Leader for life
Embracing China, Facebook and himself, Hun Sen digs in.
As the sun rose over the murk of the Mekong River, the man who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades clasped hands with the Chinese ambassador and beamed.
“The Chinese leaders respect me highly and treat me as an equal,” Prime Minister Hun Sen said during the groundbreaking of a US$57-million Chinese-funded bridge in the district of Stung Trang.
“Let me ask those of you who have accused me of being too close to China,” he added. “What have you offered me besides cursing and disciplining me and threatening to put sanctions on me?”
For a quarter century, the West helped rebuild Cambodia while it was still reeling from the genocidal Khmer Rouge. The United States and Europe tied billions of dollars in aid to an effort to transform Cambodia into a liberal democracy.
That campaign has failed. Instead, Cambodia has come to stand as the highest watermark for China’s influence in Southeast Asia and as the stage for Hun Sen’s evolution into one of Asia’s most unstinting autocrats.
Hun Sen, 65, likes to be known as Lord Prime Minister and Supreme Military Commander, and has said he plans to stay in power for another decade or two. He’s making sure of it: His government has dissolved the main opposition party before general elections set for July, jailed dozens of critics and shuttered dissenting news media outlets. In Senate elections last month, his Cambodian People’s Party swept all the seats on offer.
Hun Sen’s enduring grip on power has been supported by China’s largesse, which comes without the West’s admonishments to protect human rights and democratic institutions.
“Cambodia is in danger of returning to being a totalitarian state,” said Mao Monyvann, a former opposition lawmaker. “And the worst thing is that Hun Sen looked around and he saw that China supported him and that America was not punishing other Asian countries for doing similar things, so he just went ahead with his crackdown.”
BIG BUSINESS
China is Cambodia’s largest benefactor, providing the country with nearly onethird of its foreign investment last year. Beijing has gifted Cambodia 100 tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
“In terms of funding for infrastructure, we welcome any country that’s willing,” said Sun Chanthol, Cambodia’s minister for public works and transport. “But so far, only the Chinese are responding so generously.”
The US and other Western countries are retreating further. On Feb 27, the Trump administration announced it was cutting aid to Cambodia because its Senate elections “failed to represent the genuine will of the Cambodian people”. And Germany last month placed visa restrictions on members of the Cambodian government, including on Hun Sen.
Hun Sen has long condemned Western powers for treating Cambodians as pawns in a geopolitical game. He has a point: The French colonised Cambodia, and the Americans bombed the countryside. A state-building experiment by the United Nations spread graft.
But his government’s accusations have grown increasingly outlandish.
Dissenting voices have been branded as Western agents. Kem Sokha, the leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, was detained in September and charged with treason, accused of plotting a US-funded coup. He denies the charges.
“The US wants to break up Cambodia and destroy our country,” said Phay Siphan, a government spokesman. “The US is paranoid and wants the Cambodian government to be weak so it can come back to this region and chase China away.”
MASTER OF TIMING
During his 33 years leading Cambodia, Hun Sen has displayed a faultless sense of when to switch sides.
The son of farmers became a fighter for the Khmer Rouge, whose murderous rule from 1975-79 resulted in the deaths of about a fifth of the national population.
“Yes, we were Khmer Rouge soldiers,” said Dy Bit, Hun Sen’s cousin. “There was nothing else to do.”
Dy Bit’s sister and neighbour were beaten to death by the radical communists. “Some of us killed,” he said, “and some of us were killed.”
But in 1977, Hun Sen defected to Vietnam. When Vietnamese troops ejected the
Khmer Rouge two years later, Hun Sen, at 26, returned to Cambodia as the world’s youngest foreign minister.
By the time the United Nations arrived in 1992 to administer a transitional authority, Hun Sen was firmly in control. He later sidelined his co-prime minister Norodom Ranariddh, whose party had won elections in 1993.
Throughout his political reinventions, perhaps only Hun Sen’s antipathy toward the United States has remained unchanged.
He grew up in a wooden house near the Mekong River, in a province that was
heavily bombed by the Americans as the Vietnam War spilled across the border.
