Hun Sen's diplomatic juggling act
By Geoffrey Cain
PHNOM PENH - More than any other Southeast Asian country, Cambodia finds itself
caught in the middle of competing United States and Chinese diplomatic
overtures. With Washington offering bilateral strategic initiatives and Beijing
rich financial assistance, Prime Minister Hun Sen has deftly balanced the
country's diplomacy between the two superpowers to his government's political
advantage.
In 2006, the US opened a massive new embassy in Phnom Penh, underscoring
Washington's new diplomatic commitment to the country. The facility includes
office space for fighting global terrorism, including a large US Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) presence and a new joint National Counterterrorism
Committee, established in 2007.
FBI director Robert Mueller pointed to the fact that Jemaah
Islamiyah operative Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, had taken refuge in a
Cambodian Muslim school before his capture in Thailand in 2003 as one reason
for setting up the new counterterrorism agency. US Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli
chimed in that unnamed radical Muslim groups were bidding to impose with
funding a stricter interpretation of Islam on the local Muslim Cham community.
China, on the other hand, has deployed commercial resources to win influence.
Since 2005, Beijing has offered up around US$600 million in annual economic
aid, with funds earmarked for roads, bridges and dams. Unlike the previous aid
received from Western donors - which in recent years accounted for over half of
the country's national budget - Chinese money comes with no pre-conditions that
Hun Sen’s government fight graft or move towards more democracy.
In February this year, the Chinese government promised to help electrify
Cambodia's power-starved countryside, including a $1 billion commitment for two
major dam projects. Those projects will alleviate chronic power shortages,
which the World Bank says have led to the world's highest energy costs.
The projects will also help power operations of the more than 3,000 Chinese
companies now situated in Cambodia and which in 2007 produced US$1.56 billion
in revenues, accounting for 7% of gross domestic product (GDP), according to
Economic Institute of Cambodia statistics. China now employs a sizable
proportion of the national workforce, supplanting the mostly Western
non-governmental organizations and garment factories which dominated the local
economy in the 1990s, when the country first emerged from decades of war.
Cambodia's economy is expanding at double digit growth rates and China's
economic interest in the country has intensified since 2005, when US oil
company Chevron discovered what some have projected are large stores of oil and
gas off the country's southern coast. Those growing commercial ties were
witnessed in the establishment in February of a special economic zone at the
coastal town of Sihanoukville, from which goods will be produced for export
duty free to China.
At least six Chinese companies have so far signed contracts with the zone's two
Chinese and Cambodian developers. Once a second phase of construction is
completed in 2011, the Sihanoukville zone will have the capacity to accommodate
150 companies and 40,000 workers. The Chinese developers hope the zone will
export $2 billion worth of products per year by 2015, according a joint press
release.
Hun Sen attended the SEZ's launch and noted after signing an official agreement
with the project's developers that the new facility would stoke growth in the
Cambodian economy and strengthen bilateral ties with China. Beijing has donated
nine patrol boats to the Royal Khmer Navy to help secure the new facility
against piracy and trafficking.
While China's economic influence grows, that of the US is on the wane. In
recent years the US has given around $150 million in annual economic aid, a
small fraction of China's commercial patronage. At the same time US-Cambodian
trade ties have fallen off, seen in the 30% year-on-year decline in garment
exports to the US in 2007. The US has long been the primary importer of
Cambodian textiles, which is still the country's largest export item.
By offering more aid through strategic initiatives, the US policy towards
Cambodia has apparently shifted after emphasizing throughout the 1990s the
promotion of democracy and the rule of law. That frequently put the two sides
at diplomatic loggerheads, notably over an FBI investigation into a March 1997
bomb attack against a rally held by opposition politician Sam Rainsy in the
capital Phnom Penh which killed at least 16 and injured 150 people, including a
US citizen.
According to a Washington Post story from June 1997, which quoted four US
government sources with access to classified material, the FBI had tentatively
pinned responsibility for the blasts and subsequent interference in their
investigations on Hun Sen's personal Brigade 70 bodyguard unit. The US has
never publicly released the investigation's findings, although US-based Human
Rights Watch earlier this year called upon Washington to re-open its
long-stalled investigations. "Instead of trying to protect US relations with
Cambodia, it should now finish what it started," the rights group said in a
statement.
