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.

Why China’s New Cambodia Military Boost Matters

Beijing’s recent assistance once again spotlights the strengthening defense ties between the two countries.

By Prashanth Parameswaran

China will donate tanks and APCs ahead of a joint military exercise

This week, Cambodia revealed that China had given it yet another round of military assistance as part of a visit by its defense minister to the Southeast Asian state. 

The move represents just the latest effort by both sides to boost their defense ties in 2018 as they commemorate 60 years of their bilateral relations and Cambodia moves toward elections next month, which represents a major test for the ruling party.
As I have noted before in these pages, Cambodia has been forging closer ties with China for decades, with Beijing being its largest donor of military aid and asking few of the human rights questions to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) under Prime Minister Hun Sen that some Western countries have. 

Closer bilateral ties work for both sides: they provide the Royal Cambodia Armed Forces (RCAF) with much-needed capability boosts to shore up the country’s security and give China a strong Asian partner that supports key Chinese initiatives and positions from Taiwan to the South China Sea.
This year is a significant year for bilateral ties, with both countries commemorating 60 years of bilateral ties and Cambodia heading into a general election. 

So it is little surprise that we have seen both sides play up the defense side of the relationship as they have other realms, with periodic dispatches of assistance from Beijing as well as the holding of interactions such as military exercises.

The development fits into a broader pattern where the CPP, facing arguably its toughest test yet at home, has decided, at least for now, to continue to advance military ties with China, who is happy to do so without asking too many questions, while cutting off or downgrading certain aspects of those relations with certain Western countries who may ask too many.
This week, China-Cambodia defense ties were in the spotlight again this week when Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe paid a five-day visit to Cambodia that kicked off over the past weekend. 

Wei’s visit was highly anticipated, with Cambodian defense officials including Defense Minister Tea Banh publicizing it weeks earlier and local media outlets suggesting that there could be an unveiling of a new defense cooperation agreement between the two countries.
Wei’s trip did see both sides play up their defense ties and announce further efforts to strengthen the relationship. 

Wei met with several top Cambodian officials, including Tea Banh and Prime Minister Hun Sen, and visited Brigade 70 – a notorious unit within the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) that is charged with important responsibilities including leadership protection and has long been dogged by allegations of right violations and shadowy and even illegal activities. 

In those meetings, the two countries extolled the value of Beijing’s assistance to Cambodia. 

Wei even attended the launch of an exhibition highlighting the various aspects of military cooperation between the two countries in Koh Pich, which also included several Chinese military vehicles.
But of the developments that took place during Wei’s visit, the one that got the most headlines was unsurprisingly the announcement that Beijing had pledged yet another round of military aid to Cambodia. 

While this has in fact become almost an expected outcome with these visits over the past few years, additional scrutiny was on this round of assistance since it came weeks before the holding of Cambodia’s elections and just after the United States had imposed additional restrictions on Cambodia.

Banh told reporters following his meeting with Wei that China had offered what he characterized as a $130 million package.
No further details were issued by either the Chinese or Cambodian sides. 

Cambodian defense spokesman Chhum Socheat offered few additional specifics other than noting that the funding constituted “additional grants… for the military sector.” 

And as is typical with these sorts of military aid by Beijing to Phnom Penh, no details were provided on how the assistance would be used.
What was less in the headlines but arguably far more consequential was discussions by both sides on how to further strengthen their defense ties in the future. 

Though few details were disclosed on this front as well, among the developments in the discussion were Cambodia hosting the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy for exchanges and a continuation of Exercise Golden Dragon into 2019.
Additionally, according to Khmer Times, Lieutenant General Mao Sophan, the commander of Brigade 70, also said he had asked Wei for unspecified additional assistance for counterterrorism special forces in 2019, as well as machinery and equipment to clear 17,000 hectares of land in Kampot province to use as training ground for live-fire drills. 

