New Airport Shows Cambodia Can Get What it Wants from China

This Op-Ed, penned by Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations, discusses Cambodia’s Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport, a massive $1 billion dollar airport completed through a build-operate-transfer structure featuring a Chinese consortium, detailing some of the new airport’s pluses and minuses. It also ponders what the airport says about the future of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The piece points out that the airport offers various economic, cultural, and safety benefits, but comes with environmental and social downsides, too. It stresses that the airport will not reach its full potential without significant other infrastructure developments, which may themselves have defects. Per the piece, the new airport shows, among other things, that the BRI is not just about debt traps, may not be small or beautiful in the future, and does not necessarily suck in domestic leaders.

This publication originally appeared as Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, “New Airport Shows Cambodia Can Get What it Wants from China,” Nikkei Asia, November 12, 2023, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/New-airport-shows-Cambodia-can-get-what-.... Copyright remains with the original holders.