China announced a major infrastructure project in Cambodia midway through its election campaign and denounced proposed economic sanctions by the EU on the Southeast Asian nation.
China’s ambassador in Phnom Penh also attended a ruling party rally in the Cambodian capital, according to a media report.
The flurry of moves during the three-week campaign shows that China is leaving nothing to chance to ensure that its most loyal ally in Southeast Asia, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, comfortably wins today’s poll, political analysts said.
“This is a bold step for China,” said Chheang Vannarith, from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “In the past, China kept a very low profile when it came to elections and domestic politics in Cambodia. This time, China is being very assertive.”
China has had a long and volatile relationship with its southern neighbor. After backing the Khmer Rouge, it fell out of favor when the murderous communist regime was deposed. Ties have become stronger in the past decade with the government of Hun Sen, who has been in power for 33 years.
“China sees Cambodia as a strategic state, one that is very important to China,” Chheang said, adding that Beijing had “learned the lesson” from the surprise election defeat of Malaysia’s long-ruling coalition in May.
New Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has suspended more than US$20 billion of China-backed projects and been highly critical of some of its investment.
Cambodia has supported China’s island-building and militarization in the contested South China Sea, and shielded Beijing from criticism by ASEAN, Southeast Asia’s 10-member forum of nations.
ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei are in disputes with China over rival claims to the waters.
For Cambodia, China is its closest economic and political ally. Chinese capital investment into Cambodia increased from US$600 million in 2012 to US$1.08 billion in 2016, Cambodian government figures showed.
Over the five year period, Chinese investment averaged half of all foreign investment.
China’s embassy in Phnom Penh did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Asked if China supported the re-election of Hun Sen, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said in Beijing on Friday that the election was an internal affair, but China wanted the country to “develop stably.”
“China supports the Cambodian people to choose a development path that suits their national condition, and supports and offers its best wishes for the election to proceed smoothly,” Geng said.
Cambodian Minister of Foreign Affairs Prak Sokhonn, who recently described relations between the two countries as the “best ever,” declined a request for an interview, as did senior Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation officials.
When the formal election campaign began, Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Xiong Bo (熊波) was a guest at a big ruling party rally addressed by Hun Sen in Phnom Penh, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.
Midway through the campaign, China announced it would provide Cambodia with US$259 million in concessional loans to fund a ring road in Phnom Penh.
During two events held a few days later, Xiong hailed Cambodia’s “excellent” diplomacy and criticized proposed EU sanctions on Cambodia’s important garment industry sector.
“No matter what the EU decides to do, China will continue to expand and deepen our cooperation with Cambodia in all fields, especially in term of trade and economic relations,” the Phnom Penh Post quoted him as saying.
There seems little doubt that Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) will win today’s election.
The main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved last year and its leader jailed for alleged treason.
Critics of Hun Sen have branded the vote a sham after the government suppressed independent media and dissent.
The crackdown prompted the US and EU to withdraw funding and monitors from the election. China, in contrast, has twice injected funding into the Cambodian National Election Committee and registered its own electoral observers.
Carl Thayer, an expert on Southeast Asia at the University of New South Wales, said relations between the CPP and China strengthened after the CNRP came close to winning the 2013 national elections.
“The Chinese found this unsettling and told Hun Sen that they wanted stability,” he said, citing diplomatic sources. “China is now heavily invested in the CPP, and the reverse is also true.”
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