This docum ent does not reflect the intent or official position of the bill sponsor or House of Representatives.
STORAGE NAME: h0351.LFS
DATE: 1/8/2024
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STAFF ANALYSIS
BILL #: HM 351 Condemning the Emerging Partnership between the Chinese and Cuban
Governments
SPONSOR(S): Porras
TIED BILLS: IDEN./SIM. BILLS: SM 318, SM 540
REFERENCE ACTION ANALYST STAFF DIRECTOR or
BUDGET/POLICY CHIEF
1) Local Administration, Federal Affairs & Special
Districts Subcommittee
Burgess Darden
2) State Affairs Committee
SUMMARY ANALYSIS
The United States and Cuba have had a contentious relationship dating back to Fidel Castro’s overthrow of the
United States-backed Cuban government and establishment of a communist state allied with the Soviet Union.
China and the United States have had a complicated relationship since 1949, alternating between friction and
collaboration on trade, climate change, and Taiwan.
There has been a notable increase in Chinese espionage activity against the United States in recent years. In
May of 2014, five Chinese hackers, allegedly with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army, were indicted on
charges of stealing trade technology from United States companies. In June 2015, United States authorities
signaled that there was evidence that Chinese hackers were behind the major online breach of the Office of
Personnel Management and the theft of data from twenty-two million current and formal federal employees. In
February 2023, a spy balloon from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) navigated across the United States,
following previous incidents in parts of Latin American and in Taiwan.
Various news sources reported that in June 2023, China and Havana discussed setting up an electronic
surveillance facility in Cuba, according to a US official and a congressional aide. National Security Council
spokesman John Kirby and Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio denied these reports.
The memorial provides historical background of relations between the United States, Cuba, and China. The
memorial urges United States Secretary of State to condemn the emerging partnership between the Chinese
and Cuban Governments and the establishment of Chinese espionage and military capabilities in Cuba.
Legislative memorials are not subject to the Governor’s veto powers and are not presented to the Governor for
review. Memorials have no force of law, as they are mechanisms for formally petitioning the federal
government to act on a particular subject.
This memorial does not have a fiscal impact on the state or local governments. STORAGE NAME: h0351.LFS PAGE: 2
DATE: 1/8/2024
FULL ANALYSIS
I. SUBSTANTIVE ANALYSIS
A. EFFECT OF PROPOSED CHANGES:
Present Situation
Communism
Karl Marx proposed his ideology of Communism in his Communist Manifesto in 1848.
1
Communism is a
political ideology and form of government by which the state owns the major resources in a society,
including property, production, education, agriculture, and transportation.
2
Communism seeks to
eliminate the class system through redistribution of income
3
and envisions a world without private
property; all property is communally owned and each person receives a portion of the property based
on what he or she needs.
4
A strong central government controls all aspects of economic production and
provides citizens with food, housing, health care, and education.
5
Communist regimes throughout history typically promise a utopian society in which the working class
will enjoy unprecedented prosperity. However, communist regimes have historically been correlated
with massive poverty and repression.
6
Documented historical injustices of communist regimes include
mass murder, repression, deprivations of freedoms, loss of property, and criminalization of ordinary
economic activity.
7
Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin (Soviet Union), Mao Zedong (China), and Fidel
Castro (Cuba) are among the most notorious communist leaders.
8
Communist governments currently exist in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos.
9
Cuba
On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro led an overthrow of the Batista regime and gained control of Cuba.
10
During Castro’s tenure, Cuba engaged in military and economic relations with the Soviet Union.
11
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cuban economy faltered as Soviet economic
subsidies to Cuba ceased, and without Soviet support, Cuba fell into an economic crisis.
12
As a result,
Cuba’s gross national product fell by nearly one-half by 1993; exports fell by 79%, and imports fell by
75%. The standard of living of the population also declined significantly.
13
Castro ruled Cuba until July
31, 2006, when he shifted power to his brother, Raul Castro. In February 2008, Fidel Castro officially
relinquished the presidency to Raul Castro.
14
Raul Castro maintained the presidency until 2018, when
Miguel Diaz-Canel succeeded him.
The United States and Cuba
1
Britannica, The Communist Manifesto, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Communist-Manifesto (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
2
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Center for European Studies, Communism: Karl Marx to Joseph Stalin,
https://europe.unc.edu/iron-curtain/history/communism-karl-marx-to-joseph-stalin/ (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
3
Id.
