This year’s model

Chinese President Hu Jintao and his wife take in the sights during a 2004 trip to Egypt to discuss bilateral trade. Reuters

With Beijing working to spread its ideas across the globe, Joshua Kurlantzick travels from Asia to Africa to determine whether the 'China model’ can be duplicated.


From my seat by the banks of the lazy, dark-brown Mekong River, the skyline of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, doesn’t exactly remind me of New York, or even Bangkok. Clusters of low-lying slums, tiny houses with metal roofs, pack in next to open-air markets and squat, basic shops selling staple foods imported from Thailand. In the sidestreets, beggars missing limbs – the legacy of decades of civil war – beg for change or food from backpacker tourists with dreadlocked hair. At noon, with temperatures topping 40ºC, the entire city seems to stop; even the ubiquitous motorcycle taxis park their vehicles under trees and lie down.

But when I walk south, along the river’s bends, I suddenly come to a district that seems completely out of place. In front of skyrocketing scaffolding, Chinese construction crews in broad-brimmed hats and gray shirts work furiously, stopping only for short cigarette breaks. All around them, other Chinese companies have already made their mark on the low-rise town, putting up swank hotels and office blocks. Chinese bankers have set up shop, offering loans so that Chinese firms in town don’t have to deal with Cambodia’s archaic banks.

The Chinese construction crews are but one part of Beijing’s new relationship with Cambodia. While a decade ago China had virtually no links at all to Cambodia – Beijing supported the Khmer Rouge during the civil war, a point not easily forgotten – today China has become Cambodia’s most important foreign patron. Besides its investment and trade, China now provides over $600 million in annual aid, making it the country’s largest donor. And unlike Western countries, China doesn’t insist that the Cambodian government meet human rights standards to keep getting aid. Beijing funds local Chinese-language schools and establishes scholarships so Cambodian kids can go to university in China; it builds cultural centers in Phnom Penh. “We’ve become almost totally reliant on China,” one top Cambodian official told me. “They have influence over every section of the government.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

But all this generosity comes with a cost. In the 1990s, when the United Nations and Western donors remained the major outside influence on Cambodia, the country developed a vibrant, if rough form of democracy – political parties often settled disputes with gunfire. Idealistic young men and women one generation removed from genocide launched an alphabet soup of NGOs to protect worker rights, train journalists and monitor human rights abuses. But by the end of the 1990s, Western interest had waned, and China became the major foreign actor in Cambodia. Cambodia’s human rights climate has since deteriorated: the prime minister and his party repress all opposition, often through brutal methods, and Western donors have little leverage now that the Phnom Penh government can turn to China instead.

When I visited the embassy of France, which ruled Cambodia for 90 years prior to independence, I met with a senior economic official and asked him if he had any idea how much China gave to Cambodia, or where it went. He offered a Gallic shrug and sighed. “No,” he said. “No one knows.” Alongside scholarships for students China now offers vast training programmes for the Cambodian government: defense training for the tiny army; economic training for ministers; justice training for police and judges. In these training sessions, Cambodian officials say, their Chinese counterparts demonstrate how China does it: how China encourages investment yet gets hold of foreign technology and skills; how it encourages private enterprise while simultaneously ensuring that businesspeople continue to support the regime; in essence, how Beijing has overseen three decades of staggering growth without losing political control. And in a country that has tried to embrace Western-style capitalism and free trade – Cambodia inked a trade deal with the United States in which America agreed to import a certain quota of Cambodia-made garments and Cambodia guaranteed high labour standards in textile production – yet still failed to put a real dent in poverty, China’s promise of rapid growth finds an audience in Phnom Penh...... To read full article click here.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World.