China is quietly supplanting Russia as Cuba's main benefactor (June 2025)
www.reuters.com

... Hours over rutted roads inland from Havana, the small Cuban city of Jatibonico is a snapshot of late 19th-century living, its streets crowded with horse-drawn carriages and lacking power much of the day and night.

The town's decrepit sugar mill -- once the country's largest -- sits idle, lacking the parts, electricity, and fuel it needs to operate.

Two years ago a Russian company, Progress Agro, announced it would import machinery, fertilizer, and know-how to revitalize the mill, which once employed 2,000 people.

"When are the (Russians) coming? That's all anybody talks about," said Carlos Tirado Pino, 58, a mill maintenance worker among the few to retain his post.

Meanwhile, just outside town and out of sight, three bulldozers clear an abandoned cane field to prepare for the installation of a Chinese-financed solar park that will deliver 21 MW of electricity - one of 55 similarly sized such solar parks underwritten by China across Cuba this year.

Cuba is in desperate need of help. Shortages of food, fuel and medicine, grueling hours-long blackouts and plunging tourism and exports - combined with renewed U.S. sanctions under the second Trump administration -- have devastated its economy.

A Reuters review of various sites on the ground suggests that where many of Russia's most recent promises have fizzled, China has discreetly stepped up to fill the void, pushing ahead with a number of critically-timed projects aimed at helping Cuba salvage its economy. ...