4
Sarah Pruitt, How are Socialism and Communism Different? (November 4, 2020), https://www.history.com/news/socialism-
communism-differences (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
5
Id.
6
Ilya Somin, Lessons from a Century of Communism, Wash. Post., Nov. 7, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2017/11/07/lessons-from-a-century-of-communism/ (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
7
Id.
8
History, Communism Timeline (July 9, 2019), https://www.history.com/topics/russia/communism-timeline (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
9
Sarah Pruitt, How are Socialism and Communism Different? (November 4, 2020), https://www.history.com/news/socialism-
communism-differences (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
10
History, Communism Timeline (July 9, 2019), https://www.history.com/topics/russia/communism-timeline (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
11
Fidel Castro Biography, https://www.biography.com/dictator/fidel-castro (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
12
One World Nations Online, History of Cuba, https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/History/Cuba-history.htm (last visited Jan. 3,
2024).
13
Id.
14
Biography.com, Fidel Castro Biography, https://www.biography.com/dictator/fidel-castro (last visited Jan. 3, 2024). STORAGE NAME: h0351.LFS PAGE: 3
DATE: 1/8/2024
The United States and Cuba have had a contentious relationship dating to Fidel Castro’s overthrow of
the United States-backed Cuban government and establishment of a communist state allied with the
Soviet Union.
15
Following Fidel Castro’s revolution, nationalization of American-owned properties, and
Cuba’s growing trade relationship with the Soviet Union, the United States government began imposing
economic penalties and instituted a ban on nearly all United States exports to Cuba. In 1961, President
John F. Kennedy expanded the sanctions and export ban into a full economic embargo, which included
strict travel restrictions into Cuba.
The United States severed diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961 and began pursuing covert operations to
topple the regime, resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion. In October 1962, the United States discovered
the existence of Soviet military installations in Cuba containing nuclear weapons. President Kennedy
demanded that the Soviets remove nuclear weapons from Cuba and ordered the Navy to impose a
maritime quarantine of Cuba to prevent additional weapons from reaching the island.
16
In 1982,
President Ronald Reagan labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism due to its ties to international
terrorism and support of terrorist groups in Latin America.
17
In more recent years, the United States has shown continued support for the embargo against and
strict disapproval of Castro’s Cuba. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Cuban
Democracy Act of 1992, which stated
18
that Cuba had repeatedly demonstrated consistent disregard for
internationally-accepted standards of human rights and democratic values. The act noted that the
Cuban government restricted the Cuban people’s freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and other
rights recognized by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
19
Showing continued
support of the embargo between the United States and Cuba, President Bill Clinton signed the Cuban
Liberty and Solidarity Act of 1996 into law.
20
On December 17, 2014, under President Barack Obama,
trade restrictions and sanctions were lessened with Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive on United
States-Cuba Normalization.
21
However, President Donald Trump reversed President Obama’s directive
and re-classified Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism on January 12, 2021.
22
Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo cited Cuba’s repeated provision of support for acts of international terrorism by harboring
United States fugitives and Colombian rebel leaders as well as Cuba’s support for Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro.
23
China
On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) which ended the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and
the Nationalist Party. China’s mainland ties to communism led the United States to suspend diplomatic
ties with the PRC for decades. For more than twenty years after the Chinese revolution of 1949, there
were few contacts, limited trade, and no diplomatic ties between the two countries. Until the 1970s, the
United States continued to recognize the Republic of China, located on Taiwan, as China’s true
government and supported that government’s holding the Chinese seat in the United Nations.
24
15
Council on Foreign Relations, U.S.-Cuba Relations (July 13, 2021), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-cuba-relations (last visited
Jan. 3, 2024).
16
Id.
17
Mark P. Sullivan, CRS Report for Congress: Cuba and the State Sponsors of Terrorism List (Updated May 13, 2005),
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/RL32251.pdf (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
18
Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-484, H.R.5323, 102nd Cong. (September 24, 1992),
https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-bill/5323 (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
19
Id.
