The two countries pledged to build “diamond-like cooperation’ with new agreements.
China has offered Cambodia a grant package worth 300 million yuan ($44 million) to support its railway construction as the two communist-ruled nations seek to build a “diamond cooperation framework” in six areas.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced the grant package after a Saturday meeting with his Cambodian counterpart, Hun Sen, who was on a three-day official visit to China, the National Television of Cambodia reported.
Hun Sen said in a Facebook post that the two leaders agreed to expand cooperation in politics, production capacity, agriculture, energy, security, and people-to-people relations.
A joint statements issued in which Beijing pledged to support Cambodia in the preliminary work of railway planning, design, and feasibility studies to promote railway construction in Phnom Penh.
“Both sides look forward to early railway connection between Cambodia and China—Laos—Thailand railway,” the statement reads. It did not elaborate on the railway projects and the period of construction.
However, Cambodia announced last month that it plans to upgrade its existing 382 kilometer-railway linking Phnom Penh and Poipet city, which sits on the Cambodia–Thailand border, to become the country’s first high-speed rail. The project is expected to cost about $4 billion.
Hun Sen oversaw the signing ceremonies of 12 agreements with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during his visit to China, including the Kratie University development project and the $4.4 million grant for an unexploded ordnance reduction project in Cambodia.
Xi pledged to encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in Cambodia and help in the construction of the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone, a flagship project under the China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
One-China Policy
In the joint statement, Hun Sen reaffirmed Cambodia’s “resolute adherence” to the One-China policy and said that he opposes “any attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs or to block and contain China under the subterfuge of Taiwan.”
He vowed that “Cambodia will not develop any form of official relations with Taiwan,” a self-governed island that the China considers as a renegade province that must be reunified with the mainland by all means necessary.
“Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory as well as China’s internal affair, which brooks no interference from any external forces,” the statement reads.
The two leaders also called for joint efforts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to maintain stability in the South China Sea, where Beijing has been accused of asserting its territorial claims in an aggressive manner due to its illegal maritime activities.
“Any attempt to use the South China Sea issue to undermine regional peace, stability, and trust is counterproductive and should be avoided,” the leaders said.
Several of the ASEAN members are engaged in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, including Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam.
CCP’s Influence in Cambodia
More than 40 percent of Cambodia’s $10 billion in foreign debt is owed to China, although Cambodia has not asked Beijing to restructure that burden, unlike other countries such as Sri Lanka, Zambia, and Ethiopia, which have taken out massive Chinese loans.
There is growing international concern about China’s ties with Cambodia, one of the earliest supporters of the One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR, also known as BRI).
Launched in 2013, it is the China’s flagship project to build up geopolitical influence via investments across Southeast Asia, African, Europe, and Latin America.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia in 2019, Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales, outlined Cambodia’s financial burdens: It must pay back Chinese loans, in addition to shelling out maintenance costs for Chinese-financed infrastructure projects.
This could “result in Cambodia’s falling into the so-called debt trap,” Thayer said. “Chinese companies involved in providing infrastructure take possession of the infrastructure. This could hypothetically mean Chinese ownership of Cambodian ports and even airports.”
Beijing has invested in numerous OBOR infrastructure projects in Cambodia, such as an expressway linking the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville; a new international airport at the resort town of Siem Reap; and a hydropower plant in Stung Treng.
Sihanoukville sits facing the Gulf of Thailand and is in close proximity to the South China Sea. In Sihanoukville, Chinese money has flooded in to build resorts, casinos, and skyscrapers.
On Apr. 19, 2019, the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh posted on its official Facebook page a message about Cambodia’s economic relationship with China: “China is Cambodia’s largest trade partner, but this relationship is heavily skewed in China’s favor.”
The post included a graph showing that Cambodia imported $5.286 billion worth of goods from China in 2017 while exporting $753 million to China in the same year. Meanwhile, Cambodia enjoyed a trade surplus of about $2.67 billion with the United States in the same year.
The trade imbalance with China does “not support jobs or industry in the same way Cambodia’s trade relationship with the United States or European Union does,” the post read.
“This is just one more way Cambodia has shifted from a more balanced and diverse economic approach to one more dependent on China,” it added.
The Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, in a strategy paper published in 2017, also warned of the risks involved with the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor (CICPEC), an OBOR-planned trade route Cambodia is part of.
According to Chinese state-run media Xinhua, the corridor aims to boost Chinese cooperation with ASEAN countries, connecting Nanning, the capital of southwestern China’s Guangxi region, with Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia.
“The CICPEC has the potential to erode the current security architecture in the region, allowing China to use its economic leverage to accumulate inordinate geopolitical power in its immediate neighborhood,” the paper stated.
Frank Fang and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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