A Jungle Airstrip Stirs Suspicions About China’s Plans for Cambodia

The Chinese military’s “string of pearls” strategy depends on far-flung regional outposts. Cambodia is becoming one.
By Hannah Beech

The runway at Dara Sakor International Airport, which a Chinese company is constructing, will be the longest in Cambodia.

DARA SAKOR, Cambodia — The airstrip stretches like a scar through what was once unspoiled Cambodian jungle.
When completed next year on a remote stretch of shoreline, Dara Sakor International Airport will boast the longest runway in Cambodia, complete with the kind of tight turning bay favored by fighter jet pilots.
Nearby, workers are clearing trees from a national park to make way for a port deep enough to host naval ships.
The politically connected Chinese company building the airstrip and port says the facilities are for civilian use.
But the scale of the land deal at Dara Sakor — which secures 20 percent of Cambodia’s coastline for 99 years — has raised eyebrows, especially since the portion of the project built so far is already moldering in malarial jungle.
The activity at Dara Sakor and other nearby Chinese projects is stirring fears that Beijing plans to turn this small Southeast Asian nation into a de facto military outpost.
Already, a far-flung Chinese construction boom — on disputed islands in the South China Sea, across the Indian Ocean and onward to Beijing’s first military base overseas, in the African Horn nation of Djibouti — has raised alarms about China’s military ambitions at a time when the United States’ presence in the region has waned.
Known as the “string of pearls,” Beijing’s defense strategy would benefit from a jewel in Cambodia.
“Why would the Chinese show up in the middle of a jungle to build a runway?” said Sophal Ear, a political scientist at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
“This will allow China to project its air power through the region, and it changes the whole game.”

A Chinese construction project in the Dara Sakor investment zone. China is Cambodia’s biggest investor.

As China extends its might overseas, it is bumping up against a regional security umbrella shaped by the United States decades ago.
Cambodia, a recipient of Western largess after American bombs devastated its countryside during the Vietnam War, was supposed to be firmly ensconced in the democratic political orbit.
But to win his place as Asia’s longest-serving leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia has turned his back on free elections and rule of law.
He excoriates the United States while warmly embracing China, which is now Cambodia’s largest investor and trading partner.
Down the coast from Dara Sakor, American military officials say, China has reached a deal for exclusive rights to expand an existing Cambodian naval base, even as Beijing denies military intentions in the country.
“We are concerned that the runway and port facilities at Dara Sakor are being constructed on a scale that would be useful for military purposes and which greatly exceed current and projected infrastructure needs for commercial activity,” Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said by email.
“Any steps by the Cambodian government to invite a foreign military presence,” Colonel Eastburn added, “would disturb peace and stability in Southeast Asia.”

Raising a billboard for a Dara Sakor construction project. The Cambodian government says the area of southwestern Cambodia will be a global logistics hub.

An American intelligence report published this year raised the possibility that “Cambodia’s slide toward autocracy,” as Hun Sen tightens his 34-year grip on power, “could lead to a Chinese military presence in the country.”
This month, the United States Treasury Department accused a senior general linked to Dara Sakor of corruption and imposed sanctions on him.
Hun Sen denies that he is letting China’s military set up in Cambodia.
Instead, his government claims that Dara Sakor’s runway and port will transform this remote rainforest into a global logistics hub that will “make miracles possible,” as Dara Sakor’s promotional literature puts it.
“There will be no Chinese military in Cambodia, none at all, and to say that is a fabrication,” said Pay Siphan, a government spokesman.
“Maybe the white people want to hold Cambodia back by stopping us from developing our economy.”

The home of Ban Em’s family in Chamlang Kou village will be razed to make way for a “military port built by the Chinese,” her husband, Thim Lim, said Cambodian officials told him.

An Unusual Land Deal
In July, armed men in military uniforms arrived at the wooden house of Thim Lim, a fisherman who lives in Cambodia’s largest national park.
Leave, they demanded.
Mr. Thim Lim said he was told by officials from the Ministry of Land Management that his home would be demolished next year to make way for a “military port built by the Chinese.”
Other villagers who attended the meeting confirmed his account.
Land officials wouldn’t comment.
“China is so big that it can do what it wants to do,” Mr. Thim Lim said.
Mr. Thim Lim’s land is part of the Dara Sakor concession leased more than a decade ago to Union Development Group, an obscure Chinese company with no international footprint apart from its 110,000-acre Cambodian acquisition.

Villagers sorting fishing nets in Chamlang Kou. It is part of the Dara Sakor land concession, which was leased to a Chinese company under unusual terms.

