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Analysts See Cambodia Bolstering Military Ties With China
FILE – Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh, second left, shakes hands with a Chinese army adviser during a graduation ceremony at the Army Institute in Kampong Speu province, March 12, 2015.
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—Cambodia is strengthening its military ties with China, and analysts say it is likely to continue doing so for the forseeable future.
Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh made a five-day trip to China last week, meeting with high-ranking military officials and receiving pledges of assistance from the Chinese military.
In a recent interview, he told the VOA Khmer service that the visit was successful in bringing military cooperation between the countries even closer. That relationship is closer than Cambodia’s military ties with the U.S., he said.
Analysts say Phnom Penh is likely to look more and more to Beijing for support because of growing tensions with its old patron, Vietnam, over border issues.
Cambodia and China have traditionally enjoyed close relations, and they became noticeably closer after 2012 when Cambodia, as host of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, sided with China over the contentious South China Sea issue.
The following year, Beijing provided Phnom Penh with a $195 million loan, which bought 12 Chinese Z-9 military helicopters. In May of this year, China pledged military trucks, spare parts, equipment and unspecified chemicals.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has often touted the relationship. During the inauguration of a Chinese-funded road in Kampong Som province last month, he told a group of farmers that Cambodian-Chinese relations were at an all-time high, and that the two were moving toward a “comprehensive” partnership. China’s development fund for Cambodia for 2015 amounted to $140 million, up from $100 million the year before, he said.
Tea Banh defended the bilateral relationship, saying Chinese aid came with no strings attached and that China had never interfered in Cambodian affairs. He declined to disclose how much aid Cambodia would receive from his latest trip.
Benefits for China
Yet analysts warn that China is getting more out of the deal than Cambodia. Chheang Vannarith, a visiting professor at the University of Leeds in England, said China needs Cambodia as a partner in Southeast Asia, where competition is rising.
Double Bind: The Politics of Reform in Cambodia by World Politic Review
Double Bind: The Politics of Reform in Cambodia
Independence Monument, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, June 17, 2015 (photo by Flickr user phalinn licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).
Cambodia’s July 2013 national elections were a watershed moment in the country’s recent political history. Amid charges of electoral fraud, long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) was declared the winner of the polls by the National Election Committee. Despite the irregularities, the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) still saw its support surge, winning 55 out of the 123 seats in parliament. The result represented an unprecedented loss of 22 seats for the CPP and prevented it from wielding the two-thirds majority necessary to amend Cambodia’s constitution.
Following the announcement of the results, anti-government demonstrations in the capital, Phnom Penh, reached an estimated 100,000 people. Corralled by security forces, barricades and barbed wire, protesters marched peacefully through the city’s large avenues. Their many grievances included state impunity, corruption, deforestation, forced evictions and land grabbing. But the CNRP’s threat to boycott the national assembly and continued claims that the elections were in effect stolen by the CPP served to band together the multitude of complaints into a single narrative with clear demands: new elections, the overhaul of the election committee and Hun Sen’s resignation.
In January 2014, in response to the unrelenting street protests, government security forces cracked down, suppressing the demonstrations, arresting dozens of activists and closing Freedom Park, which had become a rallying point for the opposition. Almost overnight, the protests were subdued. Without a viable endgame on the streets, the CNRP had few real options but to conclude a negotiated settlement with the CPP in July 2014 and to take its seats in the National Assembly.
Since then, the political stand-off has entered a state of limbo. But while the opposition has had mixed success in advancing its reform agenda, the lack of clear progress does not necessarily benefit Hun Sen and the CPP, which could see their support further eroded in the event they do not respond to the gathering popular demand for change.
As local and national elections loom in 2017 and 2018, respectively, Cambodia’s near-term future is uncertain. The CPP has provided few, if any, signs that it intends to make a peaceful transition of power possible, if the elections make one necessary. Indeed, Cambodia’s recent history gives ample reason to believe that a win by the opposition may only lead to larger-scale unrest and violence.
To win at the ballot box, the CPP will need to pull off a tricky combination: erode the opposition’s base of support; push through social and economic reforms—particularly in the areas of education, health and commerce—to win back the electorate; and close the space for dissent.
However, in the short term, these tactics are likely to create other problems for the CPP. Demographic trends suggest that voters’ expectations of the state will continue to intensify. The need for alternative outlets to let off pressure will only increase. Tamping down dissent is likely to be met with blowback, domestically and abroad. Many of the meaningful social and economic reforms will require breaking up or bypassing patronage networks. This would risk undermining loyalty within the CPP in uncertain times when loyalty is most critical.
As a result, Cambodia’s stability in the medium to long term will ultimately rest on the CPP leadership’s ability to prepare state institutions for a peaceful transition of power. In order to do that, Cambodia will also need to diversify its economy, strengthen rule of law and find ways for China to continue to play a constructive role without creating further dependency. Clearly, this will be a tall order to fill.
Rules of Engagement and the “Culture of Dialogue”
Hun Sen, who led Cambodia out of civil conflict and navigated the CPP into a post-communist era, has been at his country’s helm for 30 years. After two decades of increasing success at the ballot box, the 2013 national elections surprised Hun Sen and the CPP, which found itself within almost 300,000 ballots of losing the popular vote to the CNRP. The CPP went from 90 seats in the National Assembly to 68. The CNRP holds the remaining 55 seats.
