By Phillip Orchard
Speculation has swirled for more than a year that Beijing plans to militarize a number of Chinese-funded port and airport projects in Cambodia. Last year, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence sent a letter to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen inquiring about Chinese intentions for Ream Naval Base, where U.S. funding had already paid for several facilities. Last month, reports surfaced that Phnom Penh had backtracked on a U.S. offer to refurbish additional buildings at the base. And last week, reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times threw fuel on the fire, citing claims from unnamed U.S. and allied sources that Beijing and Phnom Penh had signed a secret agreement giving Chinese warships exclusive access to the base, which is adjacent to the Chinese-operated Port of Sihanoukville. Nearby, another deepwater Chinese port project and a Chinese-funded airport are being carved out of the jungle, ostensibly to serve an empty Chinese-built beach resort and investment zone. (The airport, curiously, features a 3,600-meter runway, far longer than what’s needed for commercial traffic.)
China and Cambodia have denied the reports about the secret pact. Whatever the case, China has ample reason to want the facilities, which would be the Chinese military’s first dedicated overseas bases in Southeast Asia. And for the past several years, it’s been steadily pulling Cambodia ever tighter into its strategic orbit. Its success here illustrates just how potent China’s approach to winning friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific can be – under the right circumstances. But it also underscores a fundamental dilemma that will complicate China’s efforts to expand its military footprint going forward.
China’s Tricky Pursuit of Overseas Bases
For China to secure its vital sea lanes and establish a Chinese-centric order in the Indo-Pacific, it needs to be able to control chokepoints along the first island chain and challenge threats deep into the Indian Ocean basin and the Western Pacific. To do this, China needs long-range naval, air force, and missile power projection capabilities. Just as important, it needs a network of bases to service its warships, launch its warplanes and missiles, store supplies and ammunition, and so forth. However large and sophisticated its navy becomes, it’ll be confined to littoral defense without such a network.
China has struggled to build this the old-fashioned way – by persuading strategically aligned countries that have an interest in giving China the keys to the castle. After all, the United States’ vast network of overseas military bases, foreign bases open to U.S. deployments, and logistics support facilities didn’t start to take shape until the U.S. became a superpower – and, for many countries, their best hope of keeping threats of communism, jihadism and so forth at bay. Its most important bases, in fact, were established in countries it had conquered. China is not the region’s dominant power. It has conquered no adversaries. And a scant few countries in the Indo-Pacific see the U.S. and its allies as threatening enough to throw their lot in with the Chinese.
China has therefore sought to play to its strengths by flooding strategically important countries with aid and investment to cultivate economic and political dependencies, funding the construction of potential “dual use” civil-military infrastructure and then pressuring host governments to accommodate Chinese strategic needs. This is one motivation (among many) behind several Belt and Road Initiative projects. So far, though, successes have been slow coming. Many countries are happy to take China’s money if it’s there for the taking. They may even mute their criticism of China and downplay bilateral disputes to ensure that the Chinese taps remain open. But they can’t ignore the potential political, diplomatic and strategic risks of fully embracing the Chinese military. And the leverage China derives from its “debt-trap diplomacy” isn’t strong enough to overcome these pressures.
China’s best prospects are countries that have a core interest in using China to balance against a more powerful outside foe; an economy in dire need of infrastructure investment and few options for getting it; and a power structure built around opaque patronage networks. Pakistan and North Korea, the closest things China has to staunch allies, fit the bill. So too, apparently, does Cambodia.
Why China Wants Cambodia
Cambodia is often overlooked in the mounting competition for Southeast Asian loyalties. It’s not party to the disputes over the South China Sea, and it wouldn’t be much use to an outside power trying to blockade Chinese maritime trade. It’s unimportant to the BRI transportation projects meant to expand Chinese trade access to the Indian Ocean and ease China’s dependence on the Malacca Strait and other regional chokepoints.
Still, its location does have some strategic value. It would substantially extend the reach of Chinese warplanes, anti-ship missiles, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets in Southeast Asia, potentially giving Beijing ample coverage over the critical Strait of Malacca. It could allow Chinese maritime forces – the navy but also paramilitaries like the Chinese Coast Guard and the Maritime Militia – to sustain a much heavier presence around the southern fringes of China’s nine-dash line claims. It would also enable China to increase pressure on Thailand, an increasingly ambivalent U.S. treaty ally, and an increasingly belligerent Vietnam. The oil-rich waters off southeastern Vietnam are among the country’s most lucrative – and where Vietnam has defied Chinese pressure by moving forward with exploration projects with foreign firms. As demonstrated in the past two months’ standoffs around rigs in Vietnamese and Malaysian waters, China often tries to assert control over its territorial claims by harassing commercial operations with non-naval vessels. Whether or not Chinese warships ever call Cambodia home, opening its ports to Chinese paramilitaries and commercial and fishing fleets could prove valuable in this regard.
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