The deal was questionable from its inception.
With no open bidding process, Union Development was handed a 99-year lease on a concession triple the size of what Cambodia’s land law allows. 
The company was exempted from any lease payments for a decade.
On Dec. 9, Gen. Kun Kim, a former military chief of staff, and his family became targets of United States Treasury sanctions for profiting from relationships with a “China state-owned entity” and for having used “soldiers to intimidate, demolish and clear out land.”
While the Chinese firm was not named, rights groups and local residents said it was Union Development.
Presiding over the signing of the Dara Sakor deal in 2008 was Zhang Gaoli, once among China’s top leaders.
The company’s promotional materials call the development “the largest seashore investment project not only in Southeast Asia but in the world.”
Even with generous lease terms, the one part of Dara Sakor that has been built, a resort complex, is languishing.
On a recent day, the golf course was empty and the casino deserted.
The marina restaurant attracted one Chinese family, which had brought seafood in a plastic bag to avoid paying resort prices.
Instead of retreating from a faltering venture, Union Development has doubled down.
The new construction at Dara Sakor includes a 10,500-foot runway and a deep-sea port able to handle 10,000-ton vessels.

The Dara Sakor Resort, which includes Koh Kong Casino, has seen little tourist traffic.

Who controls the venture remains opaque.
For years, Union Development claimed Dara Sakor was entirely private.
Yet Gen. Chhum Socheat, Cambodia’s deputy defense minister, told The New York Times that the nation’s civil aviation authority was running the airport project, meaning that it could not possibly be linked to the Chinese military.
Sin Chansereyvutha, a spokesman for the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, however, said that “we don’t have an agreement” for Dara Sakor airport.
In May, Union Development handed Hun Sen, the prime minister, a check for $1 million for the Cambodian Red Cross, which his wife runs.
The company’s headquarters in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, are decorated with pictures of Gen. Tea Banh, Cambodia’s defense minister, striding across Dara Sakor’s golf course.
Union Development Group’s main office is next to the defense minister’s home.

Construction at the Chinese-built Sealong Bay International Beach Resort development, near Cambodia’s largest naval base.

‘China Is Looking for Our Prosperity’
Less than 50 miles from Dara Sakor, another nearly empty Chinese-built development rises from another national park.
The Sealong Bay International Beach Resort has sea views and Chinese chefs.
But it’s the project’s neighbor that has been attracting the most attention: Ream Naval Base, Cambodia’s largest.
“All these projects thrive off ambiguity because you’re never really sure what’s going on,” said Devin Thorne, co-author of “Harbored Ambitions,” a study by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington research group, on China’s maritime strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
“You’ll have five Chinese port proposals; two of them fall through and then suddenly there’s one more next door. It’s really hard to keep track of.”
In July, The Wall Street Journal reported on a secret draft agreement to give China exclusive access to part of Ream Naval Base for 30 years.

Cambodian ships at Ream Naval Base. American officials suspect there are plans for Ream “that involve hosting Chinese military assets.”

Speculation about Ream intensified this year when the United States, which had acceded to a Cambodian request to refurbish U.S.-funded training and boat maintenance facilities on the base, was notified that the Cambodians no longer wanted the Americans’ help.
“The withdrawal of the request six months later was surprising and raises questions about the Cambodian government’s plans for the base,” said Colonel Eastburn, the Pentagon spokesman.
General Chhum Socheat, the deputy defense minister, denied that Cambodia had asked the Americans for money for Ream.
“We are frankly fed up,” he told The Times.
“Do we have to ask the United States to develop our sovereignty? Do we have to beg the United States to do this project, that one?”
But in a May 8 letter to the Cambodian Defense Ministry, the American defense attaché in Phnom Penh noted that Cambodia had “requested U.S. assistance to conduct repairs and minor renovations to U.S.-provided facilities on the base.”
In a response a month later, a Cambodian defense official replied that “the repairs and renovations of the facilities on the base are no longer necessary.”
In a subsequent letter, Joseph Felter, then the American deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, warned General Tea Banh, the defense minister, of suspicions “that this sudden change of policy could indicate larger plans for changes at Ream Naval Base, particularly ones that involve hosting Chinese military assets.”
The defense minister did not answer the letter.

Hun Sen, center, at a groundbreaking ceremony for a Chinese-built bridge in Cambodia. “We are very good friends,” a spokesman for his government said, referring to China.