While he led the puppet administration installed by the Vietnamese, Hun Sen chafed at the fact that the United States refused to recognise his government. Washington, still smarting over its retreat from Vietnam, pushed for Cambodia to be represented at the UN by the Khmer Rouge, which still held a corner of the country.
Hun Sen has never been invited to the White House. But he has travelled to Beijing numerous times, and in 2016, President Xi Jinping of China visited Cambodia.
Hun Sen’s supporters suggest that Beijing is more sympathetic to his authoritarian impulses because that is the natural state of affairs in Asia.
“We only respect one ruler because in our history there was only one king,” said Phay Siphan, the government spokesman. “The Chinese understand this because they have closer blood to us.”
Hun Sen has, however, also borrowed from Donald Trump’s playbook.
At the Mekong bridge ceremony, he pointed out New York Times journalists in the crowd and noted that the newspaper had been given “fake news” awards by Trump. He then warned that if its report was not suitably positive, “the Cambodian people will remember your faces”.
BUYING FRIENDS
Hun Sen has proved adept at using social media. The public relations firm Burson-Marsteller says his interactions on Facebook make him the third-most engaged leader in the world, although the opposition accuses Hun Sen of buying his “likes” through click farms.
On a cool February morning, Hun Sen addressed 10,000 young garment workers on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The speech was broadcast live on Facebook, and a stream of hearts and thumbs up floated across Hun Sen’s page.
After the hour-long talk, Hun Sen posed for photos with members of the crowd. Every worker was given the equivalent of $5 in cash in an envelope that specified the money was a gift from Hun Sen and his wife, Bun Rany.
Yet his Cambodian People’s Party is not assured of the youth vote in the election scheduled for July 29. In the last election, in 2013, the opposition, buoyed by support from young Cambodians, threatened to unseat the ruling party.
Hun Sen’s campaign strategy has been to position his government as the sole guarantor of peace. “Without us, there would still be war, and you wouldn’t have the choice to work in factories,” he told the garment workers.
Yet nearly 70% of Cambodia’s population is younger than 30. They have known no other leader but Hun Sen, and they appear eager for change.
Hun Sen, though, seems keen to keep politics a family concern. He has put his youngest son, Hun Many, in charge of courting the youth vote. Currently the country’s second-youngest lawmaker, Hun Many has expressed interest in becoming prime minister.
Hun Sen’s eldest son, Hun Manet, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, is widely considered to be angling for the job of commander in chief. Second son Hun Manith is rising in the intelligence services.
“We have to remember that democracy is an important pillar, but it is not the only one,” said Hun Many, who was educated in the United States and Australia.
CHINA’S ECONOMIC LIFT
Cambodia achieved 6.9% economic growth last year. In 2005, half of Cambodians lived below the poverty line. Less than a decade later, fewer than 14% did.
But even as millions of rural residents have graduated to factory work, expectations are rising along with income levels. Security officers have responded to workers’ protests with bullets.
That puts all the more pressure on Hun Sen to attract Chinese money. Western investors have been put off by Cambodia’s endemic corruption, not to mention the official anti-Western rhetoric.
In Sihanoukville, business is booming. In the coastal backwater once popular with Western backpackers, 20 casinos have opened in the past two years. A dozen more are scheduled to begin operations this year. The clientele is almost exclusively from China.
Hun Sen’s vacation villa is across the street from the Chinese-owned New MGM casino, where Chinese gamblers can be seen placing bets of $100,000 in the VIP room.
In late January, Yun Min, the governor of Preah Sihanouk province, wrote an internal report warning that so many Chinese workers had descended on Sihanoukville that the local economy was suffering. He denounced the influence of Chinese gangsters.
“Some mischievous people,” he cautioned, might use Sihanoukville’s makeover “to attack and influence the Cambodia-China relationship”.
Hun Sen publicly dismissed Yun Min’s criticism. Less than a week later, the governor seemed chastened.
“Like in any family, we might have disagreements with China,” said Yun Min, sitting in his office, with a view of a Chinese construction crane hovering nearby. “But our Lord Prime Minister Hun Sen is very clear that we still love our family.”
© 2018 New York Times News Service
Let me ask those of you who have accused me of being too close to China. What have you offered me besides cursing and disciplining me and threatening to put sanctions on me?