Given the aforementioned notoriety attached to Brigade 70 and the scrutiny that has brought from some external actors, those developments are significant.
Cambodian officials have been careful in terms of how they have messaged this new round of assistance, which is not surprising since it comes right before the elections. 

And as we have seen in the past in China-Cambodia defense ties, more will also become clearer as future engagements take shape in the months that follow, including what commitments are actually followed through on and how Cambodia plans on using the assistance it has received. 

But the developments of the last few days have clearly reinforced the high level of continued activity occurring in this realm of the relationship between the two sides.

Warning sounded over China's 'debtbook diplomacy'

Academics identify 16 countries loaned billions that they can’t afford to repay
By Helen Davidson
Sri Lankan monks take pictures at the opening of an airport built with Chinese money in Hambantota.

China’s “debtbook diplomacy” uses strategic debts to gain political leverage with economically vulnerable countries across the Asia-Pacific region, the US state department has been warned in an independent report.

The academic report, from graduate students of the Harvard Kennedy school of policy analysis, was independently prepared for the state department to view and assessed the impact of China’s strategy on the influence of the US in the region.
The paper identifies 16 “targets” of China’s tactic of extending hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to countries that can’t afford to pay them, and then strategically leveraging the debt.
It said while Chinese infrastructure investment in developing countries wasn’t “inherently” against US or global interests, it became problematic when China’s use of its leverage ran counter to US interests, or if the US had strategic interests in a country which had its domestic stability undermined by unsustainable debt.
The academics identified the most concerning countries, naming Pakistan and Sri Lanka as states where the process was “advanced”, with deepening debt and where the government had already ceded a key port or military base, as well places including Papua New Guinea and Thailand, where China had not yet used its amassed debt leverage.
Papua New Guinea, which “has historically been in Australia’s orbit”, was also accepting unaffordable Chinese loans. 

While this wasn’t a significant concern yet, the report said, the country offered a “strategic location” for China, as well as large resource deposits.
While there was a lack of “individual diplomatic clout” in Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, Chinese debt could give China a “proxy veto” in Asean, the academics said.

They also warned that the 2023 expiration of the compact of free association between Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands could “threaten the unfettered basing access and right of strategic denial the US has enjoyed since world war two, and help the Chinese navy extend its reach past the first island chain into the blue-water Pacific”, it said.
China’s methods were “remarkably consistent”, the report said, beginning with infrastructure investments under its $1tn belt and road initiative, and offering longer term loans with extended grace periods, which was appealing to countries with weaker economies and governance.
Construction projects, which the report said had a reputation for running over budget and yielding underwhelming returns, make debt repayments for the host nations more difficult.
“The final phase is debt collection,” it said. 

“When countries prove unable to pay back their debts, China has already and is likely to continue to offer debt-forgiveness in exchange for both political influence and strategic equities.”
As a case study, the report cited specific concerns about Sri Lanka granting China an 85% stake in a 99-year lease on a major port in Hambantota.
The deal, which the report described as “opaque and contentious”, came after a decade of deepening debt ties with China. 

In 2007 China offered financing for the $361m port at a time when other entities were concerned about human rights and commercial viability, and then loaned a further $1.9bn for upgrades and an airport.
By 2017, when the port deal was signed, Sri Lanka owed more than $8bn to Chinese-controlled firms. 

The port, which was yet to generate a profit, became a “debt trap”.
“Once Sri Lanka made the initial commitment, the sunk cost and need to generate profit to pay off the original loans drove it to take out additional loans, a cycle that repeated itself until it was finally cornered into giving up the port in a debt-for-equity swap,” it said.
“This has sparked fears that Hambantota could one day become a Chinese naval hub, and sent a worrying signal to other debt-strapped developing nations.”
China has invested in or financed infrastructure developments across the Asian and Pacific regions, including large-scale projects representing sizeable portions of host nations’ GDP. 

The loans often require that Chinese companies build the projects, and complaints that locals are overlooked for a fly-in Chinese workforce are frequent.
It has also sought to expand its military presence, prompting warnings for nearby countries including Australia. 

