Background

Cambodia's past

Angkorian Empire

There is little known about the time before the Angkorian Empire. Language, religion and sculptures indicate that the territory now known as Cambodia was influenced by India from 100 AD on.

The beginning of the Angkorian Empire is believed to trace back to 802 AD, when Jayavaram II declared himself as a god-king. During his regency he controlled most of today's Cambodian territory. Other god-kings followed and ruled the country for centuries. What remains from this time are gigantic palaces and temples, most of all the in Angkor area, close to Siam Reap.

The keys to the Angkorian Empire’s success were irrigation systems that increased productivity of farming. What might have led to the decline of the Angkor Empire is a controversy among historians.

The list of possible reasons that lead to the breakdown of the Angkorian Empire is long: Periods of drought, overworked irrigation systems, deforestation, massive real estate projects, such as Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom, which exhausted both the king's finances and the population, religious conflicts, internal rivalries or a mix of all that.

In the 15th century, the Thais took more and more control over the Angkor Empire by co-opting the Cambodian royals. Though this was long ago, there is still a rivalry between Cambodia and Thailand today.

French colony

Until the 19th century Cambodia was ruled by kings who were installed by the Thai royals. In 1867, the Cambodian King Leggio Norodom switched sides by asking the French to make his kingdom a French protectorate. While the monarchy remained in place, it had mainly representative functions since the new masters took control of politics and the economy.

The French established a bureaucracy, limited the king's power, and put an end to slavery. Aside from that, the French did little to develop their colony, and it mainly served as a territory from which to draw taxes and raw materials.

During World War II and afterwards, the French increasingly lost their grip over their colony. Cambodia reached its independence in 1953 after negotiations of King Norodom Sihanouk.

What remains are traces of French architecture all over Cambodia, the influence of the French Cuisine and a relatively large community of French expats.

Golden years

The period that followed after Cambodia's independence is considered to be Cambodia's golden era. In 1955, King Sihanouk stepped down from his throne in order to enter politics as a citizen and as such he led the country for the next 15 years. It is described as a time of peace, prosperity, creativity, and optimism. The temples of Angkor became a popular tourist destination.

Meanwhile, the armed conflict in Vietnam began to escalate. Sihanouk considered the Vietnamese communists. as well as US allies South Vietnam and Thailand, as a threat to his country's security. Officially, Sihanouk declared Cambodia's neutrality in order not to be drawn into the war.

Parallel to the escalation of the Cold War, domestic tensions rose. Sihanouk saw in Cambodia's communists a threat for his political survival. After the leader of the communist party was killed by the government, Pol Pot was elected as their new chief. In 1963, Pol Pot was summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign a treaty saying that Sihanouk was the only possible leader for Cambodia. Instead, Pol Pot fled the capital in order to establish an insurgent base in the jungles and to conduct guerrilla attacks against the government. His followers received support and training from Vietnam.

During this time, a French-Cambodian construction project carved a camp out of the jungle and built Cambodia's first deep-sea port. It was named Sihanoukville. Soon Sihanoukville attracted Cambodia's high society, who had a good time at the beaches. The party was over in 1970, after Sihanouk was removed from power by his cousin. Years later, after the Khmer Rouge came to power and highjacked a US container ship, the port and the city was bombed by the US Air force. It would take around two decades for Sihanoukville to recover.

Drawn into the Cold War

In the middle of the 1960s, Cambodia's neutrality reached its breaking-point. Sihanouk broke diplomatic ties to the US since he was convinced that the CIA wanted to remove him from power. He gave a green light to Vietnamese communists to use Cambodia's territory as sanctuary and supply route. It is said that he signaled US officials and media that he had no objections if the US bombed these communist Vietnamese sanctuaries as long no Cambodians would be killed. Officially he condemned US bombings on Cambodian ground.

In 1969, US Airforce started secretly bombing Cambodia, first the area close to the Vietnamese border, then the whole country. The bombings lasted until 1973, killing up to 250,000 Cambodians. Cambodia found itself between a rock and a hard place as it became the battle ground of a proxy war, communist guerrillas under Pol Pot were training and mobilizing in the jungles against the government and civilians died and fled their homes. But the worst was yet to come.

Civil War

In 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown by his cousin Prince Sirik Matak and military commander Lon Nol. He was sentenced to death in absentia and switched sides in order to support the Khmer Rouge. Lon Nol gave the Vietnamese an ultimatum to withdraw their forces within one week. This direct confrontation drew Cambodia even more into the Cold War and marked the starting point of the civil-war.

Following the ultimatum, US and South Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in order to fight the North Vietnamese Viet Cong. The Viet Cong withdrew even deeper into Cambodia, which further destabilized the government, now controlled by Lon Nol. The population's support for the government eroded significantly. Shortly after, the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge overran almost half of the country. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took control of the capital Phom Penh which would result in one of the bloodiest chapters of modern history.

Today, the carpet bombings of the US Air Force on Cambodian soil is believed by some historians to have been a significant factor that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge by facilitating their recruitment, drawing Cambodia into complete chaos and turning it into a failed state.