Hun Sen and his deputies accuse the United States of trying to foment a revolution against his government.
In July, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill seeking to impose sanctions on individuals who have undermined democracy in Cambodia. 
Associates of Hun Sen, who has crushed his political opponents, could be among them.
Two years ago, the Cambodian military suspended joint military exercises with the Americans and began partnering with the Chinese instead.
Then, in a further sign of deepening military ties, Hun Sen announced in July that he had spent $240 million on Chinese weaponry.
“If the U.S. Embassy, they don’t like us, they can pack up and leave,” Pay Siphan, the government spokesman, who is a dual Cambodian and American citizen, said in an interview.
“They are troublemakers, and we see it when they look down on Cambodia.”
“China is looking for our prosperity,” he added.
“We are very good friends.”

An empty lifeguard tower on the beach at Dara Sakor Resort.

The Japan-China rivalry is playing out in Cambodia's election

• Japan's support of Cambodia's general election is a strategic maneuver to counter Chinese influence in the developing state.
• Tokyo's actions are a direct backing for Hun Sen's authoritative regime.
• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may ultimately need to decide between maintaining economic power in Cambodia or upholding democratic standards.

By Nyshka Chandran

July 8, 2018: An election poster with images of Heng Samrin, Honorary President of the Cambodian People's Party, and Prime Minister Hun Sen, in Siem Reap.

Cambodia's general election on July 29 has become a proxy theater for competition between China and Japan as the two vie for influence in the Southeast Asian state.
As Phnom Penh's largest foreign investor and economic benefactor, the world's second-largest economy has donated $20 million in polling booths, laptops, computers and other equipment to the National Election Committee, an agency that supervises elections, according to the Associated Press. Tokyo, also one of Cambodia's top donors, has provided over 10,000 ballot boxes worth $7.5 million, Reuters reported.
Those contributions aren't surprising since both Asian heavyweights hold historically deep ties with the frontier economy. 

But Tokyo, concerned about Beijing's rising influence across Southeast Asia, is likely acting with strategy in mind.
"Japan’s economic footprint is starting to be dwarfed by the scale of Chinese investment in the country, through Belt and Road projects, and Chinese political influence," said Champa Patel, head of the Asia-Pacific program at London-based policy institute Chatham House. 

For Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, "maintaining relations with Cambodia will be to act as a counterweight to Chinese influence in the country and the wider region," she continued.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping's administration has offered Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's government billions in development assistance and loans through bilateral frameworks and the continent-spanning infrastructure program known as Belt and Road. 

That, in turn, has produced a flood of Chinese commercial ventures in the country, including economic zones, casinos and industrial parks.
Beijing's economic leverage is also believed to have translated into political clout: During a 2016 ASEAN meeting, Phnom Penh was acting as an agent of China when it blocked mention of an international court ruling that rejected Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea in the group's official communique.
Meanwhile, security-research firm FireEye announced last week that it found evidence of a Chinese hacking team infiltrating computer systems belonging to Cambodia's election commission, opposition leaders and media. 

It wasn't immediately clear if any data was breached, but FireEye said the episode likely provided the Chinese government with visibility into Cambodia's election and government operations.
Amid those developments, Japan is looking to ramp up its presence in the developing state — the two nations signed a grant and loan agreement totaling over $90 million in April.
"Japan's foreign policy does seek to counter China's influence in Cambodia," said Paul Chambers, lecturer and special advisor on international affairs at Thailand's Naresuan University: "Japan, under Abe, wants to show Cambodia that trade and investment matter more for it than human rights — a consideration which has been of prime focus among Western countries."
Japan's support of the July 29 election translates to direct backing for Hun Sen's authoritarian regime.
The vote has been called a democratic sham amid the absence of the country's main opposition faction, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved by the Supreme Court on government orders late last year. 

Because that party is unable to participate, Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party are likely to emerge victorious.
Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, is the world’s longest-serving premier. 

His 33-year rule has been marked by numerous allegations of corruption, politically motivated prosecutions and crackdowns on civil liberties.
The United States and the European Union have suspended funding to the National Election Committee, which is meant to be independent, but is widely believed to be controlled by the ruling party. 

The United Nations, meanwhile, has warned that the election won't be "genuine" and urged Phnom Penh to lift a ban on the CNRP, which is advising Cambodians to boycott the vote.
According to CNRP Deputy President Mu Sochua, Tokyo should withdraw its cooperation: "Cambodia needs to move forward, and it can only do so with democracy ... that's why we continue to explain to Japan that the only chance to help Cambodia is to side with democracy."
The CNRP has tried reaching out to Beijing to explain its argument, but so far has been unsuccessful, Sochua told CNBC over the phone.
"To support Hun Sen is to support dictatorship and with dictatorship, no government can protect their investments," she said, adding that "Hun Sen will keep giving more concessions to Chinese companies, so if Japan wants to protect its investments, it should stay on the side of democracy."
In recent public comments, Japanese officials have urged Phnom Penh to hold free and fair elections, but didn't touch on on the government's human rights violations. 

