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China-Cambodia: More than just
friends?
By Julio A Jeldres
In July, in a message of congratulation to the
leadership of the People's Republic of China on the 45th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations
between Cambodia and China, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun
Sen hailed China as Cambodia's "most trustworthy
friend", despite that country's past support for the
Khmer Rouge.
Indeed, since the Vietnamese army
drove the Chinese ambassador and thousands of advisors
out with the Khmer Rouge in January 1979, China has
gradually regained a foothold in Cambodia and has become
Cambodia's most influential trade and political partner.
Relations between Beijing and Phnom Penh are the closest
they have been since the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge
regime collapsed.
Cambodia's close relations
with China began in July 1958, when the government of
then Prince Norodom Sihanouk recognized the People's
Republic of China and established an enduring personal
relationship with the late Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai.
Chinese leaders have not forgotten that it was
Sihanouk's Cambodia that helped break China's isolation
in the 1960s by campaigning at the United Nations (UN)
for the expulsion of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and
the seating at the UN of the People's Republic of China.
But while maintaining excellent relations with
the royal government of Cambodia presided over by
Sihanouk, China secretly aided the Khmer Rouge's
insurgent movement in the jungles of Cambodia, just as
it provided assistance and ideological guidance to
insurgent communist guerrillas in Burma (now Myanmar),
Malaysia and Thailand.
Since that time, China's
policies toward Cambodia have been singled out by one
fact: Beijing does not care who runs Cambodia, as long
as the ruler is amenable to helping China maintain its
strategic position in the region.
In 1970, after
a coup deposed Sihanouk, the prince took residence in
Beijing, where the Chinese leadership treated him with
all the honors due a head of state, providing him with
sanctuary and the means to struggle against Lon Nol, the
coup leader. However, Khmer Rouge ruler Pol Pot is said
to have became a protege of Beijing in the late 1960s,
after he was rebuffed by the Vietnamese leadership.
In 1975, after the Khmer Rouge took over
Cambodia, China became very influential in the country
and sent thousands of technicians to help the Khmer
Rouge revolution. Then in 1979, China decided to teach
Vietnam "a lesson" for its invasion and occupation of
Cambodia and for driving its protege, the Khmer Rouge,
from power, despite the fact that many Chinese residents
of Cambodia, or Sino-Khmer, were murdered during the
Khmer Rouge regime because they were considered members
of the bourgeoisie or were well educated.
Only
after the Paris Agreements of October 1991 were signed
was China able to come back to Cambodia, initially very
discreetly but, since 1997, in full force.
Yet
the return of China to Phnom Penh has not been welcomed
by all Cambodians, with many intellectuals and
politicians worried that because of the renewed
Sino-American rivalry in the Southeast Asian region,
Cambodia may once again become a pawn in the strategic
and geopolitical games of the two most powerful
countries in the world.
When current prime
minister, Hun Sen, sent tanks against his co-premier,
Prince Norodom Ranariddh - a son of King Norodom
Sihanouk - in July 1997, the international community
reacted over the political killings that followed, and
relations cooled with most of the country's Western
donors, who suspended almost all but humanitarian
assistance to Cambodia. Investors pulled out, scared by
the killings but also concerned by the regional economic
crisis of mid-1997, and the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) denied Cambodia membership within
the organization.
After the coup, Hun Sen, who
until then had an informal relationship with Beijing and
had received a lukewarm reception there in mid-1996,
looked around and determined that China had remained
silent about the July events and, moreover, had not
expressed concern over the killing of royalist
officials.
Former US ambassador to Cambodia Kent
Wiedemann, who once headed the State Department's China
section, believes the Chinese are "incredibly
sophisticated political analysts" and in Cambodia they
have demonstrated so.
In August 1997, China
granted US$6 million in assistance to Cambodia to build
hundreds of wells, and interior minister Sar Kheng
visited China to discuss cooperation "on security
issues", even though the outcome of those discussions
was never made public.
However, a few days
later, Hun Sen announced that the Taiwanese
representative office in Phnom Penh was being shut down,
despite Taiwan being one of Cambodia's major investors.
Hun Sen's actions endeared him to Beijing and
opened the door once again for Chinese influence in
Cambodia. China was the first country to recognize the
change of regime, after the July 1997 coup, and in
December of that year, China delivered 116 military
cargo trucks and 70 jeeps valued at $2.8 million,
offsetting the cessation of military aid by Australia
and other countries after the coup.