Terror ties
Instead, the US State Department claimed in a recent report on trafficking in
people that the human rights situation in Cambodia is improving under Hun Sen's
watch. It praised in particular his government's efforts to combat human
trafficking. More controversially, the FBI in April last year invited national
police chief Hok Lundy to Las Vegas for discussions on counterterrorism, even
though Lundy has been implicated in a number of serious human rights abuses.
According to Human Rights Watch, which said it has presented its own evidence
to the US government, Lundy was part of the conspiracy that carried out the
1997 grenade attack, an act the FBI had previously classified as a "terrorist
act". He also commanded battalions loyal to Hun Sen that carried out the July
1997 coup that ousted co-prime minister Norodom Ranariddh, where some
opposition party members and supporters were killed in extrajudicial fashion
and many more fled into exile.
Last week's murder of a Sam Rainsy Party-aligned journalist, Khem Sambo, also
raises questions about possible government actions in the run-up to general
elections scheduled for July 27. Former co-prime minister and now the leader of
a political party under his own name, Norodom Rannaridh, recently sought refuge
in Malaysia after the government leveled defamation charges against him.
The US's upbeat assessment of Cambodia's human rights record may be seen as a
diplomatic response to China's more unconditional and commercial approach to
bilateral relations. There is also the historical guilt factor, shared by both
the US and China, and a major complication in winning over Hun Sen's trust.
Beijing famously backed the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, both while the
radical Maoists were in power from 1975-79 and after they were overthrown by
Vietnamese forces in 1979 and took up guerilla arms around the Thai border.
The genocidal regime is now held responsible for the deaths of as many as 2
million Cambodians, including ethnic Chinese businessmen. Meanwhile, the US is
estimated to have killed over 500,000 Cambodians during its secret bombing
campaign from 1969 to 1970, which intensified the country's civil war. The US
also backed the 1970 Lon Nol-led coup which deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk as
head of state.
Some estimate China now has the upper hand over the US in terms of relations
with Cambodia. While Hun Sen welcomes US counterterrorism initiatives, which
will likely go a long way in improving the government's surveillance
capabilities, the premier's statements about the actual risk of terrorism to
Cambodia have been conflicting.
After a foiled bomb attack of the Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Monument in July
2007 by a group of local radicals, Hun Sen asserted his government's will to
combat terrorism. But by February 2008, he apparently flip-flopped his position
by saying that there were no terrorists in Cambodia.
More clearly, Hun Sen's cooperation on US counterterrorism initiatives is
subordinated to his government's drive to promote more Chinese trade and
investment. Foreign investment approvals from China amounted to $763 million in
2006, nearly double the 2005 figure, according to the Council for the
Development of Cambodia. Those figures were expected to be even higher last
year with the various deals signed by the two sides.
While the US tries to deflect China's commercial diplomacy, Beijing has
simultaneously landed on ways to unite economically and culturally with
Cambodia, including through outreach to politically influential ethnic-Chinese
entrepreneurs. It's also apparent, some say, in the fading popularity of the
English language over Mandarin Chinese, also known as Putonghua, in local
schools. Cambodia is now home to the largest Chinese school in Southeast Asia,
Duan Hua, which currently enrolls over 8,000 students. The most popular Chinese
courses are specifically geared towards business, with students reasoning that
English language capability may help to land jobs with international aid
organizations, while Mandarin, which is taught across mainland China as the
official language, will catapult them into more lucrative positions in
business.
Another indication that China is winning the struggle for hearts and minds came
in January, when Cambodian police halted and threatened to deport US activist
actress Mia Farrow for attempting to stage a protest against China's commercial
relationship with Sudan's murderous regime. Farrow said she picked Cambodia as
a symbolic place for her protest, given both Sudan's and Cambodia's genocidal
experiences while receiving Chinese assistance. Government spokesman and
Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith said at the time that authorities
banned the protest because it had "a political agenda against China", a stance
Hun Sen's government clearly doesn't share.
Geoffrey Cain is a Cambodia-based journalist. He may be reached at
geoffrey.cain@gmail.com
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