In a statement on Tuesday, the Chinese government reaffirmed its support for its fellow Communist regime in Cuba, and that it would “stand ready to work with Cuba” in suppressing the new wave of anti-government protests across the country, as reported by Breitbart.
The statement was issued by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who recently gained notoriety for falsely claiming that the United States was responsible for creating the coronavirus, which actually came from China and has since spread throughout the world. Zhao described the protests as “foreign interference in Cuba’s internal affairs,” and declared that China “firmly supports what Cuba has done in fighting COVID-19, improving people’s livelihood, and upholding social stability.”
“I’d like to stress that China stands ready to work with Cuba to implement the important consensus of the two heads of state,” Zhao continued, “and is firmly committed to deepening friendly relations between the two countries.”
Zhao also took direct aim at the United States, echoing the Cuban government’s false claims that America is responsible for the spontaneous grassroots protests: “As the Cuban side pointed out, the US embargo is the root cause of Cuba’s shortage of medicines and energy. The US should fully lift its embargo on Cuba and play a positive role in helping the Cuban people overcome the effects of the epidemic.”
China and Cuba, two of the only remaining Communist nations in the world after the end of the Cold War, are united by their membership of China’s international infrastructure alliance known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Cuba joined the BRI in 2018 when President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, in Beijing. Diaz-Canel is the hand-picked successor to the decades-long Castro regime, first started by Fidel Castro in 1959 and continued by Raul Castro upon his older brother’s death in 2016. Raul announced his intentions to step down from power earlier this year.
The protests in Cuba broke out suddenly over the weekend, with thousands of Cubans taking to the streets in cities all across the island nation. While the mainstream media and many left-wing politicians have falsely attributed the unrest to the lack of coronavirus vaccines, the protesters have made it clear that their dissatisfaction is with the regime as a whole. Crowds chanted “Libertad” (Spanish for “liberty”) in the streets, and some even waved the American flag, a universal symbol of freedom that had similarly been seen in the Hong Kong protests against China in recent years.