Description
Aid and investment are key factors in any country’s development policies, and especially so for developing countries. The analysis of aid-related policies necessarily dictates a deeper look at the participating countries’ political-economies to understand the power structures and relations embedded within them, as those shape the ideologies and how the aid and assistance ends up being used. This paper examines China-Cambodia relations as a case study, as China’s foreign lending model offers an alternative to traditional donor models and Cambodia is a relevant and important study in aid dependency. China-Cambodia relations, as shaped by their donor-recipient relationship, hold significant implications not only with China’s growing role as a global donor and superpower, but also with regionalization efforts in Southeast and East Asia. Using the structural political-economy theory as a framework, this paper examines how China’s aid and assistance to Cambodia has permeated beyond economic indicators despite its claims of being “non-interference” and “no strings attached.” Specifically, post-2012 with President Xi Jinping’s ascendance in Beijing, there has been an increasing convergence of political interests and strategies between the two countries’ governments. Through content and time-series analyses, this paper finds that Chinese financial assistance is a form of tied aid that has, to an extent, impacted Cambodia’s transformation into a stricter authoritarian nation over the years.