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Cambodia’s Strategic China Alignment
Cambodia’s Strategic China Alignment
The Diplomat
According to conventional wisdom, the international system leaves small states less room for maneuver. Cambodia is no exception. Since the kingdom won its independence from France in 1953, it had been preoccupied with protecting that independence, as well as its sovereignty and territorial integrity. During the Cold War, Cambodian foreign policymakers tried various approaches, from neutrality to alliances with major power(s) and, worst of all, isolationism. Yet Cambodia remained a victim of power politics, and ended up with a civil war and some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
Economically, China plays an increasingly important role in the socio-economic development of Cambodia as its primary trading partner, largest source of foreign direct investment, and top provider of development assistance and soft loans. Noticeably, two-way trade between Cambodia and China grew from $2.34 billion in 2012 to around $3.3 billion in 2013. Recently, the two countries agreed to boost their bilateral trade to reach the target of $5 billion by 2017. Similarly, Chinese investment in Cambodia in 2013 rose 65 percent, to $435.82 million compared to $263.59 million in 2012. More importantly, Chinese loans and grants to Cambodia reached $2.7 billion in 2012, making it one of the latter’s largest donors. Moreover, Cambodia will reap enormous benefits from new Chinese initiatives such as the Maritime Silk Road and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
In geopolitical and strategic terms, Cambodia had been a victim of its location as a country sandwiched between two powerful and historically antagonistic neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam. The history of Cambodia vividly suggests that over the six hundred years following the fall of the Khmer Empire, Thailand and later Vietnam regularly defeated Khmer armies and annexed Khmer territories. The two countries had always attempted to impose their suzerainty over Cambodia. Cambodia’s acceptance of the French protectorate in 1863 was an escape from suzerainty.
The eruption of a border conflict with Thailand from 2008 to 2011 reminded Cambodian leaders that its stronger neighbors remain a security threat to the kingdom’s territorial integrity. It also prompted Cambodian leaders to rethink the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) role in maintaining peace and stability in the region. In fact, since becoming a member of ASEAN in 1999, the regional grouping has always been the cornerstone of Cambodia’s foreign policy. Cambodian policymakers were convinced that ASEAN would be a crucial regional platform through which their country could safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as promote its strategic and economic interests. However, it seems that Cambodia’s confidence in ASEAN has faded due to the grouping’s ineffective response to the Cambodia-Thailand border dispute.
Policy Platform through the Survey of Asia Foundation
Arguing towards this research finding by Asia Foundation resonates different aspects. While the finding is very crucial for policy maker(s) to determine their policy platform, the finding doesn’t help much in crafting “institution” but it has helped a lot regarding public opinion for political parties. This research (survey) couldn’t avoid from bias and deviation within the nature of population sampling, technicality, and methodology. In a nation-state of democratic principles that consists of two-ways communication: state-people and people-state, this research is purely focusing on people-state channel, thus it is hard to comprehend the effective approach in “capacity building on state-institution”.
I am keep to articulate more in “state-institution” building which importantly relies on the equity of the state-approached and people-approached participation. It is nice to read the lacking of trust of Cambodian people towards the institution with many clauses of recommendation to bringing about trust from the people. But it is a jargon to read lengthy description on people’s bad mentality towards institutional corruption without having people’s self-responsiveness to discourage corruption, for instance “no bribe, no corruption” etc.
Cambodia is lacking nation founding father. Cambodia is fulfilled personal-cult founding fathers. By evidence, founding father have projected long term interest for the nation such as paving strong foundation for Cambodia as a nation-state to having strong institution accounting from neutral media to educate the public, to political parties system of sound balanced government party leadership and opposition party leadership, to building trust in between state and society etc. Now, government leadership party can enjoy all the provisions in term of party’s base of people-networking, media and financial injection, the opposition party is non-available at all in term of state’s funding while the party has wholly relied on generosity and donation in kind from the members. This kind of political system is not existing in civilized democratic countries. And this culture of non-equity political system shall not sustain Cambodia in its long term democratic system at all.
Interestingly, the research didn’t involve itself towards the new political concept and philosophy conundrum of “Culture of Dialogue” at all. It is probably the concept itself is too complicate for the researches design or the researchers missed to add into their questionnaires just one clause or one word “culture of dialogue”. I am keen to see the researches related this to their questionnaires so that “social capital” of “trust” might be enriched among those respondents.
To recap, I copied and pasted the key ideas in here for everyone to digest more. The research is shedding light towards political parties, academia and news outlets. It is hugely benefiting those “think tank” to think about embodying themselves to be “nation founding father”, or at least “to avail themselves for critical thinking” through word of mouth, facebook, blog, workshop, writing to the editor, or other simple sharing etc.
Democracy in Cambodia2014
…the majority of respondents in the 2014 survey said the country is headed in the wrong direction.
…the survey findings suggest the July 2014 agreement was popular on at least two accounts: first, the majority of respondents support a constitutional amendment to provide for a “balanced” National Election Committee; second, the majority of respondents believe that electoral reform should take place before elections.