China’s military influences in Cambodia and evolving military network surrounding Vietnam

(Ream naval base in Cambodia. Source: Washington Post.)

Greg Poling

On December 7, 2022, the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia and the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on “Understanding and Addressing the Challenges in the Mekong region.” The witnesses conducting the hearing in the Subcommittee were three leading US experts on the region: Mr. Greg Poling, Director of the Southeast Asia Program, Center Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Mr. Brian Eyler, Director of the Southeast Asia Program, Stimson Center, and Mr. Patrick M. Cronin, Chair of Asia-Pacific Security at the Hudson Institute. On this occasion, we interviewed Mr. Greg Poling about China’s military influences in Cambodia and China’s evolving military network surrounding Vietnam.

Why is the US interested in the Mekong sub-region?

On December 7, 2022, three leading experts including you were invited by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation to conduct a testimony about current Challenges in the Mekong Region. Please let us know why the House of Representatives is particularly interested in the Mekong region at this time.

Greg Poling: Well, it’s a pleasure to speak with you. The reason that the House is interested in Southeast Asia and Mekong subregion, in particular, is largely because of the China challenge.

This is a region that’s really on the front lines of U.S. competition with China for influence: economic influence, political influence, and security influence in the region.

And in particular, many members of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, including Chairman Ami Bera, had recently traveled to the region and visited Cambodia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam as well.

And they also just had a visit by Chairman Meeks (Gregory Meeks) to Cambodia on the sideline. He’s the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He traveled to Cambodia on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit to sign the Memorandum of Understanding, which officially made the U.S. Congress an observer of the ASEAN Interparliamentary Assembly, which is the grouping of all the different Congresses and parliaments in Southeast Asia.

China in Cambodia: Airstrip inside a resort

Your remark on December 7, 2022 at the House of Representatives focused on China’s influence in Cambodia and the difficulties it presents to the interests of the US, the American allies in the regions, and Cambodia. Please summarize your main points in the testimony at the House of Representatives.

Greg Poling: Was probably not a surprise to anybody to hear that Cambodia is a place in Southeast Asia where Chinese influence is the most obvious political and economic influence, and now more recently, military influence.

So the biggest concern for the U.S. at the moment has to be the growing Chinese military footprint at Ream Naval Base. Ream naval Base is a Cambodian navy base on the Gulf of Thailand Bay, which is being rapidly modernized and expanded using Chinese funds and probably Chinese construction workers. And about half of the base seems to have been divided off for China’s exclusive use. The US government saw a secret agreement between the Cambodian government and the Chinese government in 2019 that said as much that half of the base would be given to China for its exclusive use. And that has been a growing U.S. concern for years.

The other related facility that’s of concern to the U.S. is the Dara Sakor airstrip, which is part of the Dara Sakor resort being developed by the Tianjin Union Development Group, a Chinese private entity, nominally private entity, but with very close links to the PLA. And that’s on the other side of Ream Bay.

Ream base in Cambodia on Chinese naval map in the South China Sea

As you mentioned in the testimony, Cambodia cleared and removed the US-aided naval facility at Ream Naval Base, moved them to a more remote and underused location, and then the area was funded by China to build a bigger base. Please evaluate and analyze this action of Cambodia and China. If we look at the location of the Strait of Malacca, the position of Cambodia’s Ream naval base on the whole China’s naval map in Southeast Asia, including naval bases in the Paracel and Spratly islands in the South China Sea, can we recognize what role Ream base plays in that China’s map?

Greg Poling: For Cambodia, this seems to be about the money. Getting Chinese funds to build up the base is, you know, economically makes sense if the Cambodian navy wants a bigger facility.

And it’s also reflective of the broader role that China plays in the Cambodian economy at this point. China is now by far the largest investor in Cambodia year on year. It’s by far the largest trade partner. Certain SEZs (Special Economic Zones), especially the Sihanoukville SEZ, are basically Chinese enclaves. And so China now exercises a significant amount of economic and political influence on decision-making within Cambodia, which probably helps explain why it is getting exclusive access to the Ream naval base, despite the fact that the Cambodian constitution clearly bans permanent military presence by foreign countries.

The Cambodian government at least seems to be a bit embarrassed by this, which is why Cambodian officials continue to change their explanation. Early in this saga, back in 2019 and 2020, Cambodian officials consistently said that this was all false and that there was no agreement with China. And then after they knocked down the American-built facilities at Ream in mid-2020, they finally said, okay, it’s a little bit China is building something, but China is not going to use them. It’s just for us. So the explanations have consistently shifted.

Why does China want this? I think it helps complement it amplifies the military presence that China has built in the South China Sea using its artificial islands in the Spratlys.

That Navy base really doesn’t mean that much to China. If you were to put down a ruler and judge the distance from the Ream Naval base in Cambodia to the Strait of Malacca, which is of great concern to China, it’s the same distance as it is from China’s base on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys.