Khmer Rouge and aftermath

After seizing the capital Phnom Penh in 1975, the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a prison by establishing a totalitarian regime which based its power on terror and fear, isolating the country from the outside world. Pol Pot aimed to consolidate his power by unifying and cleansing the Khmer Rouge movement. This involved fighting the Vietnamese-trained wings of the Khmer Rouge and Sihanouk’s supporters, and also executing officials of the former government.

The regime intended to turn Cambodia into a peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative, forcing the population work for 12 to 15 hours a day. As a result of miss-management, famines brought an additional strain to the population. The regime’s attempts to eliminate any kind of possible opposition led to massive killings which took place in the so called 'Killing-Fields'.

In 1979, the Vietnamese army intervened, liberated the capital and started to put an end to Pol Pot's regime. It took five more years until a major offensive by the Vietnamese forced the Khmer Rouge to retreat to remote areas of Cambodia or to bases in Thailand. A year later, in 1985, Hun Sen was installed as Prime Minister, holding this post until today. It took another four years before the Vietnamese army left. After Pol Pot's death in 1998, most of the remaining fighters surrendered or were captured, others are still believed to be in hiding. Officially, the Khmer Rouge ceased to exist in 1999.

While internal rivalries and the fight over political power went on into the 1990s and to some degrees until today, the armed conflict managed to stay below open violence most of the time.

Still, the horror isn't over yet, since the older generation passed their traumatic experiences on to the younger generations. The 'Killing-Fields' which are all over Cambodia became places of memorial where survivors try to make their peace, descendants try to understand, and monks pray for the victims. Today, it is believed that during the fewer than four years of Pol Pot's regime, between one to three million Cambodians were executed or starved to death.

On the political level, the echo of this time can be heard in the widely-shared preference for peace and economic development over full power-sharing and risking the consequences of political confrontations.

Since the Khmer Rouge did especially target the more highly educated people, there has been a lack of a skilled workforce and an educated elite for a while. This gap was filled with foreigners for years. Now, decades later, well-educated young Cambodians are increasingly taking positions in government and business, earning ten times or more than their parents or grandparents.

Tourism

Industry

Today, tourism is one of Cambodia's main economic sectors. Most of all, the temple area of Angkor Wat attracts millions of visitors each year. The number of tourists has risen constantly over the last 15 years.

In 2017, tourism contributed directly 14.1% to Cambodia's GDP. This includes all services that deal directly with tourists, such as hotels, restaurants, travel agents and the like. In total, tourism contributed 32.4% of GDP a number also includes indirect and induced contributions. 13.6% of people in Cambodia work in the tourism industry directly, and in total 30.4% of all jobs depend on tourism. (Data: WTTC, Economic Impact 2018)

The impact of tourism to Cambodia's economy is significantly higher compared to other Southeast Asian tourist destinations such as Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, or the Philippines. These figures are around three times higher than the average of all Southeast Asian countries.

Around three fourths of foreign tourists who are visiting Cambodia come from Asia, mainly from China and the neighboring countries of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Europeans, Japanese and Koreans are significant groups as well.

Trends

Most tourists arrive in Cambodia between November and December when the weather is good for travelling. During the rainy season (mostly during May, June, and September), fewer foreign tourists arrive in Cambodia.

A remarkable trend over the last five years has been the constant increase of Chinese tourists, and to a lesser degree Europeans as well.

China taking over

Real estate boom

Whoever visits Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, Siam Reap, Bavet, or the coastal towns of Kep and Sihanoukville these days will see that a great deal of construction is happening. More and more small and old buildings are replaced with high towers of condos, apartments, or offices.

Investments into the real estate sector are mainly coming from Chinese companies, and to a lesser degree from Korean, Vietnamese, Malaysian or Japanese ones. The construction is often done by Chinese companies bringing their own workforce to Cambodia.

As a result of the high level of building activity, prices for land, houses, as well as rents have increased remarkably over the last several years. In Phnom Penh, land prices rose by a factor of five over the last 15 years, and are as much as USD 6000 per square meter for commercial and USD 4000 for residential land in the capital. This trend continued until 2013. In 2018, prices fell in Phnom Penh for the first time in years.

Experts consider local as well as Chinese backed supply and demand to be the main factors that are going to affect the real estate market in the next five years.

Locals see this development with mixed feelings. Land owners who were able to make a fortune by selling their properties to foreign investors welcome this development.

Owners of restaurants or small shops were happy with the increasing influx of Chinese investments in the beginning, since new customers or guests increased the profit of their businesses. Meanwhile, some locals are worried about the competition of new Chinese shops, restaurants, and hotels which are opening on a daily basis. Others start learning Chinese and adapting their services to the new customer base.

Cambodians of lower income brackets seem to have become increasingly skeptical about the Chinese impact on Cambodia's economy and their daily life, since the Chinese companies employ relatively few locals and the outside investment has driven up prices. Aside from this, there are lots of rumors about corruption related to real estate business and beyond.

Casino industry

If you come from Vietnam, crossing the land-border at Ham Tien, the first building right after customs is a huge casino. This is symbolic, and to some respect representative, of the emerging gambling business in Cambodia, mainly driven by Chinese investors and gamblers.

