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Harbouring grand ambitions

A Chinese company working with the diplomatic support of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is close to completing construction of a deepwater port on a 90km stretch of Cambodia’s coastline, according to company executives and documents.

A Chinese company working with the diplomatic support of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is close to completing construction of a deepwater port on a 90km stretch of Cambodia’s coastline, according to company executives and documents.

The port — deep enough to handle cruise ships, bulk carriers or naval vessels of up to 10,000 tonnes in weight — is located on the Gulf of Thailand just a few hundred kilometres from disputed territories in the South China Sea.

“The port is nearly finished,” said Mr Soeng Songang, an executive at the Tianjin Union Development Group (UDG), the Chinese company developing a 360sqkm area of Cambodia’s Koh Kong province.

The area is owned on a 99-year lease from Phnom Penh, at an estimated cost of US$3.8 billion (S$5.2 billion). “Big trading ships will be able to come to the port, which can take ships up to 10,000 tonnes because the sea is 11m deep,” he said.

The port represents the latest example of China’s push to become the predominant maritime power in Asia partly by building, investing in, or gaining unfettered access to a network of ports throughout the region, said analysts.

“Ports are extremely important in this pursuit of regional domination,” said Mr Geoff Wade, an expert on Asia at the Australian National University. He added that Beijing is investing to develop or control a series of ports at Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Gwadar in Pakistan, Kyaukpyu in Myanmar and Chittagong in Bangladesh, as well as other facilities in Thailand and Indonesia. In addition, China is setting up its first overseas military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, occupying a vital strategic position at the southern entrance to the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean, with 30 per cent of the world’s ships passing close by.

There has been no suggestion by Beijing that it plans to use the new port on Cambodia’s western seaboard for military purposes, but Mr Wade said the facility will be big enough to accommodate most of the frigates and destroyers in the Chinese navy, if required.

The UDG investment has received high-level political and military backing in Beijing since the private company, which is based in the northern city of Tianjin, secured its unusually large land concession — which cedes control of 20 per cent of Cambodia’s total coastline — in 2008.

Mr Zhang Gaoli, a member of China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the pinnacle of the country’s ruling Communist Party, presided over the signing ceremony for UDG’s investment, according to documents obtained by the Financial Times. Since then, the project — called Dara Sakor and which also includes plans for an international airport, hospitals, international schools, hotels and resorts — has been endorsed by military leaders in both countries.

In July 2015, Mr Liao Keduo, who was then political commissar of the PLA’s Tianjin Garrison Command, met Cambodia’s Defence Minister Tea Banh during a visit to Tianjin. According to a UDG website, which showed a photograph of the two men in conversation, Mr Liao expressed a “hope that Dara Sakor, this flower of friendship nurtured by the two countries of China and Cambodia, can blossom at an early date”. FINANCIAL TIMES

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