HAVANA - CHINESE President Hu Jintao arrived in Cuba on Monday for a two-day visit to promote further economic ties with the island struggling to recover from three hurricanes and the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis.

Mr Hu, making his second trip to Cuba, was expected to sign accords on the economy, trade, education and other matters on a trip Cuba hailed as a sign of the close relations between the two Communist-run countries.

He was greeted at Havana's airport by First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, a dragon dance performed by Cuban youths, and some 50 members of the local Chinese community who waved Cuban and Chinese flags.

'My visit is aimed at increasing friendship and cooperation between our two nations, and working together with our Cuban comrades to build a promising future', Mr Hu said in a statement.

China is Cuba's largest trading partner after Venezuela at US$2.3 billion (S$3.5 billion) in 2007 and is looking to increase that number.

The Asian giant currently buys about 400,000 tons of sugar annually from Cuba and is estimated to get close to half of Cuba's annual nickel production of 75,000 tons a year.

Due to damage from hurricanes Ike, Gustav and Paloma, which caused US$10 billion in damage when they rampaged through the island this year, Cuba may be hard-pressed to promise more of either product in the near-term.

Chinese loans have helped Cuba rebound from the hardships that followed the 1991 collapse of its Cold War benefactor, the Soviet Union, and those loans are starting to come due.

Western diplomats said it was likely that restructuring those debts and future credits will be on the agenda as Mr Hu meets with Cuban officials, including President Raul Castro.

Mr Hu was scheduled on Tuesday to visit a school near Havana where hundreds of future Chinese diplomats, translators and functionaries are studying Spanish.

On Tuesday evening, he was to attend a ceremony where accords with Cuba will be signed, then depart on Wednesday en route to Peru for an Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

It was not known if Mr Hu would meet with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who was in power when Mr Hu visited in 2004.

The ailing, 82-year-old Castro has not been in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006 and was formally replaced as president by brother Raul Castro in February, but he occasionally meets with visiting heads of state.

Even though the two countries are run by communists, they have very different policies. While China long ago adopted market economics, Cuba still has a Soviet-style command system where more than 90 per cent of the economy is in state hands.

'This visit is an expression of the existing excellent ties between both parties and governments and constitutes a gesture of close friendship between the people of Cuba and China', Granma, the newspaper of Cuba's ruling Communist Party, said on Monday in a front-page story.

Mr Hu came to Cuba from Costa Rica, where he said the Central American nation was benefiting from closer relations with Beijing after it cut diplomatic ties to Taiwan last year.

On Saturday, Mr Hu attended the G20 global economy meeting in Washington. -- REUTERS