We sincerely wish that the Cuban people march without surrender on the road to building socialism," the Chinese leader said.
Hu said his "visit will achieve our goal of deepening our friendship and financial cooperation," he said.
Both sides have hailed the importance of the 29-hour visit, which came as reformist China enjoys a booming economy, while Cuba, the only communist state in the Western Hemisphere, remains mired in a deep crisis.
Castro already has made it clear he expected the visit to bring significant investments to the Caribbean island nation, whose economy has suffered a steady decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Only two hours after his arrival, Hu and Castro publicly signed 16 cooperation agreements, including one boosting the extraction of nickel from Cuba's top world reserve estimated at 800 million tonnes.
The agreement calls for building an extraction facility that will produce 20,400 tonnes of nickel and cobalt per year.
Located in the Cuban province of Holguin, 800km east of Havana, the Las Cariocas plant will boost Cuban nickel production from its current 75,000 tonnes a year to almost 100,000 tonnes, a long-sought goal of the Cuban government.
The plant will be 49 percent owned by China's Minmetal and 51 percent by Cuba's Cubaniquel monopoly.
China and Europe are the chief importers of Cuban nickel.
Other agreements signed by Hu and Castro favor the biotechnology, tourism, telecommunications, fishing, education and health sectors.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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