Australia’s major parties have also voiced concern about the country’s diminishing influence in the Pacific.
The report recommended that the US target and streamline its investments, strengthen alliances and manage debt burdens, including through bolstering India’s role as a regional leader.
Last year India warned against China’s expanding BRI and urged financial responsibility with projects that didn’t create “unsustainable debt burden for communities”.

China's Satellite

Cambodia’s embrace of China stirs local tension 
By John Reed in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Sihanoukville has seen a casino boom accompanied by an influx of Chinese tourists 

Casinos including the Oriental Pearl and the New Macau line the streets of Sihanoukville, a Cambodian port and resort town.
 This city of fewer than 100,000 people will soon boast 30 casinos, with 10 built last year alone, according to local officials.
 But with Cambodians prohibited from gambling, the complexes primarily serve Chinese tourists and employ Chinese staff, angering locals in a poor country where jobs are scarce.
An estimated 120,000 Chinese visited Sihanoukville last year, double the number of 2016. Sihanoukville’s casino boom is one of the most vivid consequences of the forthright embrace of China by Hun Sen, the prime minister.
Beijing backs the authoritarian leader politically and has extended loans for the construction of dams and roads, even as his crackdown on the opposition, media and civil society groups has been condemned by the EU and the US. 
 The Chinese tourist influx has boosted the city’s property prices and spawned a growing number of high-rise buildings but it has also brought problems.
 “The Chinese don’t go out in the daytime; they go out at night,” says Sok Song, a Cambodian hotel owner and vice-president of the Sihanouk Province Chamber of Commerce.
While he stresses that the Chinese presence is “more positive than negative”, he says that “at night, sometimes they have a drink and they fight and shout at each other”.
 Ma Lin, a manager at a beachfront café whose lease will be taken over by a Chinese investor at the end of this month, says that because she “can’t speak Chinese . . . it’s hard for me to get a job with Chinese owners”.
 Expanding Chinese influence is a fact of life across Southeast Asia.
China is the biggest source of tourists in Thailand, and Beijing is financing infrastructure projects from Myanmar to the Philippines.

Cambodia is not alone in weighing the mixed blessings of Chinese investment, which elsewhere has been welcomed for its scale and relative lack of conditions attached but criticised for leaving construction and other jobs in Chinese hands.
 What is unusual about Sihanoukville’s transformation is that tension in the town has coalesced into a public backlash — unusual in a country where personal freedoms are fading — and drawn a stern response from Cambodian authorities as well as from China’s ambassador.
 Xiong Bo, Beijing’s envoy, this month acknowledged that “a small amount of low-educated people” from his country were breaking Cambodian laws.
His rare press conference came after a document emerged in which the governor of the province where Sihanoukville sits listed both the “positive” and “negative” impacts of Chinese money and people.
 “The price of renting rooms has risen, and that affects the standard of living of government officials, workers, and other people,” he wrote in a letter to the interior minister that was leaked to Cambodian media.
He said “mafia groups” were behind kidnappings and “insecurity in the province”, and that tension between Chinese visitors and locals would give the opposition ammunition to attack the Cambodian-Chinese relationship, or to claim that Sihanoukville was becoming “a second Shanghai”.
 “We want them to invest but we need more local people to have a chance to work, to get more money from this growth,” says Tang Sochetkresna, director of the provincial tourism department.
He says the city is eager for investment beyond casinos and hotels, in attractions that can draw in tourists from other countries.
Sok Song, the chamber of commerce official, says Chinese companies are building garment, footwear and other factories in Sihanoukville’s special economic zone.
 He says Cambodia’s interior ministry dispatched a task force to the town to study the problem of visitors who “do not obey the law”, and met Chinese embassy officials in January.
 The Chinese are only the latest group of foreign tourists to throng Southeast Asia’s beach towns, bringing welcome money but also tension to poor countries with conservative societies.
Western travellers engaging in behaviour deemed lewd or disrespectful continue to create periodic scandals from Cambodia and Laos to Malaysia and Thailand.
 But the Chinese presence has a stronger geopolitical component, given China’s growing economic foothold in Cambodia and its continued support for Hun Sen at a time when he is flouting democratic rights.
 “There is a narrative at the elite level that points out the positive effects of the relationship with China but you are seeing some cracks in the enforcement of this overarching narrative,” says a western diplomat in Phnom Penh.
“Sihanoukville is a one-country town, so it’s a stark example.”

