The use of alien elements to assist in Cuban communism’s longevity is old stuff. When will the U.S. and the West figure this out and finally decide to act with valor and common sense?
A June 8 article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the communist regimes of Cuba and China had reached an agreement on a cash-for-spying scheme. Beijing would pay Havana billions to install a state-of-the-art electronic eavesdropping facility on the island. The WSJ credited the information to an intelligence source. CNN also claimed to validate the WSJ report from its intelligence information pool. Both media outlets imply that the Cuban dictatorship has granted China permission to do this. Would this be a novel occurrence?
Since 1949, Mao declared a hundred-year marathon to extend its hegemony over the world. This informal declaration of war smartly changed strategy upon its revamping of the economic model from an orthodox socialist economy to a mercantilist socialist variant in the 1970s. This politically and centrally guided economic system of state capitalism, targeted market manipulation, and intense foreign investment courting opened the way of a shift in war tactics. China perfected the use of asymmetric warfare and developed the bankroll capacity to do so.
Cuban and Chinese communism never severed relations or contact, despite the 
overarching symbiotic affair with the USSR. The fall of Soviet communism and the subsequent 8-year hiatus of the short-lived Russian democratic experiment (1991-1999) which died with Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet authoritarianism, brought Castroism closer to Mao’s heirs. Excluding Venezuela, which is a virtual Cuban colony, China has become Cuba’s most important trading partner. The bond has not just been commercial.
North Koreans are often cited in Bejucal, Cuba. This is because China, as part of its benefactor relationship with the Kim dynasty regime, uses North Korean labor to help run many of its overseas operations. In this town just shy of 17 miles (ca. 27 km) south of Havana, the Chinese communists have had a high-tech radar surveillance facility functioning as early as 2018. This espionage jewel may well have been operational much earlier. China has not been timid in its appreciation of the benefits of spying. Nor has it been concerned over American potential objections.
The biggest espionage base in the Western Hemisphere is in Argentina, and China owns and runs it. This deal was orchestrated by the Kirchner-Fernandez socialist team. This military-run, high security space station of sixteen-story spying devices, sitting in over 494 acres of the Patagonian region, is a stellar intelligence gathering and disseminating center. No one can say that China is not committed to achieving its allotted hegemonic goals. Castro’s Cuba, the third-oldest Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the planet, is a natural ideological ally of the world’s primogenitor continuous communist state (China).
Communist Cuba receives most of its revenues from Venezuelan oil resales, neo-slave labor leases (like the North Koreans), Cuban exile remittances, drug trading, and information trafficking. This industry of selling data and assisting in disinformation campaigns has been a constant for the island’s Marxist government. The non-democratic regimes of Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, in addition to China, have functionally formed an alliance. This axis of evil is also composed of the Western Hemisphere’s drug cartels, Cuba’s colonial satellites (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia) and other Sao Paulo Forum governments. The prized information, generated by spying, has made the Cuban communist regime a first-class subversion player.
The Havana Syndrome, the Viktor Leonov Russian intelligence vessel’s familiarity with Cuban waters, the Lourdes Signals Intelligence facility near the country’s capital, and the Bejucal base are only the tip of the iceberg of Castroism’s enamor with espionage. The verity of a greater investment by China in the field is not new or news. The survivability of Castro-Communism, to a great degree, can be explained by its indulgence in constant warring using intelligence and counterintelligence operations. This requires data, money, and powerful partners. China has been and continues to fit that mold. Cuba lost its sovereignty sixty-four years ago. The use of alien elements to assist in Cuban communism’s longevity is old stuff. When will the U.S. and the West figure this out and finally decide to act with valor and common sense?