This is genius.
Cuba’s population is about 10.9 million. That means, if my math is right, this shipment has about 2.75 lbs of rice per Cuban citizen. That’s a LOT of rice- about 10-12 servings per person. And there’s another 3 similar shipments coming.
This is not some useless token, this is a ‘feed the country for a week or two’ type gift.
You can bet your sweet ass that neither the people nor the government of Cuba are likely to forget this anytime soon. The ‘gentle giant’ USA is choking them, China feeds them. It’s a powerful message.
Of course it’s China so there’s always a price eventually. I suspect Beijing’s goal here is additional influence within Cuba, and I don’t see any reason why Cuba would have any objection. A few boatloads of rice gets you a LOT of good will in a starving country.
Gentle giant? The United States is a capitalist enemy.
That’s sarcasm.
China’s price for foreign aid is almost always lower than Western capitalists’. It’s why their belts and roads initiative and BRICS have been so insanely successful.
More usefully- their price will likely be something Cuba is happy to do. IE, access to sell Chinese goods in Cuba? Hell yes bring them in bring our people up to modern standards. Set up a base somewhere? Of course Cuba is neutral between US and China, we lease space to US we can lease space to China too. China becomes Cuba’s primary trade partner? Hell yes sign us up US sure isn’t trading with us…
And let’s not forget China is already selling Cuba a ton of solar power tech. For a nation like Cuba that’s a godsend, because it reduces their reliance on foreign oil.
access to sell Chinese goods in Cuba?
Not just.
Persuade Nicaragua again to build a new shipping canal wider than Panama.Ortega wants China to fund his megaproject.
Indeed and right in the backyard of the USA. The Batista supporters in the US can go f-themselves for screwing over their own people.
I think it’s more of a way to keep people in line and oppressed. The government is already insanely impressive and now you want food? Well you better stay in line.
If China actually cared they’d send agriculture equipment so they can produce their own food for sustainability. But they don’t want that, they want to keep them sucking the teet every month. If you don’t, well the last shipment might just be late…
China could send basically a ‘farm in a box’ (equipment, seeds, fertilizer, instructions) and even if it was wildly successful you don’t get food out of that for 3-12 months. Cuba needs food NOW.
Cuba also needs energy a lot more than farm equipment…
Cuba doesn’t need agricultural equipment, it needs oil, which the US is preventing it from getting. Since China doesn’t have oil, it is massively building out Cuba’s solar capacity. In the meantime, they are delivering life-sustaining shipments of food.
You seem to be very misinformed about which governments are helping the Cuban people, and which are harming. Cuba wouldn’t need any of this help without US sanctions.
(And ironically, the situation you are describing aligns almost precisely with how USAID functioned before Trump destroyed it.)
This exactly. Cuba has cars and farm equipment but it doesn’t have the fuel to run them.
The solar tech China is sending Cuba will probably be their most valuable trade. Every bit of Cuba that no longer relies on US-controlled foreign oil is a godsend to Cuba. A car that charges on solar power is energy independence for them.
(would be for the US too but we’re not under sanctions and we’ve got enough gas to ignore that small truth).
People who are starving right now due to economic terrorism can’t wait for next season’s harvest to eat.
They have agricultural equipment already. They can’t operate it because the US is blockading oil shipments.
I’m so distracted by the 50kg sacks of rice. That seems like such a pain in the ass size to deal with compared to 20-30 kg for seemingly no reason. I think that’s too large to even fit neatly on standard sized pallets so I don’t think you’re even saving volume.
And then it seems like way too much for end distribution unless it’s going to a community kitchen.
If my wife could order those 50kg bags, she would. But I made her carry the last 25kg she ordered so I think she got the message. 50kg is indeed pushing it.
Because all they’ll do it cut the bag, then have everyone walk to wherever with a bowl and get a scoop every day. They won’t just be giving homes 50kg bags and saying “good luck”, like you said that’s a lot of logistics. Also it’s about control, if you need to get it every day it can be revoked if you aren’t aligned with the government. If they just drop off a 50kg bag, well now you’ve got a food supply stockpiled and you’re more likely to protest/rebel.
Kinda wild how you’re hypothesizing about the Cuban government rationing food based on ideology when the US is literally doing exactly that with the explicit goal of creating as much misery as possible.
Relevant detail: in the last 50 years the US has murdered 38 million people through the use of economic sanctions on its ideological enemies.
BuT at WhAt CoSt?
Besides all the political and moral issues and all that, I’m super curious to see how a massive influx of rice into Cuba in a time of starvation will affect their cuisine. Lots of interesting cultural foods come from periods of adapting new sources of nutrition into an existing cuisine. Obviously they already have access to rice, but I wonder how they will adapt to doing their best with eating mainly rice for some time.
Rice and beans are a staple in LATAM. Also a perfect protein.
Unsurprisingly making Central and South America slowly pivot to the Middle Kingdom is an ongoing project, as Agent Krasnov in the Oval Office destroyed USAID and screws the UN, turns El “Salvador” into a supersized concentration camp.
On the way to checkmate in 2049.
Send Cuba more solar panels and electric vehicles!
If you collect a paycheck you are on the same side as the people this shipment is meant to feed.
States spend a lot of energy to keep people from realising this.
To help quantify, that’s a little under 3 pounds (1.3kg) per person, assuming perfectly equal distribution.
That’s surprisingly decent. Fair play to them.