20
Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-114, H.R.927, 104th Cong. (March 12, 1996),
https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/927 (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
21
Presidential Policy Directive: United States-Cuba Normalization (October 14, 2016), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-
press-office/2016/10/14/presidential-policy-directive-united-states-cuba-normalization (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
22
U.S. Dept. of State, State Sponsors of Terrorism, https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/ (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
23
Matt Spetalnick, Trump Returns Cuba to U.S. List of State Sponsors of Terrorism, Reuters, Jan. 11, 2021,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-terrorism-list/trump-returns-cuba-to-u-s-list-of-state-sponsors-of-terrorism-
idUSKBN29G1Y9 (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
24
U.S. Dept. of State, Office of the Historian, The Chinese Revolution of 1949, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-
rev (last visited Jan. 3, 2024). STORAGE NAME: h0351.LFS PAGE: 4
DATE: 1/8/2024
Despite market reforms in the late 1970s, the modern Chinese state remains a communist system, like
those of Cuba, North Korea, and Laos.
25
Since coming to power in 2012, paramount leader Xi Jinping
has consolidated his control over the CCP and increasing asserted Chinese power on the global stage.
In early 2018, China’s constitution was amended to abolish presidential terms limit, allowing Xi to
remain in office indefinitely.
26
The United States and China
China and the United States have had a complicated relationship since 1949, alternating between
friction and collaboration on trade, climate change, and Taiwan. The Soviet-backed North Korean
People’s Army invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. The United Nations and the United States
rushed to South Korea’s defense. China, in support of the communist North, retaliated when United
States, United Nations, and South Korean troops approached the Chinese border. In August 1954,
President Dwight Eisenhower lifted the United States navy blockade of Taiwan, prompting Chiang Kai-
shek to send thousands of troops to the Quemoy and Matsu islands in the Taiwan Strait. Mainland
China's People's Liberation Army shelled the islands, and Washington signed a mutual defense treaty
with Chiang's Nationalists. In 1955, the US threatened a nuclear attack on China. Crises erupted again
in 1956 and 1996.
27
In spring 1989, thousands of students protested in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, demanding democratic
reforms and an end to corruption. On June 3, the government sent in military troops to clear the square,
killing hundreds. The United States suspended military sales to Beijing and froze relations. In October
2000, President Clinton signed the United States-China Relations Act of 2000, which granted Beijing
permanent normal trade relations and allowed China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. In
2006, China overtook Mexico as the US's second-largest trade partner, after Canada.
28
There has been a notable increase in Chinese espionage activity against the United States in recent
years. In May 2014, a United States court indicted five Chinese hackers, allegedly with ties to China’s
People’s Liberation Army, on charges of stealing trade technology from United States companies. In
response, Beijing suspended its cooperation in the U.S-China cybersecurity working group. In June
2015, United States authorities signaled that there was evidence that Chinese hackers were behind the
major online breach of the Office of Personnel Management and the theft of data from twenty-two
million current and formal federal employees. Ahead of the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in May
2015, United States officials stated that images from United States naval surveillance provided
evidence that China was placing military equipment on a chain of artificial islands.
29
In January of 2020, President Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed the Phase One
Agreement, which was a breakthrough in the nearly two-year trade war between the world’s two largest
economies.
30
The trade deal required structural reforms and other changes to China’s economic and
trade regime in the areas of intellectual property, technology transfer, agriculture, financial services,
and currency and foreign exchange.
31
In late January 2020, the COVID-19 virus is first reported in
Wuhan, China with leading officials in both China and the United States blamed the other side for the
pandemic.
32
25
Council on Foreign Relations, The Chinese Communist Party, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinese-communist-party (last visited
Jan. 3, 2024).
26
China anniversary: How the Communist Party runs the country, BBC (October 5, 2022), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-
49631120 (last visited Jan. 3, 2024). See also Tom Phillips, Xi Jinping’s power play: from president to China’s new dictator?, The
Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/04/xi-jinping-from-president-to-china-new-dictator (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
27
Council on Foreign Relations, U.S.-China Relations 1949-2023, https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-china-relations (last visited Jan. 3,
2024).
28
Id.
29
Id.
30
Id.
31
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, China Phase One Agreement, https://fas.usda.gov/topics/china-phase-one-
agreement#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20United%20States,services%2C%20and%20currency%20and%20foreign (last visited
Jan. 3, 2024).
