China’s absence of clear determination could jeopardise the whole program, given uncertainty over the site’s costs, its economic effect and financial viability, experts, officials and diplomats say.
In response to China’s domestic economy struggling, perhaps in nations like Cambodia, it also highlights how Beijing is significantly reducing its investments abroad.
Cambodia has recently been widely recognized by ambassadors and foreign policy experts as a Chinese client state due to Beijing paying more than one-third of its overall condition debts, once a perfect case for Western-backed “nation-building” following the protracted civil war that followed the Khmer Rouge regime’s long reign.
However, after a number of unsuccessful infrastructure projects, concerns about criminal gangs attempting to extort Chinese nationals and declining tourist numbers are now slashed.
DIFFERING NARRATIVES
The 180-kilometer canal would significantly expand an existing waterway and divert water to the Gulf of Thailand, reducing Cambodian shipping through Vietnamese ports.
In the months after the Cambodian government signed an “investment framework agreement” in October 2023 with China Road and Bridge Corporation ( CRBC ), a state-owned construction company, Cambodian officials went public about China’s financial involvement. The agreement’s text is private.
In an interview with Reuters in May, the minister in charge of the project, Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chanthol, said CRBC would develop the canal and” totally” cover its costs, getting a multi-decade concession in return.
But at the August groundbreaking, the prime minister put CRBC’s share in the project at 49 per cent, with the remainder covered by Cambodian companies.
The same day, his father and Cambodia’s decades-long leader Hun Sen posted a statement on Facebook calling on Japan to invest in the canal.
In its report on the groundbreaking, China’s official Xinhua News Agency made no mention of Chinese involvement.
A Sun Chanthol communications officer later told Reuters that the canal’s section’s ownership would remain” to be determined” with CRBC.
A company official told Reuters in mid-October that the figures circulating in the public were not definitive when questioned about Cambodian claims that CRBC would have a 49 % stake.
” It’s very complicated”, said the official, who did not elaborate.