Since early
1999, China's influence in Cambodia has not ceased to
increase. In February of that year, Prime Minister Hun
Sen paid an official visit to China, the first he had
done in his capacity as Cambodia's strongman. Hun Sen,
who had written a long essay back in 1988 suggesting
that China "was the root of everything that was evil in
Cambodia", had now changed his tune and,confronted by
Western accusations of gross violations of human rights,
government corruption and lack of transparency, decided
to play "the China card" in his relations with foreign
countries.
After his February 1999 visit to
China, Hun Sen obtained $200 million in free-interest
loans and $18.3 million in foreign assistance
guarantees, prompting the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh
to acknowledge that the $218.3 million was one of the
highest aid amounts ever provided by China to any
country and calling Hun Sen's visit "a new high in
Cambodia-China relations".
Since then there has
been not a single month without a Chinese delegation of
some kind visiting Cambodia. The number of Cambodian
official delegations visiting China has increased
twofold. The presidents of both the Cambodian National
Assembly and the Senate have visited as have the
Cambodian ministers of interior, defense, foreign
affairs and others.
Warming relations reached
their peak in November 2000 with a highly publicized
visit by Chinese president Jiang Zemin. At a banquet
hosted by King Norodom Sihanouk, Jiang made a point of
underlining China's support for Cambodia's actions at
safeguarding its sovereignty, territorial integrity and
national unity and announced that he was canceling
Cambodia's debt with China to help stabilize the economy
of the small country.
China has actively boosted
its influence in Cambodia by not hesitating to take over
where Western multilateral lenders and other donors,
increasingly frustrated over the level of corruption and
the lack of response of the Cambodian government on such
issues as human rights, military and administrative
reforms, have given up. China, is not concerned by these
"Western benchmarks" and is prepared to deal with any
regime in the region as long as China's interests and
policies for the region are enhanced and protected.
By offering development assistance to Cambodia,
which is normally delivered through Chinese
government-controlled companies, Beijing ensures that
Taiwan, the largest foreign investor in Cambodia remains
politically isolated, something that Prime Minister Hun
Sen is more than willing to do to please Beijing.
From agricultural development, pharmaceuticals,
plastic manufacturing, textiles, sugar factories,
engineering and meteorology to education and Chinese
hospitals, China's presence is now very visible indeed
in the Cambodian capital.
But China's interests
go even farther. It wishes, by these informal alliances
with authoritarian regimes of the region, such as those
in Cambodia and Myanmar, first, to counter US influence
in the region, and second, to neutralize, if not
undermine, the cohesion of ASEAN. Since a number of
ASEAN states, discreetly supported by the United States,
are challenging China's territorial claims in the South
China Sea, the alignment of those states within ASEAN
considered to be pro-China would in effect prevent the
association from adopting a united front on that issue.
Finally, China wishes to weaken Hun Sen's links
with Vietnam, which go back to the time of the United
States' intervention in Vietnam and, subsequently,
Cambodia in 1970. Vietnam has long been seen by China as
its most serious strategic rival in the Southeast Asian
region. Apart from past acrimonious relations between
the two countries, Vietnam currently has two territorial
disputes with Beijing - both countries claiming
sovereignty over the Paracel Islands and the Spratly
Islands (see South China Sea: It's not all about
oil, September 6).
Many Cambodians are
worried, however, that in pursuing its interests in
Cambodia and the region, Beijing will not hesitate to
call for help upon controversial local figures, such as
Sino-Cambodian tycoon Theng Bunma, who has been banned
from the United States, Thailand and Hong Kong because
of alleged drug-trafficking activities.
It is
known that the Chinese Embassy has asked Bunma to
intervene on several occasions with his senior contacts
in the ruling Cambodian People's Party when Beijing does
not agree with the way the Cambodian government is
handling a particular issue. This situation recently
occurred over the issue of legislation to formalize a
mixed tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge leadership,
legislation China has always opposed.
Another
concern for the Cambodians is that most of the Chinese
firms doing business in Cambodia come from Guangxi
province, one of China's poorest, where corruption is
rampant and where a past provincial deputy party chief,
Xu Binsong, was sentenced to life in prison in August
1999 for taking bribes and influence-peddling.
This kind of investment and assistance, critics
said, is welcomed by certain Cambodian politicians and
business leaders, who in many cases have reason to avoid
public scrutiny.
Julio A Jeldres is a
former senior private secretary to King Norodom Sihanouk
of Cambodia and the king's official biographer.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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