Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
included an endless banquet cycle and a list of official visitors “so long that the Chinese
embassy's political and economic officers have complained … that they never get any
rest.”
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By the time the Uighur asylum seekers trickled into Cambodia from Vietnam, the “Ch-
ina model” of authoritarian capitalism loomed as a direct challenge to the democratic
system imported by the UN and sustained for years by foreign money. Whenever donor
countries put pressure on Hun Sen to improve governance and enact reforms, China
stepped in to relieve the pressure with loans and investments. Beijing's sales pitch was
simple. It hewed to a doctrine of mutual noninterference. It made no demands on how
Hun Sen ran the country. “China respects the political decisions of Cambodia,” Hun Sen
said in September 2009, cutting the ribbon on a $128 million Chinese-funded bridge over
the Tonlé Sap. “They build bridges and roads and there are no complicated conditions.”
Chinese support has also allowed Hun Sen to offset the traditionally strong influence
of Vietnam and Thailand. This is particularly the case with Hanoi. Since the early
1990s, Cambodia and its old patron have remained fast friends, united by proximity and
the historical ties between the two countries' ruling parties. Military relations are en-
meshed; Metfone, one of Cambodia's largest telecoms operators, is run by the Vietnamese
military-owned enterprise Viettel. Cross-border trade has boomed since the signing of the
supplemental border treaty in October 2005. While Vietnamese influence remains a com-
bustive issue in Cambodian politics, the Phnom Penh-Hanoi axis is no longer the special,
quasi-colonial relationship it once was. The new power calculus was on display at the
ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting held in Phnom Penh in July 2012. When the meet-
ing discussed territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Cambodia sided with Beijing,
leaving its old ally—and other ASEAN nations like the Philippines—out in the cold. Hun
Sen is “very shrewd,” one senior Vietnamese diplomat confided to US officials in 2006.
He listened to Vietnamese leaders only when it was “convenient and profitable for him to
do so.”
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Hun Sen has been happy to toe the Chinese line in other ways. He has given Chinese
firms open access to Cambodian land and resources. He has voiced frequent support for
the “One China” policy. As it has frequently done for Vietnam, Cambodia has also de-
ported political activists and other “undesirables” wanted by the Chinese government. In
August 2002 Cambodia barred the Dalai Lama from attending a Buddhism conference,
shortly before it deported two Falun Gong activists to China, disregarding their pending
long journey from western China, it wasn't hard to predict that politics would trump
law, that the government would put its obligation to China above its obligation under the
Refugee Convention. The only surprising thing was UNHCR's failure to see the warning
signs.