China's New Vassal

As Trump focuses on North Korea, Cambodia slips toward China
By Elizabeth MacBride 

On a Saturday this past fall, hundreds of people were waiting in an hourlong line to climb the staircases of Angkor Wat. 

Legend has it that if you ascend to the third level of the huge 12th-century Hindu temple, you'll find the center of the universe. 

The news has reached China: Most of the tourists in the courtyard and at dozens of other ancient temples in the Cambodian jungle were Chinese.
Almost unnoticed, on the coattails of China's rising economy, Cambodia has become one of the world's economic success stories, a tiny tiger in Southeast Asia. 

China's long economic growth is helping to boost Cambodia.
Tourists from China have helped push Angkor Wat to a perch as the world's top tourism destination, according to TripAdvisor. 

China is helping to spur Cambodia's economy in other ways, too. 

It is investing billions to develop the nation's infrastructure, agriculture and health care. 

At the same time, as wages rise in China's manufacturing sector, some of that business is shifting to Cambodia. 

The deepening connections with Communist-controlled China worry some Cambodians, but China is seen as a better alternative than a deeper alliance with Vietnam, the landing place for communists allied with the Khmer Rouge.
Neither option seems that great to one Cambodian. 

At Angkor Wat a tour guide, noticing an American, leans in: "Please take this message back to America: Do not let communists run the world economy."

Ta Prohm, a Buddhist temple in the heart of the jungle in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, is a popular tourist destination.

The World Bank predicts Cambodia's GDP will grow more than 6.9 percent in 2018, after its economic performance ranked it sixth best in the world over the previous 10 years and pushed it into the lower-middle-income country group. 

The two big drivers are tourism and garment manufacturing. 

Between 2012 and 2016, tourism to Cambodia increased to more than 5 million visits from 3.5 million, according to the government of Cambodia. 

Tourism contributed 12 percent, or $2.4 billion to Cambodia's economy in 2016, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, a number that is expected to grow by 7 percent a year over the next 10 years.
Those are huge numbers for a country with a little more than 15 million people. 

And Cambodia's projected economic growth rate remarkably outflanks China's. 

One reason may be because Cambodian companies have been able to position themselves as low-cost, reliable alternatives to Chinese factories, where wages are rising, according to Afshin Molavi, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

"Cambodia is becoming part of an interesting Asian strategy for any of the global multinationals," said Molavi, also co-director of think tank Emerge85. 

"We're seeing [the growth] in real estate. There is a lot of construction going on. When I look at the Phnom Penh Post, I see lots of stories about the middle class buying properties."
Cambodia still lives under a shadow, however. 

Memories of the genocide from 1975–79 still color the world's perception of Cambodia, though they are also driving the country's young people to overcome that perception. 

The authoritarian government hasn't helped: It has been cracking down on civil society, dissolving the largest opposition party in November.
That makes things tricky for big multinationals, like Walmart. 

A spokeswoman for the company said it sources apparel, footwear, home goods and accessories in Cambodia. 

"We recently discussed with the government potential to increase our sourcing further, as well as the importance and our expectations of the protection of civil rights in the countries from which we source. We respectfully asked the Cambodian government to continue to improve working conditions for Cambodian factory workers and treat civil society with fairness, in accordance with international standards and norms."
There remains a serious issue with income inequality in the Asian nation. 

About 13.5 percent of Cambodia's population lives on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. 

