Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent
Published March 29, 2006
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- More than 700 students stream in each morning to the Newton Thilay Chinese school on a cramped Cambodian street, and enrollment is on track to double this year.
"More Cambodians are needing to learn Chinese," said Principal Vann Sony, "and more Chinese are coming to live in Cambodia."
Not long ago, it was unthinkable for Cambodia to seek closer ties with Beijing. That is because Cambodians have scarcely forgiven Chinese communists for propping up the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.
Yet, in a striking sign of China's swelling profile, the two countries have mended fences. China emerged as Cambodia's No. 1 foreign investor in 2004, while trade between them climbed 50 percent over the previous year. Beijing has waged a charm offensive with splashy donations, such as a new $49 million Council of Ministers building scheduled to begin construction soon in the capital—the equivalent of China donating a new Eisenhower Executive Office Building to downtown Washington.
A generation after the U.S. withdrew from Indochina, a different sort of "domino theory" is reordering power and loyalty across Southeast Asia. Once considered a threat by its neighbors—for its territorial claims and economic power—China is deftly wielding soft power in diplomacy, commerce and aid to win resources and influence.
The changes pose a growing challenge to the U.S. to shore up its eroding authority across the Asia-Pacific region. When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked tough on China's rising military strength and other issues last week in Australia, she drew a harder line than her counterpart, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who asserted that trying to contain a rising superpower would be a "very big mistake."
Southeast Asia is a major front in the new Great Game unfolding in the early years of the 21st Century. As China trolls the globe for new friends and resources—whether oil in Sudan or timber in Burma—countries are balancing or choosing between two world powers for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
"It's natural that you want to have as many friends as possible," said political scientist Kao Kim Hourn, president of the University of Cambodia. "The dynamics of relations have been transforming, and right now the priority is on economic development."
The region's center of gravity has shifted most noticeably since the late 1990s, when the Asian financial crisis struck Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. While the U.S. was tarred by backing unpopular International Monetary Fund strategies, China resisted pressure to devalue its currency and distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and aid.
To its smaller neighbors, China has proved a generous trading partner; it is proposing a mammoth free-trade zone—from the edge of Siberia to Indonesia—that would be the world's largest by population when it is completed in 2015. At the same time, China is stepping up security cooperation, including joint military exercises with Australia, the Philippines and Thailand.
This comes as Asian leaders grumble that the Bush administration seems distracted by the Middle East. In her first chance to attend a key regional forum, in July 2005, Rice sent her deputy instead, making her the first secretary of state to miss a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum since 1982. Afterward, attendees pointedly praised the Chinese delegate for offering uncritical input on issues such as human rights and economic openness.
In Cambodia, a country of just 13.6 million people, China's influence is striking.
"When I came here 10 years ago, if you went to the wholesale market, most of the goods were from Thailand, Singapore and Japan," said Jimmy Gao, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Phnom Penh. "Now more than 60 percent of the products are from China."
Midsize Chinese textile makers are opening factories in search of labor that is even cheaper than home; Chinese construction companies are underbidding their Korean and Japanese rivals; a Chinese-built dam and power plant is keeping the lights on in Phnom Penh. A Shanghai construction company is building Road No. 7, a new overland route to link China and all of Southeast Asia, in what China proudly calls its single largest foreign-aid project ever.
The largesse has yielded tangible benefits. Gao and others successfully lobbied the Cambodian government to shut down the representative office in Phnom Penh of Taiwan, the renegade province claimed by mainland China. Isolating Taiwan's government is part of the "one-China policy" that Beijing encourages among its friends.
"Of course the economic relations contribute to good political relations, and that makes us more like brothers," Gao said.
It is classic soft power, what Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye calls "co-opting people rather than coercing them." And these days, China hopes its millions in military training and loans will eventually pay off with the right to build a dock complex on the Cambodian coast, where Chinese naval vessels could monitor the Straits of Malacca, a crime-ridden choke point, through which 80 percent of China's oil must travel.
The U.S. has called on China to become a responsible "stakeholder" in world affairs with a moral authority to match its economic weight—for instance, by loosening its embrace of Sudanese leaders who permit the genocide in their country's Darfur region.
Yet in Cambodia, for instance, the U.S. is flagging in the war of perception. Officials and scholars here criticize the Bush administration for declining to provide direct funding for a new international tribunal established to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge. The U.S., which instead funds NGOs that will support the trials, has said it will not give cash to the $53 million tribunal until Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen takes steps to curb rampant judicial corruption and impunity.
But Cambodian officials are quick to point out that concerns about competence or impartiality have not deterred the U.S. from spending millions on Iraq's turbulent trial of Saddam Hussein. Cambodians see a double standard, in contrast with China's laissez-faire approach.
"China is not taking any bullying positions. China has been behaving like a benign power, a responsible power," said Kao Kim Hourn, who also advises the government on foreign policy. "It has been very constructive, very supportive."