It’s also politically advantageous for China
In all fairness, helping Cubans against the Trump administration would be politically advantageous for everybody in the World but those Far-Right politicians getting money from American billionaires.
Honestly, it’s in their favor too. Cuba is incredibly close to the US. They’d be a valuable trade partner, if nothing else. This shit is in no one’s favor.
What and let an alternative to capitalism exist right off America’s coast? One that managed to achieve a longer life expectancy and all sorts of medical breakthroughs despite the blockade?
Ya think?
Decency - the polar opposite of Trumps behaviour
We let it through? I’m shocked.
Yes, rice is not oil.
Also it isn’t preventing Israel from starving children, so A-OK
It was really 500 tonnes. The rest was drone parts hidden inside.
Your source being?
Must be truly desperate to bargain with such a fledgling state.
Username checks out
China is buying in all the good will that USA has lost through Trump being a general dick to everyone, for example by discontinuing USAID. Doing these sort of small things all over the world gives China a lot of soft power because those nations will obviously favor China over USA in the future.
But this is not Chinas fault, nor Trumps fault, because the US people put Trump in its place though everybody knew from his first period and through his announcements (Project 2025) what this highly potentially will mean.
Or maybe have empathy for the fact the poor people of that country have little electricity or food because of the behavior of the US. Maybe it’s a humanitarian thing to do instead of letting people suffer.
Countries don’t have empathy, or at least ones with hundreds of millions or even billions of citizens for sure don’t.
China has realized what the US used to know: Providing aid gives you soft power around the world. They’ve been doing this for over a decade now. The US, meanwhile, handicapped USAID.
Having some power in that region would certainly benefit China if it ever needs to keep the US at bay while invading Taiwan, for an example. How is any future POTUS, or even the current piece of shit, going to explain positioning a large amount of ships near Taiwan when China has a bunch of equipment ready in Cuba to shell the everloving fuck out of Florida?
I have to admit, the idea of Mar-a-Lago being reduced to a crater tickles me pink. Too bad that comes with Taiwan getting fucked over…
Well, they could also bomb much of the rest of south Florida, essentially the entire Miami metro area.
And to be fair I doubt it’ll ever come to that. Just the knowledge of that being a possibility might be enough that the US literally wouldn’t intervene in a war between China and Taiwan. As long as there’s a more rational president in charge than Trump, at least. Which may happen in a few years, or it… may not.
I suspect that Vance and friends are just as crazy as Trump, just better at hiding their spots. Their brains haven’t turned to mush from age, but Thiel and the like still want to do the apocalyptic things.
sure but Cuba is also a perfect strategic “partner” (read: location) for any nation that has a war plan against the US
Funny that you’re getting downvoted, because that’s already happened at least once… Good ol’ Ollie North!
A country with empathy, lol, that there is a fabrication of truths.
Like chyna so mean… The united NATO powers are crushing baby skulls.
A bad country doing a good thing doesn’t make them good.
China has lifted almost a billion people out of the extreme poverty left by colonial exploitation and drug wars.
Lead the way on actual green transition globally and is basically the only large nation meaningfully trying to avert the catastrophe that will render a huge swath of the planet uninhabitable in a few generations displacing billions of people.
Stood up to US and EU exploitative colonial hegemony in favour of international law repeatedly. China continually advocates for actually following the RBO in the face of rapacious USA warmaking.
China has not engaged in an offensive war since the revoltion.
Distributed vaccinations cheaply to nations the west would not sell to during the last pandemic which killed fucking millions of people.
Has set up alternative funding programs for countries to develop that are far less exploitative than IMF loans.
Is all of this self interested to some degree? If course it is. Is it self interested to the detriment of the world? I think you would struggle to make that case when held up next to other superpowers.
What the fuck is your threshold for a good nation? Has anyone in the 21st century met it?
Literally doing all your comfy life related things
Doing endless r and d
Advancing in renewables
Trying to build a proper community (some might disagree here) The list goes on
You wont find a perfect country but what China doing to the world and its people is far from “bad”.
Except for the whole genociding Muslims thing.
Surveillance and exceptional human rights abuses but overall nothing more than what the average Chinese person is subject to. Apart from those wierd stories about Chinese uncles sleeping in their beds, put out by the BBC.
We’re literally exterminating Arabs, wiping out entire bloodlines, but somehow we give a sht about Muslims in one corner of China? A bit suspect no?
The US doing bad things doesn’t absolve China of doing bad things. It’s not a zero sum game
We can care about both
Are you referring to the US?
No, China. The US stopped doing good things.
No, that would be a bad country doing a shit thing (or 20), doesn’t make them good.
The last few years have really soured me on the idea of nations in general.
I live in hope the NZ is a net positive on the world - but with the current right of centre coalition we have in power I’m losing that hope, especially at a local NZ level.
It is election year…vote like it matters.
I’ve been horrified by what the Kiwi government has been doing
I was disgusted when they were voted in, but sadly, for some reason Aotearoa seems to have become more acutely stupid
Meanwhile, Australia is actually progressing a little bit
Meanwhile, Australia is actually progressing a little bit
If you mean progressing towards a fascist decline sure. We’ve had literal Nazis march in the street alongside politicians who gave their support, an extremely brutal crackdown on the right to protest, right wing parties surging, continued undermining of healthcare and education in favour of the bourgeois, expansion of fossil fuel projects, hardcore backing of ultraright wing militarism in the usa and Japan.
Cunt’s fucked mate.
The US doesn’t really do many good things lately.
