The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a long history of supporting the global working class. This has recently included vital support for and cooperative projects with socialist Cuba that aid both countries’ people. 

Direct interventions had taken a backseat since the 1978 opening-up of the Chinese economy. Recently, the stability wrought from socialist construction and the rapid growth of the Chinese economy — which some people call the Chinese economic miracle — have allowed the PRC to assert its sovereignty in the face of escalating U.S. trade, political and propaganda attacks.

Cuba, another of the countries whose economy remains based on socialist ownership and control, has also been forced to weather an onslaught of U.S. imperialist economic assaults. Since Cuba is much smaller than China and closer to the U.S. enemy, U.S. hostility has a greater negative impact. This is largely due to the different material conditions of China and Cuba and the differing approaches taken by both countries’ governing communist parties as a result.

China is a massive country of 1.4 billion people with a vast economic potential on a world scale. Beginning in the 1980s, China’s economy evolved into the manufacturing base of much of the world. At first, China provided inexpensive consumer goods to the U.S. and later supplied the rest of the imperialist-dominated world market with all sorts of industrial goods. 

Meanwhile, Cuba lost its powerful Soviet economic partner following the counterrevolution in that country in the early 1990s. This loss led to what the Cubans called the Special Period of economic hardship of the 1990s, with the Cuban economy strangled by the U.S. blockade. This blockade not only stops Cuba from trading with the U.S., it penalizes third countries that conduct economic activities with Cuba. Washington has imposed this blockade in some form since 1962, but before 1991 Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union countered its impact.

Since the 1980s, China has brought 800 million of its people out of poverty, a gain unmatched elsewhere. China has gained in economic stability and strength and has strengthened its military. Meanwhile, there has been weakening U.S. domination of the world, as shown by capitalist economic instability since the 2008-09 financial crisis, the U.S. inability to handle the Covid-19 crisis and the setbacks to major U.S. military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. 

These imperialist setbacks and gains for China have opened room for the PRC in recent years to more actively defy U.S. imperialism while avoiding direct or proxy conflict.

China’s recent more activist foreign policy has encompassed other socialist states, suggesting a possible new building of solidarity between countries that share complicated histories. An example is BRICS, an association of states that are either confronting hostility from U.S. imperialism or trying to achieve some independence from imperialist economic domination. Cuba became a BRICS partner state in 2023, and Vietnam became a partner country this June. 

China, now Cuba’s largest trading partner, displayed an act of solidarity between the two countries by donating solar panels that would add 120 megawatts to the electrical grid earlier this year. (China-Cuba solidarity, WW, May 7, 2025) 

China expands solidarity with Cuba

Months later, China is now expanding its support for Cuba with both words and deeds.

On July 2, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning strongly condemned the U.S. blockade of Cuba, calling it a “profound disaster” for the development of Cuban society and a violation of international law. (teleSUR) She reiterated that the PRC staunchly supports Cuba’s socialist development based upon its “national conditions.”

Mao Ning’s remarks were made in direct opposition to the recent National Security Memorandum on Cuba the Trump regime issued. She also called for the U.S. to remove Cuba from its state sponsors of terrorism list. Trump re-added Cuba to this list on the first day of his second administration.

In direct solidarity, China and Cuba are continuing their joint venture in biopharmaceuticals that began in September 2023. A year later, the two countries signed an agreement to build a new cooperative laboratory linking the Cuban Center for Immunoassay (CIE) and the Chinese Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). This new biotech lab is primarily researching the SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) and influenza A and B viruses.

In February, scientific collaboration reached new heights with the inauguration of the first Sino-Cuban biopharmaceutical company in the Chinese city of Changzi. The company is focused on the development of high-end equipment for the production of antibody pharmaceuticals. 

China and Cuba both boast a history of scientific achievements, particularly in the biomedical field. Increased scientific cooperation between the two countries is proving to be a powerful basis for the two socialist countries to bilaterally strengthen their solidarity.