These days, the influx of Chinese capital, workforce, and businesses is most visible in Sihanoukville. In restaurants, the menus are written in Chinese and many restaurants serve Chinese dishes.

Around 8 am the roads in Sihanoukville are full of young Chinese (including Taiwanese) expats, wearing black pants and white shirts, going to work in casinos, shops, offices, or the nearby special economic zone which harbors clusters of Chinese companies. The same picture repeats around 5pm when the work day is over. On the weekends, more and more Chinese expats have fun at Otres Beach, along with Chinese tourists who are spending their money in the casinos. Some restaurants and bars at Otres Beach have reacted by writing menus Chinese, and some of the staff have started learning to speak Chinese.

Sihanoukville is the epicenter of the rapidly emerging casino industry in Cambodia. Some years ago, Chinese investors and the Cambodian government set the goal of turning Sihanoukville into a 'new Macao'. Since then, Sihanoukville's population has greatly increased and numerous casinos have been built. In 2018, there were said to be over one hundred casinos in the coastal town - at least unofficially.

The casinos focus mainly on Chinese guests. Cambodians aren't permitted to gamble by law, so most of the casino's billboards are written in Chinese and many of the staff hardly speak any English. Often the casinos are big and stylish; they are by no means dark and dirty gambling halls.

Many of the casinos seem to be rather empty most of the time, and the staff often outnumbers the guests, at least for the moment. This has led to speculations as to whether the many new casinos are an investment – or a gamble - on large numbers of future guests. Some say the servers for the online gambling sites targeting Chinese online gamblers (which are in the same buildings) are often the most profitable part of the casinos. And of course there are all kinds of other rumors that naturally emerge when a lot of money is at stake.

The gambling industry has grown massively over the last years; Sihanoukville is literally rebuilt by its direct and indirect impact. It is clear that the Chinese intend to stay. A 'China Town' is built outside of the town where condos and huge resorts are under construction or in the planning stages. Western expats who have lived there for years are irritated about the Chinese “takeover” of Sihanoukville, while admitting that some of the new roads, built by Chinese companies leading to Chinese development projects, are a pleasure to drive on. The locals get along, one way or the other. Skepticism seems to be growing - or at least it's formulated more openly these days. The police aligned themselves with the new bosses by charging them the double price.

The speed at which Sihanoukville has changed - and is still changing - is impressive. It is like looking at history in a time-lapse clip: the fascination of creativity and dynamic growth; the brutality of winners contrasted by losers' drama; geopolitics clashing with tuk-tuk drivers’ interests; the surprises that come out of nowhere. The stage of the game being played in Sihanoukville is “all in”.

Culture

Daily life

People's daily lives differ among rural and urban areas, as well as between the older and younger generations. Poverty is widespread in Cambodia. Statistically, it is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia.For those living in rural areas, most of the older population, life is centered around the family. In a country without a robust social welfare system, the family is an economic safety net.

The younger generation, mostly living in cities, live their lives more independently from family ties and traditions. Considering that only 20% of the population lives in urban areas, the life of most Cambodians is structured mainly by family and traditions. The Cambodian society is more traditional than its neighbors, Thailand or Vietnam.

The use of mobile phones, the Internet, and most of all Facebook has seen tremendous growth rates over the last years. At the end of 2017, nearly 50% of the population used the Internet and close to 80% of those users had a Facebook account (data: ITU, Facebook). An indicator of Facebook's popularity might be seen in the ten million likes on the official Facebook page of Cambodia's prime minister - while the number of Internet users in Cambodia is around eight million.

In general, social media platforms were heavily used for political communication and campaigns all over the world in the past. This might have led to the creation of an army of fake accounts on social media platforms.

As in other Southeast Asian countries, Facebook has become a synonym for the Internet and it is one of the major platforms for daily communication and a major source of information. Moreover, telecommunication providers offer free data usage for services like Facebook or YouTube.

The mix of a population which is centered on family life, tradition, and religion on one hand, and the fast adoption of digital world, economic development and masses of tourists on the other hand, makes Cambodia a perfect place to discover and research for those who are interested in people and societies, or for those who just like to listen to what people have to tell them.

If there is any characteristic mindset that most Cambodians have in common, it might be the tendency to avoid open confrontation at any cost, but to fight until the end if there seems no alternative. Those who are able to live and let die, might have a good time visiting Cambodia, no matter where they come from.

Religion

At first glance, Buddhism is the main belief-system in Cambodia, next to some traces of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. Traditionally, young men spend a short time as monks, for Cambodian's it is normal to give food or donations to monks and receive their blessings in the form of prayers in exchange. During the year, there are several religious festivals, and rituals such as oblations are part of the daily life. There seem to be no rivalries or confrontations among the religious groups.

Parallel to Buddhism, but mainly under the hood, animism is all over the place. The existence of ghosts, living in nature, or ghosts of ancestors, is simply a fact for many Cambodians, probably even more than for their Thai and Vietnamese neighbors. In villages, where people cannot afford medical treatment, shamans are the ones sick people go to in order to get healed, or to be purified.