It's China, Cuba needs $8-10 billion USD, money that China isn't that eager to put into Cuba, but Trump's constant warmongering against Cuba has given China the opportunity to put a bunch of spy stations on the island.
#savedyouaclick
#savedyouaclick
Cuba doesn't have a lot of foreign currency, but it does have a lot of cheap labor, often shockingly skilled labor. Boiling it down to a cost in dollars may not be easy, let alone saying "China won't spend that".
These kinds of claims would really benefit from additional information regarding the nature of such spy stations. What would they do and why? I don't think Cuba is exactly a top tier sigint location.
They could install radar, but that's not spying.
Setting up reliable and fully controlled spy networks within the borders of a hostile country is hard. Like casting Idris Elba as James Bond (to borrow Trevor Noah's quote).
With a few in Cuba, they've got proximity to develop HUMINT, gather OSINT and SIGINT, with potential tracking of US military movements in the Caribbean and Atlantic at super-low latency.