Attendees to the 20th Summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations, held in Phnom Penh, could not miss the warm welcome for another visitor – billboards and flags honoring Chinese President Hu Jintao. The visit was no coincidence, argues journalist Sebastian Strangio, based in Phnom Penh. A steady flow of loans and investment in Cambodian projects signals rising Chinese influence and possible cracks in regional solidarity among the 10 member states of ASEAN, particularly over territorial disputes with China over the resource-rich South China Sea. Of course, Cambodia was not always close to China, with its history of funding the Khmer Rouge, the communist guerrilla group that began in 1960, presided over genocide of 1.7 million from 1975 to 1979, and continued its insurgency into the 1990s. Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen insists China does not control his country of 15 million. But China’s support undoubtedly emboldens Cambodia to ignore outside pressure on human rights or environmental issues. – YaleGlobal
Hun Sen aims at balancing US, Vietnamese and Chinese interests for Cambodia’s benefit
16 May 2012
Sebastian Strangio
YaleGlobal
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| Balance and power: Chinese President Hu Jintao with host Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (top); construction site of Chinese Stung Tatai Hydropower Dam project |
PHNOM PENH: As delegates touched down in Cambodia’s capital for the 20th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, they arrived in a city preened for the arrival of another, more important visitor. Chinese President Hu Jintao had just wrapped up a state visit, and Phnom Penh’s main thoroughfares were still strung with hundreds of miniature Chinese flags in celebration of the trip. The president and his wife gazed down from billboards erected at major intersections across town.
Cambodia is chairing the 10-member bloc in 2012, and the timing of Hu’s four-day state visit in April was more than coincidence. Looming over the summit was the ongoing dispute over the South China Sea, a potentially energy-rich area subject to competing claims by China and ASEAN member states including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Some observers suggested that Hu had come to exert pressure on Cambodia. Carlyle Thayer, analyst with the Australian Defence Force Academy in Sydney, wrote in a briefing that Hu’s visit was “designed to put pressure on Cambodia as ASEAN chair to take China’s concerns into account” and discourage formal discussion of the issue. Though it was later raised during summit talks, Phnom Penh kept the issue off the formal agenda.
The episode demonstrated China’s rising influence in this country of 15 million. Indeed, Beijing’s global New Deal – hefty amounts of loans and investment dollars unconstrained by human rights or good governance concerns – seems almost tailor-made for Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, a strongman autocrat who chafes at Western pressure to enact democratic reforms.
