{"id":663006,"date":"2026-05-24T22:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/663006\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T22:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:07:10","slug":"cuba-receives-china-rice-shipment-amid-us-threats-blackouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/663006\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba receives China rice shipment amid US threats, blackouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cuba<\/a> took delivery of 15,000 tons of rice donated by China<\/a> on Sunday when the first of several promised shipments arrived at the port of Havana<\/a>, helping to somewhat alleviate acute shortages on the Caribbean island.<\/p>\n

“This noble gesture of solidarity will reach millions of consumers throughout all the provinces, in addition to our health and education institutions,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

“The heartfelt ties of friendship and cooperation that unite [Cuba and China] are strengthened in crucial moments,” he said.<\/p>\n

Chinese ambassador Hua Xin said on Cuban television that the deliveries represent “the largest food aid” from China to Cuba “in recent years.”<\/p>\n

The shipment is the first batch of 60,000 tons of rice that Beijing has pledged to help combat a dire economic situation in the communist country which has only been exacerbated since the United States<\/a> toppled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro<\/a> in January and halted exports of oil from Venezuela<\/a> to Cuba.<\/p>\n

Cuba faces blackouts amid economic crisis<\/p>\n

On Sunday, up to 64% of Cuba was set to be subjected to simultaneous blackouts, according to data from the state-run Electric Union (UNE) compiled by the Spanish EFE news agency.<\/p>\n

The Cuban government has recently acknowledged that the island’s energy situation<\/a> is “acute,” “critical,” and “extremely tense,” with some blackouts in the capital Havana lasting 22 hours or more.<\/p>\n

Last week, a record was set when 70% of Cuban territory was simultaneously without power during the moment of highest energy consumption. This week, the impact of these outages has fluctuated between 58% and 65% of the island.<\/p>\n

The Havana government has called the current US oil embargo \u2014\u00a0which has been imposed on top of a general US trade embargo in place since 1962 \u2014\u00a0“genocidal” and has accused Washington of “suffocating” the island.<\/p>\n

Cuba requires approximately 100,000 barrels of oil per day to meet its energy needs, only about 40,000 of which are supplied by domestic production. Various independent studies estimate that between $8 billion and $10 billion would be required to revitalize the Cuban energy system.<\/p>\n

US threats against Cuba<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump<\/a>‘s administration continues to step up political pressure on Cuba<\/a>, pushed by hardline Cuban-Americans in Florida, who have called for US-instigated regime change in their homeland for decades.<\/p>\n

But ousting Diaz-Canel is unlikely to be as straightforward as the operation to remove Maduro in Venezuela in January, not least due to the lack of an obvious alternative.<\/p>\n

“The security apparatus in Cuba has systematically dismantled every alternative or potentially alternative power source,” Orlando Perez, an expert on US-Latin American relations at the University of North Texas in Dallas, told the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

The Cuban military is\u00a0also a more cohesive and ideologically entrenched fighting force than Venezuela’s and \u200bmore likely to resist foreign intervention.<\/p>\n

Havana is also seen as more advanced in the fields of surveillance and intelligence after years of cooperation with the Soviet Union<\/a> during the Cold War<\/a>, and more recently with China.<\/p>\n

Edited by:\u00a0Saim Du\u0161an Inayatullah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cuba took delivery of 15,000 tons of rice donated by China on Sunday when the first of several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-663006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}