Raul Castro sings in Chinese

Juventud Rebelde article

“More than 5,000 Chinese students will graduate in Cuba between 2006 and 2001,” said Chinese President Hu Jintao during a visit to the seaside Tarará neighborhood in Havana; the visiting guest was accompanied by Cuban President Raúl Castro.

During a warm encounter with some of the Chinese students, President Hu Jintao noted that Fidel Castro himself, along with Raúl Castro, planned and promoted the educational exchange program, which had taken great care to see to the living and studying conditions of the young Chinese on the island.

Hu Jintao expressed the gratitude of the Chinese government and people to the Cuban people and authorities, as well as to the teachers of the Asian students.

“This is the largest exchange program in the field of education since the establishment of the diplomatic relations between China and Cuba. It is also an example of the development of friendship and cooperation between the two countries,” Hu Jintao said at a political-cultural ceremony held at the facility where 1,130 Chinese students live and study.

Cuba was the first Latin American country to receive students from China, and is the nation that now educates the largest number of them.

In his speech, Hu Jintao mentioned how three of students from the Chinese province of Sichuan joined a Cuban medical team that travelled to China to participate in rescue and assistance operations following the earthquake that shook the region in May. He noted how they also took part in reconstruction work at the affected areas.

The Chinese president said this is a good example of how people can serve their nation when they are committed to their country and have the skills to do so.

Hu Jintao encouraged the students to take advantage of this opportunity and to acquire the scientific and cultural knowledge they need to be useful for their country.

Equally, he called on them to demonstrate the spirituality of the new generation of Chinese youth and to honor their best traditions through respect and solidarity.

“I hope you can become messengers of the strengthening friendship between the two peoples,” said the president to about 330 Chinese students participating in the political-cultural event. They represented the more than 1,900 nationals being educated on the island, who are distributed between western Havana, the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Jagüey Grande, Matanzas Province; and in the Santiago Figueroa School, in the southern Havana municipality of San Antonio de los Baños.

Homage to China

Raúl Castro closed the meeting, and to the surprise of all began to sing a song in Chinese that he learned in his youth. Meanwhile Hu Jintao signed the visitors’ book as proof of his distinguished presence in the educational center.

The Cuban leader explained that these were the only words that he knew in Chinese, and that he had learned them in Vienna, when he attended a youth congress in 1953, at the height of the Cold War. There, he had the opportunity to mix with the large Chinese delegation that attended the event.

“Since they arrived a few days beforehand, we begin us to teach each other songs, and that is where the only words in Chinese that I know came from.”

“I don’t have the memory that Fidel has, but I still remember this song,” said Raúl Castro, who urged those present to accompany him in singing the tune; several youngsters joined in.

The audience, identifying with Raúl Castro’s tune, loudly applauded the Cuban president’s initiative, who explained that that it was in homage to the performance of the young Guang Xilu, who was accompanied by a guitar duet and a flute in a song composed by students Zhang Zhu and Bie Geng. In flowing Spanish, the group recited the poem De qué callada manera, by Cuban national poet Nicolás Guillén. In addition, a choir of another twenty-eight students interpreted La Guantanamera.

Building bridges of friendship

The youth present at the event represented the different aspects of the program, which includes intensive Spanish, language improvement; and various university courses in Spanish, medicine, nursing, tourism, humanities education and psychology.

Rubén Zardoya, rector of the University of Havana, spoke about the human quality of the Chinese students. “We have been able to see that they are not only intelligent and happy, but also studious, responsible, self-willed, disciplined and endowed with a great sense of personal honor. We learn from them as much or even more than what they learn from us,” he said.

What talking about the mission entrusted by Fidel Castro of building up ties of friendship with China, Zardoya said there are no more solid links than the ones that are built on the basis of principles, culture and shared language.

He also explained that Cuba and China are working together in the creation of the Confucio Institute of the University of Havana; this will be a center to promote Chinese language and culture throughout Latin America.

Since September 2006, 2,544 Chinese students have come to Cuba to study Spanish.

“Our doors will always be open. I hope the Chinese youth will continue knocking them,” Zardoya said.

Fidel Castro: Meeting Hu Jintao

Prensa Latina article

Havana, Nov 20 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro highlighted the figure and prestige of Chinese Head of State Hu Jintao, with whom he held a warm and friendly meeting.

In his Thursday Cubadebate article, entitled “Meeting Hu Jintao,” Fidel Castro wrote “We wish the best to our distinguished and fraternal friend in his endeavors. We thank him for his encouraging visit and the honor of showing interest in a personal meeting with me.”

The Cuban leader stated that the Chinese president, who concluded Wednesday his official visit to the Island, “is a leader who is aware of his authority and practices it to the full.”

“President Hu Jintao reaffirmed his wishes to continue developing relations with Cuba, a country for which he feels great respect,” stated Fidel Castro, who talked with the visitor for 1 hour and 38 minutes.

REFLECTIONS BY COMRADE FIDEL: MEETING HU JINTAO

I didn’t want to speak much, but he forced me to elaborate. I asked a few questions but I mostly listened to him.

He related the exploits of the Chinese people in the past 10 months. The enormous nation with a 1.3 billion population has been hit by heavy and out-of-season snow, and an earthquake which devastated areas three times that of Cuba; in addition to the most serious international economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

I could see in my mind the great efforts of the Chinese people, its workers, its peasants and its manual and intellectual workers; the traditional hard-working spirit and the millennium-old culture of that country that preceded by thousands of years the colonial period imposed by the West, the same West where the current G-7 powers sit today with their force and wealth, playing a hegemonic role in the world economy.