"More Cambodians are needing to learn Chinese," said Principal Vann Sony, "and more Chinese are coming to live in Cambodia."
Not long ago, it was unthinkable for Cambodia to seek closer ties with Beijing. That is because Cambodians have scarcely forgiven Chinese communists for propping up the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.
Yet, in a striking sign of China's swelling profile, the two countries have mended fences. China emerged as Cambodia's No. 1 foreign investor in 2004, while trade between them climbed 50 percent over the previous year. Beijing has waged a charm offensive with splashy donations, such as a new $49 million Council of Ministers building scheduled to begin construction soon in the capital—the equivalent of China donating a new Eisenhower Executive Office Building to downtown Washington.
A generation after the U.S. withdrew from Indochina, a different sort of "domino theory" is reordering power and loyalty across Southeast Asia. Once considered a threat by its neighbors—for its territorial claims and economic power—China is deftly wielding soft power in diplomacy, commerce and aid to win resources and influence.
The changes pose a growing challenge to the U.S. to shore up its eroding authority across the Asia-Pacific region. When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked tough on China's rising military strength and other issues last week in Australia, she drew a harder line than her counterpart, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who asserted that trying to contain a rising superpower would be a "very big mistake."
Southeast Asia is a major front in the new Great Game unfolding in the early years of the 21st Century. As China trolls the globe for new friends and resources—whether oil in Sudan or timber in Burma—countries are balancing or choosing between two world powers for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
"It's natural that you want to have as many friends as possible," said political scientist Kao Kim Hourn, president of the University of Cambodia. "The dynamics of relations have been transforming, and right now the priority is on economic development."
The region's center of gravity has shifted most noticeably since the late 1990s, when the Asian financial crisis struck Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. While the U.S. was tarred by backing unpopular International Monetary Fund strategies, China resisted pressure to devalue its currency and distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and aid.
To its smaller neighbors, China has proved a generous trading partner; it is proposing a mammoth free-trade zone—from the edge of Siberia to Indonesia—that would be the world's largest by population when it is completed in 2015. At the same time, China is stepping up security cooperation, including joint military exercises with Australia, the Philippines and Thailand.
This comes as Asian leaders grumble that the Bush administration seems distracted by the Middle East. In her first chance to attend a key regional forum, in July 2005, Rice sent her deputy instead, making her the first secretary of state to miss a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum since 1982. Afterward, attendees pointedly praised the Chinese delegate for offering uncritical input on issues such as human rights and economic openness.
In Cambodia, a country of just 13.6 million people, China's influence is striking.
"When I came here 10 years ago, if you went to the wholesale market, most of the goods were from Thailand, Singapore and Japan," said Jimmy Gao, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Phnom Penh. "Now more than 60 percent of the products are from China."
Midsize Chinese textile makers are opening factories in search of labor that is even cheaper than home; Chinese construction companies are underbidding their Korean and Japanese rivals; a Chinese-built dam and power plant is keeping the lights on in Phnom Penh. A Shanghai construction company is building Road No. 7, a new overland route to link China and all of Southeast Asia, in what China proudly calls its single largest foreign-aid project ever.
The largesse has yielded tangible benefits. Gao and others successfully lobbied the Cambodian government to shut down the representative office in Phnom Penh of Taiwan, the renegade province claimed by mainland China. Isolating Taiwan's government is part of the "one-China policy" that Beijing encourages among its friends.
"Of course the economic relations contribute to good political relations, and that makes us more like brothers," Gao said.
It is classic soft power, what Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye calls "co-opting people rather than coercing them." And these days, China hopes its millions in military training and loans will eventually pay off with the right to build a dock complex on the Cambodian coast, where Chinese naval vessels could monitor the Straits of Malacca, a crime-ridden choke point, through which 80 percent of China's oil must travel.
The U.S. has called on China to become a responsible "stakeholder" in world affairs with a moral authority to match its economic weight—for instance, by loosening its embrace of Sudanese leaders who permit the genocide in their country's Darfur region.
Yet in Cambodia, for instance, the U.S. is flagging in the war of perception. Officials and scholars here criticize the Bush administration for declining to provide direct funding for a new international tribunal established to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge. The U.S., which instead funds NGOs that will support the trials, has said it will not give cash to the $53 million tribunal until Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen takes steps to curb rampant judicial corruption and impunity.
But Cambodian officials are quick to point out that concerns about competence or impartiality have not deterred the U.S. from spending millions on Iraq's turbulent trial of Saddam Hussein. Cambodians see a double standard, in contrast with China's laissez-faire approach.
"China is not taking any bullying positions. China has been behaving like a benign power, a responsible power," said Kao Kim Hourn, who also advises the government on foreign policy. "It has been very constructive, very supportive."
eosnos@tribune.com
2 comments:
I think the chines should learn the khmer langage instead .
^ Haha and then how are we going to understand them??
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