32
Council on Foreign Relations, U.S.-China Relations 1949-2023, https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-china-relations (last visited Jan. 3,
2024). STORAGE NAME: h0351.LFS PAGE: 5
DATE: 1/8/2024
President Biden and China’s President Xi met in person for the first-time during Biden’s presidency in
November of 2022. Both leaders expressed a desire to ease bilateral tensions and agreed to reopen
communication channels, including climate talks that were suspended months earlier.
33
Not long after
the meeting, in February 2023, a PRC spy balloon navigated across the United States. Over the course
of seven days, the balloon sailed from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to the coast of South Carolina, where it
was intercepted and destroyed by an F-22 fighter jet. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his
trip to China after this incident. Chinese spy balloons have floated over American airspace on several
occasions in the past six years, as well as doing so in parts of Latin America and over Taiwan.
34
China and Cuba
Sino-Cuban relations have improved since the end of the Cold War and they continue to develop and
increase in both the economic and political fields. For Cuba, China is a strategic ally because of its
world role, and its increasing economic strength. For China, Cuba is a vital link with Latin America and
the Caribbean.
35
Various news sources reported in June 2023 that China held discussions with Havana about setting up
an electronic surveillance facility in Cuba, according to a United States official and a congressional
aide. It was unclear whether China and Cuba had a formal agreement in place for the base.
36
National
Security Council spokesman John Kirby and Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de
Cossio denied these reports.
37
United States Senators Jim Risch, John Barrasso, Bill Hagerty, Pete
Ricketts, and Ted Cruz introduced the Countering Espionage and Surveillance Entities in Cuba
(CEASE) Act in November 2023 to impose sanctions on any foreign person that has engaged in a
significant transaction or provided material support to or for a Chinese military or intelligence facility in
Cuba.
38
Effect of the Memorial
The memorial provides historical background of relations between the United States, Cuba, and China.
The memorial urges United States Secretary of State to condemn the emerging partnership between
the Chinese and Cuban Governments and the establishment of Chinese espionage and military
capabilities in Cuba.
The memorial calls for copies of the memorial to be dispatched by the Secretary of State to the
President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United
States House of Representatives, the United States Secretary of State, and each member of the
Florida delegation to the United States Congress.
Legislative memorials are not subject to the Governor’s veto powers and are not presented to the
Governor for review. Memorials have no force of law, as they are mechanisms for formally petitioning
the federal government to act on a particular subject.
B. SECTION DIRECTORY:
33
Id.
34
Michael Sobolik, Preparing for the Next Spy Balloon, American Foreign Policy Council (Feb. 15, 2023),
https://www.afpc.org/publications/articles/preparing-for-the-next-spy-balloon (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
35
Carlos Alzugaray Treto, Cuban-Chinese Relations after the End of the Cold War, University Press of Florida (January 2014),
https://academic.oup.com/florida-scholarship-online/book/23445/chapter-abstract/184482600?redirectedFrom=fulltext (last visited Jan.
3, 2024).
36
Dan De Luce, Abigail Williams and Andrea Mitchell, Is the Biden administration downplaying China's plans for an eavesdropping post
in Cuba?, NBC News (June 10, 2023), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-administration-turning-blind-eye-
chinese-provocations-rcna88347 (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
37
Natasha Bertrand, Cuba gives China permission to build spying facility on island, US intel says, CNN (June 9, 2023),
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/politics/cuba-china-spying-facility/index.html (last visited Jan. 3, 2024).
38
CEASE Act, s. 3225, 118
th
Cong. (Nov. 2, 2023). STORAGE NAME: h0351.LFS PAGE: 6
DATE: 1/8/2024
Not applicable.
II. FISCAL ANALYSIS & ECONOMIC IMPACT STATEMENT
A. FISCAL IMPACT ON STATE GOVERNMENT:
1. Revenues:
None.
2. Expenditures:
None.
B. FISCAL IMPACT ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
1. Revenues:
None.
2. Expenditures:
None.
C. DIRECT ECONOMIC IMPACT ON PRIVATE SECTOR:
None.
D. FISCAL COMMENTS:
None.
III. COMMENTS
A. CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES:
1. Applicability of Municipality/County Mandates Provision:
Not applicable. This memorial does not appear to affect county or municipal governments.
2. Other:
None.
B. RULE-MAKING AUTHORITY:
The memorial neither authorizes nor requires executive branch rulemaking.
C. DRAFTING ISSUES OR OTHER COMMENTS:
None.
IV. AMENDMENTS/COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE CHANGES
Not applicable.