What a great challenge for this leader in these times of globalization who in a gesture of goodwill came to visit our blockaded, harassed and threatened homeland! Are we not one a rogue state among 60 or more that can be the target of a pre-emptive attack? That much was said by the insane leader of the empire six years ago, the same man who just five days ago met in Washington with the G20!

China is the only member of that group whose State can regulate a high growth rate, at the pace it chooses, no less than 8% in 2009. The idea raised during the last Party Congress was to quadruple the per capita Gross Domestic Product between 2000 and 2020, measured in 2007 present values; that was the year the Congress was held. He spoke to me about that in detail. Thus, in conditions of peace, China will reach by the end of that period the figure of no less than 4 thousand dollars per capita income. I think that it should not be forgotten that China is an emerging nation whose per capita income at the time of the revolutionary victory –with a smaller population— hardly reached $400 per capita, and the country was completely isolated by imperialism. Just compare this with the $20 thousand per capita, or more, that developed capitalist countries such as Japan, the Western European nations, the United States and Canada currently enjoy. The per capita income in some of these exceeds the $40 thousand annually, even if their distribution in society is far from fair.

It is only by using $586 billion from its foreign reserves amounting to almost $2 trillions, accumulated through much hard work and sacrifices that this country is facing the present crisis and advancing. Is there any other country as sound as this?

The President of China, Secretary General of the Party and Chairman of the Party and Government Central Military Commissions, Hu Jintao, is a leader who’s aware of his authority and exercises it to the full.

The delegation he headed signed with Cuba twelve draft agreements towards a modest economic development in an area of the planet where the small territory in its entirety can be battered by increasingly intensive hurricanes, an evidence of true climate changes. The area affected by the earthquake in China is hardly 4% of the total area of that great multinational State.

Under certain circumstances, the size of an independent country, its geographical location and the size of its population can play a major role.

Would a country like the United States, which robs already trained minds everywhere, be in a position to apply an Adjustment Act to the Chinese citizens similar to the one it applies to Cuba? Obviously not. Could it apply it to the entire Latin America? Of course, it couldn’t there either.

Meanwhile, our marvelous, contaminated and only spaceship continues to circle around its imaginary axis, as one popular Venezuelan program likes to repeat.

It’s not an everyday occurrence for a small state to have the privilege of receiving a leader of Hu Jintao’s stature and prestige. He shall now continue his trip to Lima. There will be another great meeting there. Again, President Bush will attend, this time seven days closer to the end of his mandate.

It is said that in Washington, with only 20 leaders of the attending nations, the local security measures and those required by the host to thwart any attempt at physical removal, changed the habits and every day life in that city. How would it be in the great city of Lima? The city will surely be taken over by the security forces. It will be difficult to move around it because the well-trained members of the US supranational bodies will be there, and their interests and plans will only be known many years after the presidential terms of the eventual leaders of the empire are over.

I summed up for him some of our country’s assessments on the habits of our neighbors to the north, which tries to impose on us its ideas, its mindset and its interests with its fleet full of nuclear weapons and fighter planes; also our views on Venezuela’s solidarity with Cuba from the most critical days of the Special Period and the hard blows dealt by the natural disasters. Likewise, that President Chavez, a great admirer of China has been the steadiest advocate of socialism as the only system capable of bringing justice to the peoples of Latin America.

In Beijing, they treasure good memories of the Bolivarian leader.

President Hu Jintao reaffirmed his wishes to continue developing relations with Cuba, a country for which he feels great respect.

The conversation went on for 1 hour and 38 minutes. He was warm, friendly and modest, and his affection was obvious. I found him young, healthy and strong. We wish our distinguished and fraternal friend the best in his endeavors. Thanks for his encouraging visit and the honor of showing an interest in a personal meeting with me! Fidel Castro Ruz November 19, 2008 1:12 p.m.

While the US and British governments give billions to the banks…

… China spends on “low-income housing, water, electricity, disaster relief and transport”.

Article from the Financial Times.

China authorises $586bn stimulus package

By Geoff Dyer in Beijing

China announced on Friday a “massive infrastructure spending programme” as part of a new fiscal stimulus plan aimed at boosting the country’s rapidly slowing economy.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, authorised Rmb4,000bn ($586bn) of investment on infrastructure and social welfare over the next two years, although it did not say how much of the spending would be on new projects not already in the budget.

The government said the spending plan reflected a decision to adopt an “active” fiscal policy to deal with the global financial crisis, while monetary policy would be “moderately active”.

The announcement reflects mounting anxiety in Beijing that China’s economy is cooling much more quickly than was initially expected in the face of weaker international demand and a slowdown in the local property market.

Two recent surveys of manufacturers showed a slump in activity in October, confirming anecdotal evidence that the slowdown has accelerated in recent weeks. Some economists believe that growth, which was nearly 12 per cent last year, could fall to as low as 6 per cent next year without a substantial fiscal stimulus.

Beijing has also been under growing international pressure to take fiscal measures to boost its economy in the hope that continued strong growth can provide some counter-balance to recession in the developed world.

The government has already cut interest rates three times, scrapped quotas for bank lending and unveiled measures to help housebuyers and some exporters. However, economists said those measures had not been enough to overcome growing gloominess among companies and consumers.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, the State Council decided on Friday to “map out more forceful measures to expand domestic demand”, which would include “massive” infrastructure spending.

The investments will focus on low-income housing, water, electricity, disaster relief and transport, with railways expected to see a big increase. Spending in the fourth quarter of this year would be boosted by Rmb120bn beyond what was planned.

The government said it would introduce a long-awaited reform of value added tax which would cut costs for Chinese companies by Rmb120bn, Xinhua said.

In China’s 2006-10 Five Year Plan, the government said it would spend Rmb5,100bn on infrastructure projects.