That is down from 47.8 percent in 2007, and income levels have barely risen for many people. Cambodia stagnated for the latter part of the 20th century partly because of internal conflict and the lack of infrastructure in rural areas. 

There are still unexploded land mines left over from bombing during the Vietnam War. 

In a sign of Cambodia's increasing importance in Southeast Asia, the Trump administration aimed to cut U.S. State Department funding of $2 million for land mine clearance — and then reinstated it after an outcry.

The China factor
Many of the tourists visiting Cambodia are Chinese, and they are stoking tourism growth. 

Even though only about 6 percent of Chinese people have a passport, China has become the world's largest outbound tourist market, with more than 135 million departures a year — and Angkor Wat is an easy two- or three-hour flight from many cities in China.
Signs of the tourism boom abound in Siem Reap, the town near many of the hundreds of temples constructed during the Khmer Empire, which once stretched from Myanmar to Vietnam. 

In 2016, Cambodia-based Sokha Hotels & Resorts opened a 776-bed resort, and a drive down the highway leading to Angkor Wat revealed two more hotels under construction. 

Most online platforms report hundreds of hotels in the town (TripAdvisor lists more than 300), though concrete numbers are hard to come by.
Angkor Wat hit the tourist map in the early 1990s, when it became a World Heritage Site — but it is already the world's top-rated tourism destination, based on a combination of the number of reviews and what they say, according to TripAdvisor. 

Many Americans are only vaguely aware of it, but it beats out the Great Wall and the Taj Mahal. Visitors call it "majestic," "memorable" and "like nothing I've ever seen."

A key outsourcing hub
Cambodia's boom in garment manufacturing has also been driven by changes in China. 

As wages have risen in China over the last decade, Cambodian companies have positioned themselves as low-cost, reliable manufacturers, said Johns Hopkins Molavi. 

"I don't see anything to show that it's going to slow in 2018," he said. 

"When you have that kind of manufacturing growth, what also happens is that you have rapid urbanization and growing middle classes at the lower end. People buy motorbikes and scooters, Kit Kat bars and Coca-Cola." 

Village markets show multinationals adapting their strategies for markets like Cambodia, with inexpensive, single-serve boxes of detergent and shampoo, for instance.

A factory in Phnom Penh. Cambodian companies have positioned themselves as low-cost, reliable manufacturers.

Cambodia has a couple of other things going for it: Angelina Jolie and a generation of young people determined to rebuild their country from the poverty of previous generations and heal the scars of the genocide.
The other spur to Cambodian tourism has a much darker cast. 

A few hundred thousand people visit the Killing Fields every year; there is another site open to the public in Phnom Penh, a former school where victims of the genocide were tortured before being taken to the Killing Fields. 

The communist Khmer Rouge took control of the country under a dictator, Pol Pot. 

An estimated 2 million Cambodians, many of them the educated professionals of Cambodian society, were killed.
In 2001 action-adventure film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie, was shot in Cambodia, and Jolie adopted one of her children, Maddox, from an orphanage in the country. 

She has become an advocate for Cambodians. 

Last fall she released First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, about the genocide, on Netflix.
After an event for rising Cambodian leaders at the private school Liger Leadership Academy, one of the Cambodian stars of Jolie's film said working on it inspired her to start talking to her grandmother, who lost her husband in the genocide, about her experience. 

"She's open to talking about it more and more."
Sreyneang Oun plays a daughter of the family in the film — and has since developed a friendship with Jolie's family.
For years, said Caroline Bell, leader teacher at the school, the genocide wasn't spoken about in Cambodia. 

Now it's become something young Cambodians feel they can explain to the world. 

"We try to get them to see there's always gray area between victim and perpetrator," said Bell. "Globally, it's one of the two things Cambodia is known for."

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.”

Chinese Calamity

China's Huge Dam Projects Will Threaten Southeast Asia As Water Scarcity Builds Downstream
By Daniel Rechtschaffen

BEN TRE, VIETNAM - APRIL 28

A river is born high in the Tibetan Plateau, before snaking its way 3,000 miles south and emptying itself into the South China Sea. 