Japan's embassy in Cambodia told CNBC that Tokyo's assistance was aimed at enhancing the credibility of the electoral process.
"Although Japan supports the technical and logistical aspects of the electoral process, they are not, at least in their own view, necessarily endorsing the legitimacy of the election itself," echoed Deth Sok Udom, a political science professor at Phnom Penh's Zaman University.
Ultimately, Abe may find he has to choose between maintaining economic power in Cambodia or upholding democratic standards.
"I suspect that Japan would opt for the first strategy," Chambers said.

China's Plan to Buy Influence and Undermine Democracy

By lavishing infrastructure dollars on illiberal governments, Beijing is supplanting American soft power.

By PHILIP HEIJMANS
Xi Jinping shakes hands with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte prior to their bilateral meeting during the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China on May 15, 2017.

Along a major tributary of the Mekong River in northeastern Cambodia sits the newly opened Lower Sesan II Dam hydropower plant. 

The 400-megawatt damwill produce badly needed electricity for the country, but at the cost of potential major ecological damage and the eviction of some 5,000 families from the area. 

Such consequences are unlikely to sink the fortunes of Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strongman leader who, for 32 years, has relied on the largesse of foreign governments to fund infrastructure projects: For this latest venture, he has China to thank for footing the more than $800-million bill.
In the past, Southeast Asian nations largely turned to the United States and its Western partners to finance such undertakings; in exchange, several of them would maintain the trappings of a democratic society. 

But under President Donald Trump, America’s waning regional influence is opening the door for China to expand its footprint in the region, even if that means Beijing must deal with illiberal, repressive autocrats seemingly determined to remain in power forever. 

“I believe I can live at least 30 more years, therefore I can continue as prime minister for 10 more years. It is not difficult for me,” the 65-year-old Hun Sen remarked at the inauguration for the dam last month.
To enhance its economic and political clout, China has made substantial inroads across Southeast Asia on the back of multi-billion-dollar infrastructure and investment deals like the one in Cambodia. This is how China will engage with the world for the foreseeable future. 

At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Wednesday, a political conclave held once every five years to present the leadership’s governing agenda, Xi Jinping, arguably China’s strongest ruler in decades, will solidify his rule and reinforce an expansive foreign economic platform that will shape the region for years to come.
Such future dealings abroad are unlikely to come with any pledges toward democratization attached. In Cambodia, for example, China hasn’t slowed its investments despite Hun Sen’s crackdown on democracy and basic freedom. 

Facing vocal challenges from opposition groups ahead of next year’s general elections, he has begun actively silencing pro-democracy institutions, expelling the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute, forcing Radio Free Asia to close its Phnom Penh office, shuttering the The Cambodia Daily, jailing opposition party leader Kem Sokha on allegedly phony charges of treason and collusion with the United States, and calling for the withdrawal of Peace Corps volunteers. 

On Monday the National Assembly moved to redistribute all of the main opposition party’s legislative seats.
“At one time, Hun Sen had to care about what the U.S. and the EU said because he was getting critical aid from them and now he is able to get all of it from China,” Murray Hiebert, senior adviser and deputy director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. 

With China intent to take America’s place, “it is interesting that there is considerably less focus on democracy and rights issues.”
Hun Sen’s recent moves represent an accelerated attack on fundamental rights and a blow to Cambodia’s fragile democracy. 

They are also a piece of a larger transformation across Southeast Asia. 

Najib Razak, the prime minister of Malaysia, continues to crack down on dissent, while Thailand’s military has maintained firm control of the government since a 2014 coup, repressing opposition figures and activists in the process. 

As the military government of Burma continues its bloody persecution of the Rohingya in Rakhine State, the country’s much-lauded democratic transition under Aung San Suu Kyi has failed to live up to expectations. 

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte continues his brutal drug war, which has claimed between 7,000 and 13,000 lives.

While these shifts towards autocracy began before last November, they have accelerated since the election of Donald Trump, who has largely offered only subdued responses to foreign crises. 

This is a far cry from the Obama administration’s attempted rebalancing strategy in Asia, which addressed rights concerns with vigor, encouraged the democratic transition in Burma, and spearheaded the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which President Trump withdrew from in January. 

