GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

It was once said of Fidel Castro that his "stomach is in Moscow but his heart is in Beijing." Now the opposite seems to be true.

Dmitry Medvedev's trip to Cuba this week may have the geopolitical dazzle, but nowadays it is China that does more to pay the bills.

When Hu Jintao visited the ailing former Cuban leader last week, Castro was happy to receive Beijing's largesse. But the problem for Cuba has been Castro's unwillingness to take Chinese lessons. Hu's trip, 30 years after Deng Xiaoping launched China's reforms, was a vivid reminder that for all the speculation about Raúl, the prospects for a similar process in Cuba are dim as long as Fidel remains on the scene.

Medvedev will find the elder Castro in a Russophile mood. In his new post-presidential incarnation as a columnist-cum-blogger, Fidel's paeans to the Russian Orthodox Church ("a spiritual force...not an ally of imperialism") have been only its most recent - and strangest - manifestation.

In July, he gave cryptic endorsement to suggestions from Russian air force officials in the newspaper Izvestia that strategic bombers could be deployed to Cuba. Soon afterwards, he went beyond the Cuban government's official line to give his unequivocal support to Moscow over the Georgia conflict.

China may not take part in the anti-American nose-thumbing that Castro enjoys. It even refused to develop a free-trade zone on the north side of the island for fear that it would antagonize the United States. But the numbers count. As well as being one of Cuba's leading creditors, Beijing is already Cuba's second largest trading partner, narrowly behind Venezuela and a more reliable long-term bet than Hugo Chávez's petro-solidarity.

Russia barely makes the top 10. The last Russian president to visit the island, Vladimir Putin, closed down Moscow's military intelligence-gathering facility at Lourdes in 2002. With it went the $200 million annual lease.

Hu was quick to drop in on the former Soviet base during his previous visit, where a more innocuous-sounding "University of Information Sciences" was established with Chinese equipment. Modern Chinese buses now compete for space on Havana's streets with 1950s Cadillacs.

But on the question of Cuba following a "China model," there is a fraternal split. In his early days in power, Fidel Castro was thought to have the greater affinity for Beijing of the Castro brothers. Both used to arrive unannounced at the Chinese Embassy to demand food from the chefs and to remain there, talking long into the night.

The break with China in favor of a more powerful and generous Soviet benefactor appeared a pragmatic rather than an ideological choice. Even after denouncing Mao Zedong as a "senile idiot," Castro's "revolutionary offensive" continued to draw its inspiration from Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Relations were patched up following a visit by a senior Chinese official, Qian Qichen, at the peak of the Tiananmen crisis and Cuba's desperate need for support after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Fidel Castro never reconciled himself with Deng's reforms (he once called Deng a "caricature of Hitler"). Castro seemed uninterested by his visits to the showcase cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai. There are stories that on a trip to Cuba in 1993, Communist party chief Jiang Zemin stayed up late into the night at his hotel preparing more convincing accounts of the "socialist nature" of China's reforms for the skeptical Cuban president.

The big hope for the Chinese was Raúl Castro. His lengthy tours of China featured a string of meetings to discuss lessons for Cuba from the Chinese experience. He invited a key aide to the former Chinese premier, Zhu Rongji, to lecture Cuban officials on China's economic reforms. And it was under Raúl's supervision that liberalizing experiments were undertaken in Cuban military enterprises.

So when Fidel stepped down, speculation was rife that a more pragmatic, Chinese-style economic opening was on its way. But reforms have been modest: a little loosening of agricultural markets; some greater freedom to purchase electronic equipment; the abolition of restrictions on Cubans entering international hotels.

There is speculation that the slow pace of change has been due to Raúl's reluctance to weaken his own political base - the military holding companies that dominate the economy. But much of the evidence points to Fidel's shadow.

Either way, external conditions are sharpening the choices. The financial crisis has given Cuba little room for anti-capitalist schadenfreude. Demand has weakened for nickel, Cuba's key export. Its leading benefactor, Venezuela, is taking a hit with plummeting oil prices. Other hoped-for anti-American allies, such as Iran and Russia, have emptier pockets too. Credit for Cuba is drying up and debt payments are being rescheduled. All this has come on top of the worst hurricane season in decades, which wiped over 10 percent off Cuba's GDP.

In Barack Obama, the Castros face an American president whom they will have a hard time blaming for Cuba's woes. It may come hard for Fidel, but he may finally have to face the fact that Chinese medicine is the most palatable option for communist regimes that want to extend their lease on life.