Will a Castro-less Cuba adopt the Chinese path to progress? 

Last week, the Castro-era came to an in Cuba. Well, not quite. Yes, Raul Castro stepped down as the president of Cuba last Thursday (19th April), and Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, took office as new president. But it is not a Castro-less era yet. Raul Castro will continue to play a significant role in the decision-making as he will remain the leader of Communist Party and the head of the military till the next Party Congress in 2021.

However, the writing on the wall is clear. It is a transitional phase in Cuban Polity: since 1959 communist revolution, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader, ruled Cuba with an iron hand for almost a half-century and passed on the baton to his younger brother and fellow revolutionary in 2006. Mercifully, Raul Castro did not seek to perpetuate a dynastic rule, just as his North Korean counterpart did. The choice of Diaz Canel as the new president has ushered in a new era in Cuba.

Raul is still hovering in the background; but he is already 86. And Raul has himself announced that Diaz Canel would also be the Party’s First Secretary (subject to party congress’s approval, but that is a given in a communist system) in 2021. So Diaz Canel is most likely to emerge as the most powerful leader of Cuba in another three years, without a Castro surname. Raul Castro deserves credit for this transition.

What are the implications of this change of guard at the highest echelons of power? Will Cuba under Diaz Canel tread a new path, even as it swears by the Castro revolutionary line?

There is no doubt that the Castro era created a generous social welfare programme – free healthcare, education and social security system — that has been a cornerstone of the Cuban economy for last six decades. But there is still no denying that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the biggest benefactor of the communist revolution in Cuba, the Cuban economy has been in a tight squeeze, especially with the US-led embargo in operation for decades. President Barack Obama initiated moves to normalise relations with Cuba and to lift the embargo in 2014, but President Donald Trump has all but reversed that process.

The Cuban economy badly needs to embark upon an alternative course if the task of the state is to go beyond fulfilling the basic needs of the people. Many Cubans are fleeing the nation because they find the environment both politically and economically strangulating. Only 11 million Cubans remain in the island today.

Can there be a better hope for tomorrow for these Cubans? Can Cuba chart a new course? It has often been debated if the Deng Xiaoping path of growth that China adopted in 1980s — keep a tight control over the polity through the one-party rule but let the economy open up for competition between private and public sector, between domestic and international companies – will also be proved useful to Cuba.

Fidel Castro was an orthodox communist who could not bring himself around to the idea of adopting market-economy reforms. His brother Raul Castro, when he replaced Fidel to the high office, took baby steps to usher in a certain degree of privatisation – he allowed Cubans to buy and sell residences; he relaxed rules to help Cubans become self-employed entrepreneurs - but he backtracked when the new businessmen made a clamour for structural reforms to successfully pursue the economic activity. There was a backlash from within the communist party bigwigs who felt that the economic concessions would threaten the communist stranglehold.

Raul Castro did not want to go down in history as being reckoned as Mikhail Gorbachov of Cuba; Gorbachov’s glasnost and perestroika brought in welcome openness to polity and economy of the Soviet Union, but it ended up destroying the hegemony of the communist party and the Bolshevik revolution. Raul had the Chinese example to look up to: to put a firm lid on the political openness but allow a large window to economic freedom. But he was not fully convinced about the utility of this path for Cuba and largely retraced his tentative steps.

Will Diaz Canel be in a position to break free from ideological orthodoxy to decisively pursue the Deng line -- which successive Chinese leadership including Xi Jinping have followed -- with greater conviction? Today, China has emerged as the economic powerhouse of the world. Can Cuba dream of becoming the economic engine of the Caribbean by embracing the market-economy magic wand that China wields today?

Perhaps it is not likely to happen soon. All the available information tell us that the new president is, like his predecessors, quite steeped in economic and political orthodoxy. He is neither a votary of economic liberalisation nor of political freedom. That is why possibly he was chosen – that he would uphold, not deviate from, the ‘revolutionary line’.

Today, it is status quo for Cuba. Nobody knows about tomorrow