That withdrawal, along with Trump’s distaste for multilateralism, “has set back U.S. economic interests in the region for the immediate future—a glaring development in light of the substantive advances in Chinese economic engagement,” the Sydney-based Lowy Institute published in an August report on U.S.-Sino relations in Southeast Asia.
China’s aggressive economic approach abroad has been a hallmark of China’s “Go Out” policy, which Xi Jinping has pursued vigorously since he became the leader of China in November 2012. Since the days of Mao Zedong, China has sought to deconstruct what it views as an illegitimate international order led by the West. 

But it lacked the political stature and resources to do so, until an economic revival starting in 1989 saw an injection of trillions of dollars on near double-digit annual GDP growth. 

Under Xi, the country pursued a national renaissance and sought to expand its influence abroad through a gradual buildup of soft power. 

Case in point: China’s mammoth $1-trillion economic corridor through Eurasia unveiled in 2013.
Closer to home, Chinese foreign direct investment in the six largest economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was expected to reach about $16 billion in 2016, according to Swiss bank Credit Suisse. 

China already accounts for 30 percent of all FDI into Thailand, and 20 percent into Malaysia, and is poised to supplant the United States as the largest investor in the Philippines this year. 

China has also used the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—a rival to the U.S.-backed World Bank and International Finance Corporation—to extend an additional $1.73 billion in loans in the Asia-Pacific last year alone.
Such deals boost economic conditions throughout the region, and help its leaders solidify their political footing, while buying Beijing influence. 

They also help smooth over larger conflicts. 

After visiting China in October 2016, Duterte returned home with $24 billion in funding and investment pledges; afterwards, diplomatic relations were restored, following longstanding territory disputes in the South China Sea. 

The case for growing Chinese influence in Cambodia is even more clear. 

Between 1994 and 2014, China accounted for up to 44 percent of the $19.2 billion in FDI Cambodia received, according to official data. 

Last year, Cambodia blocked ASEAN from unilaterally condemning China over its territorial claims in the South China Sea dispute.
Even Burma has once again become a base for Chinese private investment, including in a $7.3-billion deep-water port and a $2.3-billion oil and gas pipeline in crisis-hit Rakhine State. 

This is a sharp reversal for a country that, since it embarked on democratic reforms in 2010, has exercised caution when engaging with China.
The rise of China’s economic influence in the region, paired with diminished U.S. criticism on human-rights issues, has helped pave the way for a hardline agenda among regional governments, who also now stand to benefit from playing two of the world’s major superpowers off each other. 

For example: Following brash anti-U.S. rhetoric, Duterte ran a successful campaign to draw financial incentives from Beijing. 

But he has since dismissed his disdain as “water under the bridge,” earning him a meeting with President Trump in November.
Despite the near-universal condemnation of the extrajudicial killings carried out on Duterte’s watch, in May, China praised him for his “remarkable achievements” in promoting “human rights” and urged the world to support his government’s sovereignty—which, for Xi, seems to indicate his government’s willingness to tolerate such atrocities so long as it can rack up political points.
China has also repeatedly offered similar support to the Burmese government, saying last month at the UN that it “understands and supports” its efforts to protect its national security in Rakhine State. Meanwhile, harsh criticism from members of the international community could actually be driving Burma back into China’s arms after the Obama administration worked to cultivate influence there. “Such criticism from the West must be music to the ears of Chinese security planners, who are rattled by Burma’s recent drift from a close relationship with China toward improved ties with the West,” Burma expert Bertil Lintner wrote for YaleGlobal University online last month. 

By contrast, Trump has yet to make any direct public statements on the Rohingya crisis.
Trump has also sent mixed signals on his tolerance for allegedly corruptible players after separately hosting Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha and Najib Razak at the White House. 

The Malaysian prime minister is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for diverting $3.5 billion in state funds.
But while China is expected to further solidify Xi’s foreign policy approach at the national congress, it is worth noting how such deals have come to fruition. 

Much like the Lower Sesan II Dam in Cambodia, other deals abroad have been repeatedly criticized for their blatant disregard of human rights, their opacity, and for their tendency towards unsavory partnerships—in this case, 45 percent of the dam project is owned by Cambodia’s Royal Group, which is headed by notorious tycoon Kith Meng. 

Many of those infrastructure deals have also been criticized for entailing lofty demands that include major land concessions, multi-decade build-operate-transfer contracts, and guarantees for Chinese contractors.
“China’s propensity for coopting, pressuring, and even bullying Southeast Asia’s rulers is creating potentially double-edged swords for Beijing,” Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Forum at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, told me. 

“A corrupt, entrenched local elite can be bought into alignment with China, as has happened in Cambodia. But, such cronyism can prompt opposition from civil society actors who are thereby more likely to blame China for local exploitation and repression, as has happened in Myanmar.”