On its journey, it passes through six countries, sustaining their ecosystems and local economies, its fisheries providing a lifeline for 60 million people in its lower basin.
The Mekong changes names as it ventures southward through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and finally Vietnam. 

Its English title, from the Lao-Thai Me Khoong, or “Mother River,” emphasizes its life-giving nature. It has had a profound influence on the cultural traditions of the 95 ethnic groups who make their homes along its shores, and its basin is second in biodiversity only to the Amazon.
Water is the world’s most important resource, providing economic, agricultural and transportation benefits. 

This is especially true for the developing countries of Southeast Asia, who rely on rivers like the Mekong to spur economic growth and support local industries. 

But although the Mekong was the lifeblood of Southeast Asia long before modern-day borders were delimited, it has been at the root of acute political turmoil in recent years. 

As the supply of water fit for irrigation and maintaining ecologies becomes increasingly scarce in the region, upstream countries that control vital transboundary resources, like China, wield an enormous amount of power. 

Although all of the Mekong’s riparian countries harness or plan to harness its waters for hydropower, extensive damming in China’s section has had the severest effects on downstream states.
The Mekong River is divided into upper and the lower basins. 

The upper basin falls mainly within China’s borders and its upstream location effectively allows for a chokehold on the river’s lower riparian states. 

China’s effects on the river are most evident in its extensive dam projects—hydropower is second only to coal as the country’s largest energy source. 

This represents a larger shift by the government toward renewable energy in the wake of rapid environmental decline and social unrest due to air pollution in recent years. 

Luckily for China, authoritarian governments have a much easier time than democracies commissioning dams, which often cause mass displacement of populations and destruction of local ecosystems. 

China currently has seven dams completed in the upper basin, with another 20 set to be finished in the near future.
Chinese dam-builders are incentivized by the fact that the vast majority of the Mekong’s drop in elevation occurs within China’s borders in the southwestern province of Yunnan, creating a powerful downstream flow ideally suited for hydropower. 

However, this region is also famous for being one of China’s most biodiverse, and this damming comes at great harm to local ecosystems. 

Not surprisingly, hydropower projects in Yunnan have been met with fierce resistance, sometimes violent, by local environmental organizations.

GUANLEI, CHINA: A man brushes his teeth on the banks of the Mekong River. Environmentalists have warned that China's aggressive dam building and development plans threaten fish stocks and add to the pollution of Southeast Asia's strategically important Mekong River, which connects Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. 

But perhaps the gravest concern surrounding Chinese dams is their potential for an international crisis—studies in recent years have increasingly shown that China’s many dams are having serious effects on the countries in the lower basin who share the Mekong. 

By changing water temperatures and altering sediment loads that are carried along the river, China’s dams pose a serious threat to fisheries downstream, the yields of which provide the major source of protein to the region’s inhabitants. 

More noticeable are the severe droughts and floods brought by a change in water flow caused by the dams. 

In March last year, China was approached by a desperate Vietnam asking that the Jinghong hydropower floodgates be opened to quench a downstream water shortage.
Mitigating a water crisis in the region is an issue the international community has sought to address for decades. 

In 1997, China was one of three countries that voted against the United Nations Watercourses Convention, an agreement establishing the non-navigational uses of transboundary waterways. 

Since the 1960s, China’s per capita renewable internal freshwater resources have diminished by half thanks in no small part to explosive population growth and rapid industrialization; the country’s available water per person in 2017 is one-third of the world’s average. 

And this water crisis, compounded most recently by pollution, is likely a major factor in China’s close guarding of water resources within its boundaries. 

Although Beijing has sought out less comprehensive regional initiatives with Southeast Asian countries to moderate the Mekong, these are difficult to enforce without the backing of the international community.
And unfortunately, the potential for crisis isn’t limited to the Mekong. 

China controls the “Water Towers of Asia”—the lofty sobriquet given to the Tibetan glacial plateau. 

