HAVANA -- China's President Hu Jintao made a landmark visit to Cuba Tuesday, bearing millions of dollars in aid and promises of closer future trade ties.

The Chinese leader brought 4.5 tons of humanitarian aid for victims of three hurricanes that battered Cuba this year, which was handed over late Monday after Hu's arrival at the Jose Marti International Airport.

Receiving the gift, Cuba's Minister of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Rodrigo Malmierca said that Cuba "deeply appreciates the visit of President Hu Jintao, at the exact moment the country is struggling to recover and continue its development."

It was the third donation China has made to assist Cuba in its recovery from hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma, which caused $10 billion worth of damages in the space of two months. Hurricane aid from the Chinese government and businesses has totaled more than $2.5 million.

Later he accompanied President Raul Castro on a visit to a school for Chinese students, where the Cuban leader sang snippets of a song in Chinese praising late Communist Party Leader Mao Zedong.

"I learned to be a student like you, young like you and will remain so all my life," Castro told Hu and 300 Chinese students in the town of Tarara, east of Havana.

During the ceremony, President Hu thanked the Cuban authorities for supporting young Chinese students in Cuba, noting that by 2011, some 5,000 Chinese will have learned Spanish in Cuba since the inception in 2006 of the exchange program which he called a "sign of friendship and cooperation ... between the Cuban people and the Chinese people."

During his 36-hour visit -- his first to Cuba since 2004 -- Hu plans to oversee the signing of various cooperation deals.

Hu also visited convalescing former president Fidel Castro, 82.

The Chinese leader held a "long conversation" with the former Cuban leader and described finding Castro "very recovered," according to the Chinese official Xinhua news agency. The two appeared in a picture published on the website.

Fidel Castro has met with several foreign leaders in recent months, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Hu arrived in Havana late Monday after attending the world economic crisis summit in Washington and making a stopover in Costa Rica, where he launched free-trade talks and a string of cooperation deals.

His Latin America tour, which also includes an Asia-Pacific summit in Peru, comes as China expands its diplomacy and investment around the world, eyeing natural resources and developing markets for manufactured goods and even weapons.

Chinese exports to Latin America grew 52 percent in the first nine months of 2008 to $111.5 billion, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.

China was Cuba's second business partner, after Venezuela, in 2007 with $2.7 billion of combined trade, and one of its main creditors.

The two countries have remained close for decades, their Marxist Socialist past a driving force in relations, and they have increased ties since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"This visit is an expression of the excellent existing links between both parties and governments," said an official statement published in Cuba's official government paper Granma on Monday.

Hu's visit comes less than two weeks before the arrival of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in another Russian bid to fortify relations with outspoken US adversaries in Latin America on the back of a trip to Venezuela.

China offered key support to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro when Cuba fell into dire economic straits after the former Soviet Union collapse, forging a divide which Russia has recently sought to reduce.

Current deals include Chinese oil prospecting and extraction in Cuba -- onshore and offshore -- and two Cuban eye hospitals in China and a third under construction.

Since Raul Castro officially assumed power in February, taking over from his ailing older brother Fidel, analysts suggest he is moving toward China's market economy model, although authorities still underline support for Cuba's state controlled economy.

Raul Castro recently sought foreign investment for prospecting and exploitation of gold, silver, zinc and copper deposits.

China already invests in nickel, Cuba's main export, and hydrocarbons on the island which produces the equivalent of 80,000 barrels of oil and gas per day.

Granma on Monday lauded the Chinese model but underlined "an unequal distribution of wealth in the country, marked difference between city and countryside and the erosion of the environment."