“Don’t let China Capture Cuba,” is the headline on an article in the Aug. 26 The Hill by Chinese-American neocon Gordon G. Chang, of the extreme right-wing Gatestone Institute, known for its attacks on Muslims and its pro-Zionist views. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, a mouthpiece for the war party, was Gatestone’s president from 2013 to 2018. Chang rails that China is involved in subversive activities in Cuba, in the form of a “persistent intelligence-gathering presence,” directed at the United States. He quotes from the State Department’s July report, “Cuba: the capital of 21st Century Communism,” arguing that “it’s China, not Cuba, that is the real capital of communism this century,” but explaining that Cuba is where “the ambitions of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran converge.”
Again quoting from the report, he asserts that Cuba is a “force multiplier” for an “anti-American coalition” and that as part of that coalition, the Chinese “actively run three of Cuba’s 18 known signals intelligence locations.” Chang lists those locations, citing a 2024 report from the Anglophile Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) as his source. For added emphasis, he drags out the ubiquitous China-hater from the U.S. Army War College, R. Evan Ellis. Ellis, he said, recently told him that the Chinese may have been operating the listening posts since as early as 1993 and that they will probably hold on to the “strategically valuable” facilities “until the day they are kicked out.”