The Mekong, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra and the Salween all begin as trickles in these mountains before spilling across China’s borders to eager downstream riparian states. 

Getting first call on how these waterways are manipulated means that China poses a severe security risk to its neighbors.

This photo taken on March 18, 2015 shows a small hydro-electric power station above the Nu river near Gongshan, in southwest China's Yunnan province. Many smaller hydro power stations already generate electricity from water running off the mountains into the Nu river. 

China controls the life essence of eastern Asia: The towers within its domain provide water to 1.3 billion people. 

Up until now China has been compliant in releasing water when requested by downstream states, but the country’s water supplies are drying up. 

And as they do, assertions by recent scholars that 21st-century wars will be fought over water are becoming increasingly convincing.

Thailand’s detention of Joshua Wong shows how deeply some Southeast Asian nations are in China’s orbit

By Isabella Steger

Standing up to China.

Thai authorities yesterday (Oct. 5) detained Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong at Bangkok’s airport and barred him from attending an event at a university, drawing attention once more to how Thailand and some neighboring countries are increasingly bowing to China’s demands.
In response, some Thai citizens have been circulating a drawing on social media showing Thailand as an extension of China. 

The artist highlighted Taiwan in the drawing, a nod to comments by Thai student Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, who noted that the 19-year-old Hong Kong activist had no problems entering Taiwan earlier.

According to a statement by the Thai government, it received no direct order to arrest Wong, but the decision was taken to avoid an “escalation of political conflict” as Wong’s activism in other countries could “affect Thailand’s relations with other nations.”

The Nation, an English-language newspaper in Thailand, cited an official at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport as saying that the request to arrest Wong came from China. 

Thai prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Wong’s expulsion from Thailand was “China’s issue.”
The incident comes after Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller with Swedish citizenship, went missing last October in Thailand and later reappeared in China. 

In January, Chinese journalist Li Xin disappeared (paywall) while traveling from China to Thailand via Laos.
Writing after Gui’s disappearance, Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London, said that “we seem to be seeing a wholly new form of the Chinese state acting outside its borders in ways which are opaque, arbitrary, and worryingly predatory.”
As the Wall Street Journal notes in an editorial, what happened in Thailand fits a “global pattern.” 

China’s long arm of the law has extended as far as Kenya and Armenia, where authorities deported suspected Taiwanese suspects of fraud to China. 

Beijing claims Taiwan as a Chinese province.
Nicholas Bequelin, regional director for East Asia at Amnesty International, said that following violent protests in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009, after which many Tibetans and Uighurs fled China for neighboring Nepal, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, China started to systematically put pressure on those countries.
It’s not illegitimate for China to demand the repatriation of people who have committed offences in that country, or who have committed crimes against Chinese citizens from abroad. 

The problem is the fact that the government systematically conflates criminal offences with the exercise of fundamental rights of freedom such as expression or assembly when it is critical of the Chinese government.
Thailand last year repatriated about 100 Uighurs from detention camps back to China. 

Laos and Cambodia had also sent Uighurs back to China in the past. 

Malaysia last year also barred pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong, including Wong, from entering the country.
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, said that Southeast Asian countries are increasingly reliant on China’s aid and investment—which comes without criticism of human rights abuses, unlike that of the US or other Western countries. 

Cambodia, ruled by strongman Hun Sen, scuppered a statement critical of China’s position in the South China Sea at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting this summer, for example. 

In Thailand, where the military junta is increasingly cracking down on any form dissent, China’s influence may be of secondary importance, said Connelly.
“Would Thailand under Yingluck Shinawatra’s government have returned Joshua Wong? I’m not so sure,” said Connelly, referring to Thailand’s previous prime minister who was ousted in a military coup in 2014.

“The key dynamic in Thailand isn’t so much China’s investment, but it’s first and foremost that it’s not a democratic government… but any ASEAN country would have been pretty receptive to banning Wong.”