So the Navy part doesn’t matter a lot. What matters more are the sensors and radars and communications facilities that China can put into Ream, which will allow China to monitor activity in the Gulf of Thailand, in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and maybe even in the eastern Indian Ocean, which will be very helpful to China, both to keep an eye on what Vietnam is doing and also what the U.S. is doing in its alliances and joint exercises with the Thais and the Malaysians.

The other thing that’s important is that the Dara Sakor airstrip I mentioned, which is not part of Ream Naval Base but is close by, seems to have been built to military specifications.

That’s a very long military-grade air airstrip that actually could help China quite a bit. One, it would let China launch patrol aircraft over the Gulf of Thailand. Two, it would give Chinese fighter jets what’s called a deferred runway. So a runway that they could land on if they need to, if they get in trouble, which is very important for aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers need a divert runway nearby in case the planes get lost. There’s a problem with the sensors? You don’t want your planes to have to crash into the ocean. So unlike the U.S., China doesn’t have many friends and allies. There are not a lot of places that would let Chinese fighter jets land. Cambodia could be one of those places.

Ream Naval Base and the Kra canal

China and Thailand have repeatedly discussed the project of digging the Kra Canal across Thailand. Recently, the United States, India, and Australia all want to participate in the project, not giving China a monopoly in this project. Economically, The World Bank states that 140,000 ships will seek to transit the strait annually by the end of the decade, far in excess of its capacity of 122,000 ships. Hence, the construction of this new canal could decrease the pressure on the Strait of Malacca. This canal will benefit the shipping and logistic companies as there would be reduced operating and voyaging costs between East Asia and Europe. But politically and militarily, in your opinion, does China’s development of the Ream naval base in Cambodia create any advantages for China to compete with the US and its allies in the Kra Canal area in the future?

Greg Poling: It could, but I am personally extremely skeptical that anybody will ever dig the canal or they’ve been talking about the canal for longer than I’ve been alive.

It’s always private businessmen who get this idea right that they’re going to dig a new Panama Canal or a new Suez Canal and they’re going be rich. The fact is, this will be an enormous undertaking, hugely expensive, environmentally destructive, politically, and extremely difficult to keep going.

But it would rely on the permission of most especially the Thai government, which could change as early as this year. But also, I mean, you’d have negotiated with the Malaysian government, the Singaporean government, you know, the there are rail and road and water linkages down through the isthmus that they go to other countries. You’d have to do all of that for a project that probably wouldn’t make a ton of money. I mean, to be a little bit youthful.

It’s pretty close to the Strait of Malacca. What makes the Panama Canal work? What makes the Suez Canal work? Is that they’re the only ways to get through where you’re going? The cross canal would be one of many ways to get from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean. There’s a Malacca strait, there are Lombok and Sunda straits. So yes, it would be marginally beneficial to China to have some other way to get its vessels, particularly US naval vessels, out of the Gulf of Thailand, the South China Sea, without having to go past the Strait of Malacca that, of course, the US and Singapore monitor. But is it so useful that they could afford to spend tens of billions of dollars over a decade and wreck their relationships with Thailand and Malaysia? Probably not.

Vietnam’s countermeasures 

The last question, back to Vietnam’s issue, the Ream base is located next to Phu Quoc island and Kien Giang province. Militarily, China has gained the upper hand in the Paracels and Spratlys in the South China Sea. Could you please comment on the impact of this military situation on Vietnam? What strategy should Vietnam implement now and in the future? Should Vietnam develop military bases in Phu Quoc, and Kien Giang, or focus on defending Saigon? In terms of international cooperation, what should Vietnam do?

Greg Poling: I cannot realistically advise the Vietnamese government at the tactical level like that. What I can say, excuse me, is that the Vietnamese government should be more worried than the US government is about Chinese accessories and naval bases because in peacetime it allows China to spy on everything Vietnam does in the South. It will allow China to monitor all Vietnamese air naval activity anywhere in the South, anywhere in the Gulf of Thailand. It will potentially try to fly patrol aircraft that could circle the Vietnamese coast. All of this should be of concern and it gives China another hypothetical point of attack in case of a conflict. So Vietnam wouldn’t just have to worry about the northern border, which would be its top concern, and secondarily, the Paracels.

It would now also have to worry about this soft underbelly in the south. Part of the answer here is certainly shoring up Vietnam’s political relationship with Cambodia. And we have every reason to believe that Vietnamese officials have raised the issue of agreeing with Cambodian officials. Why wouldn’t they?

And of course, Cambodia is not entirely a proxy state yet. I mean, Cambodia does have agency here. And so part of the answer is Vietnam trying to do what it could to make sure that Cambodians would never allow the use of a naval base for that kind of military activity. And then in peacetime, Vietnam will have to monitor and try to foil this kind of intelligence collection, which will certainly be happening.

Thank you Mr. Greg Poling for giving our audience this interview.