PHNOM PENH – On December 18, 2009, Cambodian police rounded up 20 ethnic Uighurs from safe houses in the capital Phnom Penh, where they had arrived earlier in the year seeking political asylum. A day later, the group, which included two infants, was driven to the airport in a bus with shades drawn over the windows and placed on a Chinese charter flight bound for an unknown location.
A day after the plane departed Phnom Penh International Airport, Chinese vice president Xi Jinping touched down to a warm welcome by Cambodian officials and was driven into the city along boulevards strung with miniature Chinese flags. During his three-day visit, the Chinese leader and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen signed 14 bilateral agreements worth an unprecedented US$1.2 billion.
The two incidents topped off a decade in which Chinese aid and investment had been on a steady rise in Cambodia. Unlike Western aid money, which is often linked to a range of good governance reforms, cash-rich Beijing has quietly bankrolled the construction of roads, hydropower dams and other infrastructure works (many built by Chinese companies) without strings attached.
In return for this “blank check” diplomacy, Cambodia has offered rote – and cheaply bought – support for Beijing’s one-China policy. The deportation of the Uighurs, wanted as “criminals” who Beijing claimed took part in deadly ethnic riots in the country’s restive Xinjiang province, was the first instance in which Cambodia’s loyalty was truly tested: with $1.2 billion on the line, the country’s leadership was not found wanting.
A trove of diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, released earlier this month by the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, documents in detail how China brought behind-the-scenes pressure to bear on Cambodia to return the Uighurs. Even before the deportation, which outraged Western diplomats and led the US to withhold a planned shipment of military trucks, the cables expressed concerns about China’s increasing clout in Cambodia, arguing that it could hamper good governance reforms and fuel corruption.
“Cambodia’s ‘Year of China’ looks to become its ‘Century of China’,” US ambassador Carol Rodley wrote in a December 2008 cable (08PHNOMPENH1027) coinciding with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Phnom Penh and Beijing. “China has spared no effort this year in celebrating the 50th anniversary of bilateral relations with Cambodia,” the dispatch stated.
In addition to a procession of high-level official visits, the Chinese courtship included “royal banquets, trips to Beijing [and] the first-ever visit by a Chinese warship”. “The list of Chinese visitors is so long that the Chinese embassy’s political and economic officers have complained to [embassy officers] that they never get any rest.”
Rodley also noted that Cambodia’s accommodation with China looked to be paying off “handsomely”: China’s pledge of $256 million in bilateral assistance for 2009 was the “highest single donor-country contribution to Cambodia ever”, dwarfing the $213 million in European assistance and Washington’s own $62 million aid package.
Another diplomatic cable (09PHNOMPENH956) noted that the increase was mirrored in bilateral trade between China and Cambodia, which amounted to an estimated $1 billion in 2009. The year was topped off by vice president Xi Jinping’s $1.2 billion bonanza – a package of loans and grants worth more, the cable noted, than the total Chinese economic assistance for the preceding 17 years.
At a September 2009 ceremony marking the construction of the $128 million Cambodia-China Prek Kdam Friendship Bridge in Kandal province, premier Hun Sen hailed China’s generous contributions, saying it was helping to strengthen the country’s “political independence”. “China respects the political decisions of Cambodia,” he told his audience. “They are quiet but at the same time they build bridges and roads, and there are no complicated conditions.”
But the deportation of the Uighurs, according to various leaked US cables, showed that China’s latent economic influence could be leveraged into considerable hard-power clout. The diplomatic dispatches give an inside account of the deportation and how the Chinese brought pressure to bear on Cambodian officials to shift their position on the asylum seekers.
A dispatch (09PHNOMPENH954) dated December 21 noted that until December 17, 48 hours ahead of the deportation, the Cambodian government consistently maintained in meetings with diplomats that it would handle the Uighurs according to its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which should have legally prevented their deportation.
A day later, just 24 hours ahead of the 20 ethnic Uighurs were rounded up, the government’s position “changed abruptly”. “Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak suddenly declared that the group ‘were not real refugees’ but rather ‘criminals escaping from China and involved with a terrorist organization’.” It noted that the statement was “nearly identical” to statements made by the spokesperson of the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs on December 15 and 17.
Another leaked US cable (09PHNOMPENH956) dated December 22 and titled “A Grateful China Rewards Cambodia”, concluded that Chinese cash had provided “a strong incentive for Cambodia to support Beijing’s policy objectives.” It said that the deportation, so exquisitely timed with the signing of the economic aid package, raised questions about “the non-transparent quid pro quos often attached to China’s ‘no strings attached’ assistance”.
“Nevertheless,” it concluded, “China’s conditions on assistance appear to be more palpable to the RGC [Royal Government of Cambodia] than other international development partners’ ‘strings,’ and could erode donor efforts to use assistance to promote improved governance and respect for human rights.”
US diplomats also focused on the example of Cambodia’s hydropower development, which has been supercharged in recent years by strong Chinese support. According to a US cable (08PHNOMPENH1003) dated December 2008, specific Chinese-funded projects, such as the Kamchay Dam in the country’s southern province of Kampot, were moving ahead despite “environmental and economic concerns.” Ambassador Rodley’s December 2008 cable concluded that by enabling Cambodia to counterbalance Western countries, China’s strong influence could be “counterproductive to donor efforts in linking assistance to improvements in good governance and fighting corruption.”
“Similar to the situation among Southeast Asian neighbors, Chinese money with few strings attached can exacerbate corruption and unbridled natural resources exploitation,” she wrote. “The lack of transparency in the economic relationship and the decision-making process in general enables the politically connected to benefit from concessions at the expense of the Cambodian people and the environment.”
Despite Hun Sen’s frequent praise for China’s no-strings-attached assistance, cables from the US’s Phnom Penh Embassy indicate that the relationship is complicated by history. Rodley wrote that Hun Sen “does not forget” the role played by China in supporting, along with the US, the Khmer Rouge-led opposition government that occupied Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations until 1991.
Another cable (06PHNOMPENH696) from April 2006 documented the Cambodian government’s apparent unhappiness over the rates of interest on Chinese loans offered that year, which were disadvantageous compared to similar loans from Japan. “The Cambodians wanted 1-3% [interest] but the Chinese did not agree,” the author of the US cable noted.
A later dispatch (09PHNOMPENH956) noted that a high proportion of these loans went towards supporting projects being built by Chinese companies. Some projects, such as hydropower dams, are built on build-operate-transfer agreements that allow for Chinese control over a set period – usually 40 or 50 years.
“The RGC inherently does not trust its big friends, China included,” Rodley concluded in her cable. “We expect, therefore, that Cambodia will continue to play its balancing act among great powers as it charts its own course in the future.”
In some ways, the situation mirrors both the late pre-colonial era, when the Khmer kings sought to counterbalance the influence of Thailand and Vietnam, and the 1950s and 1960s, when then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk danced a tightrope between the two opposing Cold War blocs.
Surveying the rise of China in its Cambodian annus mirabilis of 2009, Chea Vannath, a Phnom Penh-based political analyst, agreed that it was natural for a country of Cambodia’s size to hedge a little. “As a sovereign government, Cambodia needs aid from both sources,” she said. “It is eager to strike a balance.”
[Published by Asia Times Online, July 19, 2011]
