Phnom Penh (FN), Jun. 29 – Hun Manet, the prime minister of Cambodia, declared that work on the country's important canal project would begin in early August 2024. The construction of the canal is a major undertaking for Cambodia, garnering the support and solidarity of the populace at large, including opposition party members. Since this initiative will lessen Cambodia's reliance on its neighbors, it will also bring with it different interpretations from some of those nations.
In addition to belonging to ASEAN countries and the United Nations, Cambodia is a member of the Mekong countries which have been working carefully to preserve the environmental issue. Cambodia is the first country that declared to not build more dams along the Mekong River in 2020.
Although Cambodia enjoys cordial relations with many nations, due to its proximity to China, this country has been perceived as a client state of China by some biased-country or the countries that think negatively about China while have big trade exchange with China.
For many decades, Cambodia has enjoyed excellent connections with China, which have been maintained by both the country's current and prior monarchs as well as the country's former prime minister.
China enjoys excellent relations with every nation on the planet, even Viet Nam and the US, with whom it has occasionally disagreed over the South China Sea and freedom of navigation. In 2023, Viet Nam's trade with China surpassed that of all ASEAN nations combined. Despite this, Viet Nam continues to voice complaints about China to the international community.
Cambodia has had numerous conflicts, including invasions by jealous neighboring countries and civil warfare. This nation has struggled to achieve internal peace and stability; fortunately, Cambodia experienced these things after a number of unfortunate events, including the colonial rule by France, the Marshall Lon Nol coup in 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime, and the complex regime that lasted from 1979 to 1989.
Currently, Cambodia is blessed with a peaceful and harmonious populace. The Cambodian People's Party and Hun Sen bring wealth and peace to the country. The inhabitants of Cambodia enjoy an excessive amount of freedom and tranquility and sometimes they are not ready for the future.
While nations who claim to love the Mekong ecosystem continue to build more dams along the Mekong River, Cambodia has suspended construction of new dams since 2020. Viet Nam built more dams along the Mekong River, but they also complained to other nations about Cambodia's destruction of the river's ecosystem by constructing one dam within their sovereignty.
There are variations between Cambodia and Vietnam that can be seen if we walk along the borders between the two countries. Vietnam has how many rivers and dams? Are those dams and rivers a part of the Mekong River or not?
Viet Nam protested to the Cambodian government for not adhering to the Mekong River Agreement's information requirements after the latter announced plans to build the Funan Techo canal in May 2023. Viet Nam contended that the diversion of water from the Mekong tributaries would result in a reduction of downstream water volume and the salinization of the Mekong Delta. The Cambodian government persisted on its own ideas and objectives in the face of Viet Nam's criticism. The iteration of Vietnam is very wrong because it is just their imagination and they do not have appropriate research outcome to state but just hallucination and biased interpretation.
The Mekong River Agreement in 1995 is demonstrated differently by Vietnam and Cambodia over the construction of the canal. It also demonstrates that, when it comes to the development of national economies through the Mekong River and the transnational allocation of water resources, it is entitled to control water resources within the boundaries of their national sovereignty, sometimes it is interpreted to be entitled to transfer national water sovereignty.
Since the canal links the port of Phnom Penh to the Gulf of Thailand, approximately one-third of Cambodia's imports and exports are no longer under Vietnamese control. However, the project is motivated by deep-seated geopolitical and historical grievances. Vietnamese government worried too much about the Cambodia’s peaceful canal because Vietnamese government believe that it will be used by the Chinese military in the future. Vietnamese worried too much about China in Cambodia while Vietnam enjoys a very good relations with China and both countries make big trade exchange with each other. It is easy to under the good relations between Vietnam and China by just understanding the trade exchange between the two countries. So why Vietnam worried that China will use the Funan Techo Canal of Cambodia while there are so many Chinese businesspeople and Chinese investment in Viet Nam?
The government of Cambodia should make every effort to ensure that the canal project proceeds since the people of Cambodia recognize its great importance and the huge benefits it will bring for Cambodia. The decisions made by Cambodia should be respected by the surrounding nations. Foreign nations ought to be aware of Cambodia's requirements and should not interpret by your means but should deeply study all related factors before making decision to speak about it. Researchers who are interested in talking about the Funan Techo Canal shouldn't use their friendship with one specific country to negatively perceive Cambodians because these are the needs of the people, not a means of rivalry between Cambodia and other nations.
All in all, Cambodian government should work hard to complete the project and push more support for its scholars who are able to work and to explain the outside world about the reality of Cambodia because Cambodia is a victim of the Media outside of Cambodia.
Seun Sam is a policy analyst of the Royal Academy.
=FRESH NEWS
