BRI port raises red flag in Cambodia
As a military installation, Ream Naval Base on Cambodia’s southwestern coast is not much to behold. At least, not yet.
Moored to its concrete pier, which was refurbished four years ago with funds from the US military, four Soviet-era Stenka patrol boats and several small Chinese-made vessels comprise most of the Royal Cambodian Navy’s coastal fleet. Some of the boats are not seaworthy and at least one has been spotted hauling construction materials for commercial developments on nearby islands in the Gulf of Thailand.
But, while the vessels and facilities are modest, Ream’s geopolitical importance may be set to grow as China pours money into Cambodia under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Last month, Ream became the second site in Cambodia to draw the attention of the US for what a senior Pentagon official suggested was its potential to host a Chinese military presence. And a Wall Street Journal report said China and Cambodia had signed a secret agreement that allows Beijing to use Ream for 30 years.
Prime Minister Hun Sen called the report “slander”, and Cambodian officials arranged a tour of the base for journalists to show the country had “nothing to hide”. Yet Hun Sen also admitted that the country has purchased “tens of thousands” of weapons from China.
Washington’s security establishment has long claimed that China’s expansive BRI investments in ports and airfields have a strategic military component. Dubbed the “string of pearls”, the network of ports and logistics facilities, it is claimed, will allow China to project military power and secure vital sea lanes — particularly the choke points through which its energy supplies pass.
In its recent annual report to the US Congress, the Pentagon wrote that some BRI investments “could create potential military advantages” for China, and forecast that Beijing would seek to add a second overseas base following the opening of an outpost in Djibouti in 2017 that China characterises as a “logistics facility”.
Beijing has rejected the framing of its BRI programme in a military context, calling it “Cold War” thinking. Instead, Chinese leaders portray the more than US$1-trillion economic initiative as promoting “winwin” economic development for countries involved.
There is no question that infrastructure is in high demand in the developing world, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and an expert on Southeast Asia security.
“The domestic motivations for getting ports and airfields are increased trade and increased tourism. It has deeply rooted economic reasons,” Thayer said of emerging countries. “The kind of conditions that the Asian Development Bank, World Bank and others would put down don’t exist with China. You get approval much easier and earlier.”
At a forum last month, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe explicitly linked deeper security ties with the BRI in an address to military leaders from the Caribbean and South Pacific. His comments came against the backdrop of increasing tension in the disputed South China Sea, where China recently launched a missile from one of its militarised artificial islands.
However, experts caution against viewing BRI investments exclusively through the lens of Chinese military strategy, saying the issue is multifaceted and includes economic and political motivators both in China and recipient countries.
“There’s definitely no smoke without fire is one way of putting it, there’s definitely potential for dual use,” said Charlie Thame, a political science lecturer at Thammasat University in Bangkok who has studied Chinese infrastructure investment in Cambodia and Myanmar.
But he added that “people tend to look at it either from a purely military strategic point of view or from a purely political or economic point of view, and often fail to provide a much more nuanced analysis of how a spectrum of different interests are motivating Chinese planners and officials to get access”.
In Kyaukphyu, on the southwestern coast of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, a Chinese-led consortium is leading a $1.3-billion port and special economic zone. The megaproject is part of a broader plan known as the China-Myanmar economic corridor.
Academic Sean Turnell, a Myanmar expert and senior economic adviser to its government, said the plans “above all” serve Beijing’s strategic interests by securing a port on the Indian Ocean and access to planned energy pipelines running overland to China’s Yunnan Province.
“The whole port makes no real economic sense for Myanmar at all,” said Turnell. “It makes a lot of sense for China. This is the port that gives them absolute, unencumbered access to the flows of goods and energy above all from the Middle East, it avoids the Straits of Malacca, it’s nicely situated to irritate India, it’s of immense strategic importance.”
However, he stressed Myanmar’s domestic politics must also be taken into consideration. The original $7.3-billion Kyaukpyu project agreement, inked with the previous military junta, was renegotiated and scaled down after the 2015 election that brought a quasi-civilian government to power.
The renegotiation, he said, was an example of “pushing back” against an arrangement that served the shortterm interests of the ruling elite to the long-term detriment of the country.
“[The previous deal] was just really bad. … It was basically the same sort of story of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, but much worse,” Turnell said, referring to the Chinese-built port on the South Asian island, which was leased to a Chinese company for 99 years after the country was unable to make debt repayments.
“For all the problems here, which are severe, Myanmar is the first country, I think, to successfully negotiate BRI, to push back and get something they want.”
In Cambodia, too, domestic politics provide the context for China’s unfolding BRI investments. This includes the 360-square-kilometre UDG development in Koh Kong, where the construction of the country’s longest airstrip and a planned deep-sea port have raised eyebrows about dual-use potential.
As billions flow into the country — stirring concerns about debt and fuelling local resentment in places like Sihanoukville, the epicentre of a Chinese-led construction boom — there has been no official pushback.
In power for more than 30 years, Hun Sen has moved increasingly close to China while crushing opponents at home. While China provides a bulwark against international condemnation for Cambodia’s democratic backsliding, the massive injections of cash also grease the wheels of the country’s patronage network.
Sophal Ear, associate professor of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles, called it a “marriage made in heaven for autocrats”.
“The win-win is really between China and Cambodia’s elites,” he said. “Infrastructure is a smokescreen for a money delivery mechanism for the elites.”