In downtown Phnom Penh, a huge high-end development mimicking the buildings and boulevards of Paris embodies a move to cash in on the “new frontier” for luxury — in the capital of one of Asia’s poorest countries.
A replica of the Arc de Triomphe towers over a branch of the Mekong River, flanked by shops and apartments built in the style of the French capital’s signature Haussmann blocs.
“This building is beautiful, really beautiful,” enthused Heng Sokharith, 49, who bought a unit in the Elysee project — named after the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris — for his furniture business.
Photo: AFP
“When we have such a building in Cambodia, it is a source of pride.”
With its manicured promenades, its cafes and its self-declared elegance, this “mini-Paris” is being sold as a chic enclave for the rich, sheltered from the restless bustle and noise of the city of two million.
Developers OCIC have transformed what was a swamp on an island, throwing up skyscrapers, an international school and a hospital. OCIC, part of one of the country’s largest conglomerates, invested US$400 million in Elysee, which was initially launched in 2015 and is now nearing completion.
Photo: AFP
Koh Pich, the island that houses the Elysee, has become a symbol of Phnom Penh’s rebirth after decades of conflict which ended in the early 1990s.
Cambodia has had one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia over the past 20 years. But the country is riven with graft and cronyism, with much of the wealth concentrated in the hands of a small elite with close links to longtime ruler Hun Sen and his son Hun Manet, who took over power last year. Prices for the large Elysee units run up to US$1,300 a square meter — in a country where the GDP per capita is just over US$1,600 and the minimum wage in the garment sector, a major employer, is around US$200 a month.
But despite these unpromising conditions, more than 80 percent of the 229 units have been sold, according to OCIC Vice-President Thierry Tea, although not all are currently occupied. Phnom Penh is trying to attract foreign investors looking for property with its prices, which are competitive compared to other cities in the region.
Photo: AFP
“Should the customer want to buy, to rent, to have a yield and return on investment, they are very welcome,” Tea said.
“Cambodia has so much to offer. Phnom Penh is a growing city. There is a lot of potential.”
Under Hun Sen, Cambodia developed ever-tighter ties with Beijing, and Chinese money has flooded into the country, fueling a construction boom in the capital — but also bringing a mushrooming of casinos and other more unsavory businesses.
‘NEW FRONTIER’
Those backing the Elysee and similar high-end ventures say that in addition to Chinese money, they hope high-end brands will be attracted by the market potential offered by the country’s growing middle classes.
Not far from Koh Pich, a shopping mall with up to 75 luxury boutiques will open in the next few months. Pierre Balsan, the Cambodia managing director for Bluebell, the company behind the mall, said the country was “a new frontier for luxury brands.”
The main challenge was “to try to change the perception of the brand managers about Cambodia, and the image of Cambodia”, he said.
Balsan said last year’s handover of power to a new, younger generation — Hun Manet is 46 — had helped to sell the country.
Hun Manet, who studied in the US and Britain, embodies the renewal of the elite after his father ran the country with an iron fist for nearly 40 years.
He has pledged to turn Cambodia into a “high-income country” by 2050, but he presides over a corrupt system inherited from his father, which crushed all political dissent and worked to enrich cliques close to the government.
Gabriel Fauveaud, an expert on Phnom Penh’s urban development at the geography department of the University of Montreal, said the city was seeing the “capture of real estate income by big players who are making big money” because of their political connections.
Several Cambodians working in the luxury goods sector refused to be interviewed, citing a need for discretion.
But Heng Sokharith is happy with his investment.
“I think there will be more development in the future, so in the future this area will become more attractive,” he said.
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
RSS