Run by a local ethnic Chinese organization, the school is one of the largest Mandarin-speaking elementary and junior high schools outside China and Taiwan. It currently has more than 11,000 students, including those at its branch campus. For Loeung Sokmenh, headmaster of the main campus, things have improved to an astonishing degree. She has been a faculty member there since the school reopened in 1992 after being forced to close in 1970. Those intervening years saw the tumult that accompanied a U.S.-supported coup headed by Marshal Lon Nol, the devastating rule of the China-backed Pol Pot regime and the subsequent invasion by Vietnam
The Council for the Development of Cambodia says China has been the biggest source of foreign direct investment since 2011, with the cumulative total during the period until early December reaching $4.9 billion.
"Thanks for all the assistance," Hun Sen told a business delegation from China on Dec. 1. "I can say that fraternal friend China has helped build the longest road, approximately 1,500km long, and seven bridges totaling approximately 3,104 meters long," he said.
China's presence in Cambodia's power industry is also growing. The official website of the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia states that Chinese companies provided around 80% of all the power generated in the country in 2016. The local Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which acts at the behest of Beijing, kicked off a two-week exhibit at the Royal University of Phnom Penh on Feb. 16 under the perfunctory title "achievements of electric power construction in Cambodia assisted by Chinese companies." The aim apparently was to show off China's economic muscle.
During the Chinese leader's two-day stay, 31 official documents were signed. The deals included debt waivers, a doubling of China's import quota for Cambodian rice, the removal of double taxation and nearly $2 billion in infrastructure building. Cambodia is considered a crucial part of Xi's pet project, the Belt and Road Initiative. Cash-strapped Cambodia, meanwhile, sees the plan as a way to build badly needed infrastructure.
China Minsheng Investment Group led a delegation of over 100 companies to Cambodia in December. Its chairman, Dong Wenbiao, pledged to invest in an industrial park on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and set up an infrastructure fund worth several hundred million dollars.
But China is not offering Cambodia any free lunches. Along with a renewed emphasis on Beijing's economic support for Phnom Penh, the joint communique signed by Xi Jinping and Hun Sen published last October stated that they have agreed to "further enhance coordination and cooperation within various multilateral frameworks" and to maintain close, timely and effective communications on matters concerning their significant interests to "offer forceful support for each other."
Full article in link.Since then, China's influence on Cambodia has only grown stronger. More than ever, Beijing will expect the country to fall in line with its agenda.
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