Cambodia’s three wishes for 2020
Asia Times, Outlook 2020/Opinion , January 2, 2020
By Sim
Vireak
As Cambodia
faces domestic and international challenges, the country is pinning its hopes
on three key issues for 2020, namely its position amid geopolitical
competition, a new domestic political culture, and economic resilience.
Geopolitical melting pot
For good or
for bad, Cambodia has always been the darling, if not the trash bin, of
geopolitical competition. Despite the fact that the last geopolitical proxy war
was tragic, the temptation to use Cambodia as a geopolitical platform is
re-emerging between the US and China as well as between China and Vietnam.
Cambodia
should learn from Thailand in terms of how the latter has never been colonized
but instead has always served as a platform for healthy competition that is
beneficial for Thailand both economically and politically.
Historically,
Cambodia can also take aspiration from its 16th- and 17th-century position
when it was the center of commercial connectivity in the region that could
balance harmonious co-existence among Chinese, Japanese and European traders.
It was known that Phnom Penh in those days was the international and regional
Mekong upstream port-of-trade and marketing emporium and a major supplier of
deerskins that were shipped to Tokugawa Japan, in return for a variety of
silver and international products.
Key to this
point is how Cambodia can identify its contemporary “deerskins” that could help
appease American, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and European partners
altogether. How can Cambodia position itself as a geopolitical melting pot
without another disaster to its own people like that in the period from the
1970s to the 1990s? How can Cambodia appease different players
while firmly protecting its sovereignty, independence and national
interests?
Let’s cite
concrete examples. If the US perceives that Cambodia is hosting a Chinese
military port in Ream Naval Base, Cambodia can possibly address such distrust
by resuming military exercise with the US at that base at mutually agreeable
terms. If the US perceives that Cambodia is hosting a Chinese airbase in
Koh Kong province, Cambodia can probably outsource airport management to
joint-venture companies that may dilute the Chinese monopoly while maintaining
mutual economic benefits among all parties concerned.
If Vietnam
perceives that Cambodia is supporting China on South China Sea issues, Cambodia
can possibly encourage Vietnam to create a bilateral border mechanism with
China to institutionalize constructive dialogues like that between Cambodia and
Thailand.
Regarding the
South China Sea, there is a growing trend to accept the oversimplification that
any failure to reach a consensus over a joint communiqué or any other ASEAN
statements in which SCS issues are involved are caused by Cambodia, which is
perceived as a vassal state of China, despite the fact that negotiations among
10 actors with different interests and positions are highly complex.
Vietnam and
the US should be able to understand by now that it can just never happen that
Cambodia would support either China or Vietnam, which have
overlapping claims with other member states of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations. Because it was an indisputable fact that when Cambodia had territorial issues with Thailand
over the ownership of land surrounding the Preah Vihear Temple, neither China,
the US, Vietnam, the Philippines or Japan could take any position to the
contrary.
It is quite
obvious that Cambodia’s position remains the same, taking no side on
territorial issues in the South China Sea, and urging states directly involved
to deal with the issues among themselves peacefully without provocation, threat
or coercion, demonization or victimization.
New domestic political culture
There exists
an exceptional opportunity for Cambodia to reset its domestic political culture
after the dissolution of an opposition that aligned itself
with constant foreign interventions, extremism, racism and non-democratic
regime change.
Cambodia
should reinvent national consensus and national reconciliation among domestic
political actors by building a new political culture that is based on dialogue,
policy-based debate, and parliamentary participation. There is a strong hope
for future politicians to learn to open their hearts and agree to disagree
based on national interest and national consensus.
To that end,
Cambodia can learn from Japan’s mature democracy that is less antagonistic and
agitating than some Western versions of democracy, which are now being
undermined by populism, extreme nationalism and ideological polarization.
Economic resilience and diversified economy
Despite the
threat from the European Union to withdraw preferential trade
treatment under the Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme, Cambodia should be
able to assert clearly, “No EBA, no problem.”
Looking back
to the past, one should not underestimate Cambodia’s resilience. Cambodia was
able to withstand the 12-year economic embargo by many nations starting from
1979 when the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime was toppled with support from
Vietnamese forces. It also withstood the economic crisis in 2008 following the sudden
massive withdrawal of Korean investors due to the global financial crisis.
Cambodia also manifested its resilience when Thailand decided to crack down on
illegal laborers in 2014, and eventually ousted nearly 200,000 jobless
Cambodians.
The current macro-economic
stability even provides sober ground to believe in Cambodia’s resilience as
compared with the previous economic shocks. For instance, the government
collected more than US$4.5 billion in revenue from customs and taxation during
the first nine months of 2019, with tax collection exceeding the target by $800
million. Moreover, the government has also reserved around $3 billion to cope
with any possible shock.
Apart from
preventive measures against external economic shocks, domestically, there is
hope that Cambodia will be able to encourage healthy and diversified economic
competition among domestic actors. For instance, the government can encourage
tycoons to invest in new industries or factories that create jobs instead of
heavily investing in sectors that do not diversify the economic base or create
sufficient jobs for the young workforce.