ANDRES OPPENHEIMER China has advice for Cuba on reforms

BEIJING -- The People's Republic of China's prestigious National Academy of Sciences is offering a kind word of advice to the sister socialist Republic of Cuba: If you want your economy to grow, embrace market reforms.
When I first read the not-so-subtle recommendation in a study titled "Cuba's Economic Reforms in (the) Chinese Perspective" during a visit to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Latin American Studies, a highly influential 45-researcher government think tank, I couldn't help raising my eyebrows in amazement.
What? A Chinese government think tank criticizing Cuba, I asked myself. It's a rare occurrence: Even after two decades of China's dramatic opening to the West, the official line in China continues to be one of blind support for Cuba, a fellow communist country.
Several senior Chinese officials I interviewed during my 10-day visit expressed great admiration for Cuba's president-for-life Fidel Castro. Foreign diplomats told me that the Cuban ambassador is the king among Latin American ambassadors in Beijing.
But, looking a little bit closer, I suspect that the institute's report on Cuba reflects the real thinking about Cuba within the Chinese regime. Before we get into why China maintains the facade of an enthusiastic support for Cuba, let's look at the study, which was authored by the institute's deputy director Jiang Shixue in late 2002 but until now has not circulated widely in the West.
The study praises Cuba's limited economic reforms, but states that they are far from enough. It notes that while China's economy has grown by a phenomenal 9.5 percent average over the past two decades, and has more than doubled its per capita average income since it embraced market reforms in the late '70s, Cuba's economy has remained stagnant at best.
"Compared with Cuba, China has made greater progress in stimulating economic development (and) raising people's living standards," the report says.
"What can Cuba learn from China?" it asks.
Among its conclusions:
ULesson No. 1: The Cuban regime should change its "theoretical foundation" and openly embrace market reforms. "Cuba's reforms are not based on any clear and well defined theory," it says.
While China's former leader Deng Xiapoing, who started China's economic opening, was a pragmatist who said that "the market can also serve socialism," Cuban leaders "insist that Cuba will not walk towards market economy." Deng called on China's leaders to be "more liberal, braver and swifter" in pushing free market reforms. Castro has preached the opposite.
ULesson No. 2: Cuba should speed up the pace of its so far minimal market reforms. "As some Chinese scholars have pointed out, the Cuban leadership should be more liberal and more brave in such areas as ownership restructuring and opening to the outside world."
ULesson No. 3: Cuba should allow some people to get rich, instead of punishing wealth. "For Cuba, it seems that it is also necessary to let some people get rich first. China's experience has proved that this policy will effectively stimulate people's initiative to work, and therefore speed up the economy," the paper says.
ULesson No. 4: Cuba should "improve its ownership structure," which in Communist Party jargon means privatizing state-owned companies. While China has privatized more than 60 percent of its economy, and the figure is expected to increase rapidly in coming years, Cuba's economy is nearly totally in state hands.
"Cuba needs to quicken its steps in this regard," the report says.
My conclusion: The differences between China and Cuba are striking.
China already has privatized more than 60 percent of its economy, has more than 10,000 tycoons who have amassed more than $10 million each, and has lifted 250 million people out of poverty over the past two decades.
Meantime, Cuba has made all of its 11 million people uniformly poor, and they have gotten progressively poorer.
Why does China officially maintain its old-time alliance with Cuba? Most likely because China is becoming a capitalist country all but in name, and the Chinese regime needs to keep a communist facade to justify its one-party dictatorship.
X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.