Asia-Pacific
US sanctions two Chinese state companies over military equipment for Cuba – Beijing’s response
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced measures against eight entities and two individuals over Cuba, including two Chinese state companies that, per Washington, supply equipment to Havana’s armed forces. Beijing calls the cooperation legitimate.
Washington is turning its sanctions on Cuba towards China as well. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday, November 5 measures against eight entities and two individuals, among them two Chinese state companies that, according to the American side, supply equipment to Havana’s armed forces.
“The United States will not tolerate subversive communist networks in our hemisphere,” Rubio wrote in his post on X. The Cuban regime, he argued, is kept afloat through state enterprises, joint ventures and offshore intermediaries, while the military equipment that sustains its armed forces is supplied by foreign backers.
CEIEC and Beijing H&C
The first of the two companies is the state-owned China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation (CEIEC), which exports defence electronics and security systems. CEIEC had been on the US Treasury blacklist since 2020 over the help it gave the Maduro government in Venezuela with internet restrictions and digital surveillance. The second is Beijing H&C Technologies, a subsidiary of CETC International (CETCI), part of the state electronics group CETC, which sells surveillance and security equipment. The State Department says that in 2026 both worked with the Cuban arms procurement company Sociedad Mercantil Duna to send military equipment to Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR).
The OFAC list also included the Cuban state companies TECNOSIME, which supports oil and gas extraction, and CUBAELECTRONICA, which imports electronics, as well as the shipping companies Internacional Marítima and Petromarca. Panama’s Tentacool Commercial and five Cuban-flagged tankers were also targeted: the Emilia, Gloria C, Maria Cristina, Esperanza and Lourdes. In OFAC’s documents the Esperanza is recorded with a former name, Nedas, and a previous Greek flag. Caroil Transport Marine, which declares an address in Limassol and had already been sanctioned over Venezuela, was added to the Cuba programme. The two individuals are Guillermo Faustino Rodríguez López-Callejas and Anie Rodríguez Lastres, who lives in Panama.
The Treasury simultaneously published a determination under Executive Order 14404, which opens the way for sanctions on those operating in the electronics, manufacturing, shipping and technology sectors of the Cuban economy. The move continues the Trump administration’s series of measures against Havana, days after the UN General Assembly voted by 130 to 17 for an end to the US embargo.
Cuba had pre-empted by denouncing Washington’s broader policy. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez wrote on November 5 in a post that over the past ten months the embargo had been strengthened as never before, with an energy blockade that Havana says amounts to a naval blockade and with secondary sanctions on anyone doing business with the island.
Beijing responded the next day. “Cooperation between China and Cuba is entirely legitimate,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, as recorded in the briefing transcript. China, he added, opposes unilateral sanctions without the approval of the UN Security Council and so-called “extraterritorial jurisdiction,” and will take “all necessary measures” to protect the rights of Chinese companies.