China’s military sets sights on Cambodia

DAVID HUTT

Last week, redevelopment work funded by a grant aid from China began at Cambodia’s Ream naval base on the South China Sea. During a groundbreaking ceremony, Beijing’s Cambodia envoy, Wang Wentian, said that Chinese-Cambodian military cooperation was a “strong pillar” of an “ironclad partnership.” For several years, analysts and US government officials have sounded the alarm about a possible Chinese military presence at the Ream naval base, which juts out into the Gulf of Thailand from southern Cambodia. Use of the base could give the Chinese navy expanded access to hotly contested South China Sea, as well as escalate US-China rivalries in the region.

Before the groundbreaking ceremony, a Washington Post report cited unnamed “Western officials” that Phnom Penh will give China “exclusive” access to parts of the naval base and possibly allow Beijing to station its troops there. Phnom Penh has consistently denied reports it will allow access to Chinese troops, which would violate a clause of Cambodia’s constitution barring foreign military bases.

At a security dialogue in Singapore last week, Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh said that China won’t have exclusive access and is only assisting in the base’s redevelopment. Banh said the base was being “modernized and upgraded in accordance with Cambodian requirements.” It is still unclear what exactly the Chinese-built facilities at Ream will be, but they are “modest,” according to Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia security expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

They reportedly include a new command center, meeting and dining halls, as well as medical outposts. A dry-dock, slipway, and two new piers will also be constructed. There are reports that dredging will take place to allow larger vessels to dock but it remains unclear how deep this will go. In total, the area allocated to the Chinese renovation of the base is around 0.3 square kilometers (0.1 sq. miles), Thayer told DW. “If the Cambodian government’s words are to be taken at face value and based on the available information, we could surmise that the facility is a dual-use one, short of a base,” Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told DW.

Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), noted that access to Ream would not mean China’s navy is geographically closer to the Strait of Malacca, a key international shipping lane, since China already has built military installations in the South China Sea.

“But it would enhance China’s ability for surveillance and intelligence collection around the Gulf of Thailand and even in the eastern Indian Ocean,” Poling told DW.

China currently has one foreign naval base in the east African country of Djibouti.

There have been several reports in recent years about the possibility of Chinese troops in Cambodia. In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported on an alleged secret deal to allow Chinese troops to be stationed at the Ream naval base. That same year, a Chinese-built tourism development project in Cambodia’s Koh Kong province drew suspicion that its airport runway and deep-water port could be utilized by the Chinese military. Cambodia-US relations have also soured as ties with Beijing grow stronger. Phnom Penh has rejected American offers to help fund the redevelopment of the Ream naval base. Cambodia unilaterally suspended joint-military operations with the US in early 2017 and instead began drilling with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

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