China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Brings Crime to Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Major construction projects are ongoing in the Diamond Island area of Phnom Penh on July 30, 2019. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

News Analysis

Chinese fraud cases have been rampant in Cambodia in recent years. Causes for Chinese fraudsters booming in Cambodia are complex, with some international media suggesting that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) plays an important role.

In April 2015, Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leader Xi Jinping proposed strengthening infrastructure cooperation, when he met with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Jakarta, Indonesia. The BRI is designed for countries outside of China.

The following October, Sihanoukville’s special economic zone was established as a “model of cooperation,” which would also be desired as “Cambodia’s Shenzhen.” Shenzhen is one of the richest cities in China bordering Hong Kong to the south—as Hun Sen publicly and repeatedly claimed.

Sihanoukville morphing into Cambodia’s largest seaport and foreign trade center partly benefits from the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative. However, it also opened a pandora’s box in Cambodia: the small seaside city has become a playground for Chinese crime syndicates, The French newspaper Le Monde said in a Jan. 14 investigative report.

Sihanoukville, known also as Kampong Som, named after former King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, is a deep-water port city and the capital of Preah Sihanouk Province.

Chinese Capital Boosts Gambling Industry in Cambodia

A casino at NagaWorld hotel and entertainment complex in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, on Aug. 4, 2018. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Since China incorporated Cambodia into BRI in 2016, Sihanoukville with its 80,000 people has swiftly been targeted as a hotspot of Chinese “gold diggers.”

Every week saw more than 200 direct flights between China and Cambodia starting from 2017. At its peak, the number of Chinese in Sihanoukville reached 500,000, according to Sina, a Chinese portal site.

As a large gambling capital, Sihanoukville’s gambling sites attracted a large number of Chinese people.

In addition to offline casinos, online gambling is even more prevalent for it doesn’t have regional or national restrictions.

Chinese-run casinos emerged everywhere in Sihanoukville, and most internet gambling developers set up in the city’s special economic zone, constantly operating various gambling sites and absorbing digital finance worldwide.

As gambling fueled a vicious circle, high profits lured more people and money to Sihanoukville, which saw a large inflow of capital in a short time.

Chinese restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, KTVs, and other Chinese-language service industries sprung up, followed by an influx of Chinese real estate developers, which heated up the local land market. Land prices in downtown Sihanoukville skyrocketed from $50 to $5,000 per square meter (10.7 square feet), a 100-fold increase from 2017 to 2019.

Sihanoukville already looked like a small county in China. The city’s landmark The Golden Lion Plaza is surrounded by advertising banners in Chinese. There is even a Chinese song catching on in this southeastern Asian city saying, “I came to this place [Sihanoukville] with a dream, and I see the casino of life everywhere.”

Violence and Gang Crime

The gambling industry promoted by China’s BRI may produce an apparent economic boom in Cambodia, and it has inevitably had the side effect of a sharp rise in violent crime. An opinion article published on Chinese social media Tencent said, “the gambling industry can give birth to a multi-millionaire in a minute or leave a rich second generation penniless: Discrepancy between heaven and hell makes it easy to trigger a person’s propensity for violence.”

Behind every casino, there is almost always the support of gangsters from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as the shares of Cambodian police or officials. Cambodian gendarmes also work part-time as security guards and drivers for the venues.

Another problem is the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Chinese people formed a separate business circle, so the prices for Chinese people are much higher than that for local people, and most locals couldn’t afford it.

This disparity between the rich and the poor has led to a variety of violent crimes being committed almost exclusively against the Chinese.

Sihanoukville’s extreme imbalance is placed in the midst of a chaotic environment filled with violent kidnappings, shootings, drug trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, and gang warfare. In addition, transnational money laundering and telecom fraud are also in full swing.

China Restricts Capital Outflows and Cambodia Bans Gambling

On Aug. 18, 2019, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a ban on gambling, effective on Jan. 1, 2020. The decree states that online gambling and arcade gambling in Cambodia are prohibited in order to maintain security and public order.

According to Le Monde, this move was the result of pressure exerted on the Cambodian government by the CCP, which realized that online gambling was becoming a channel for money laundering, leading to a massive outflow of Chinese capital.

Following the ban on gambling in Cambodia, various service businesses in Sihanoukville closed down, with a wave of real estate developers, investors, and capital withdrawn instantly from the city.

Cambodia’s English-language media Khmer Times reported on Jan. 1, 2020, that there were 447,000 Chinese who had left the country, including long-term visa holders, according to the Cambodian Immigration Department.

Construction projects under China’s BRI have also come to a halt, leaving a pile of useless and unfinished buildings in Cambodia.

Chinese Internet Fraud Cartels

This still photo from a video grab shows Chinese customers playing on slot machines inside the Chinese-run casino in Sihanoukville, the coastal capital of Preah Sihanouk Province, on Dec. 13, 2018. Sophie Deviller/AFP via Getty Images

Sexual assaults, drug abuse, and violent crime have been left behind by the gambling industry in Cambodia despite the departure of Chinese capital. Another type of crime, cyber fraud related to online gambling, is growing more prominent since online casinos have been gradually replaced by the internet digital park.

Cambodia’s cyber investment park is a hub for cyber fraudsters. Jimu News, a Hubei province-based media, quoted on Feb. 11 a person with knowledge of the matter as saying that the bosses and operators of these online fraud companies are basically Chinese, with nearly 160 people in the larger ones and maybe 10 or so in the smaller ones.

The campus where the fraudulent companies are located is guarded and managed by local armed gendarmes and property owners hired by the Chinese bosses. When people enter inside, they are treated like slaves, working more than 10 hours a day, and being beaten and tasered if they fail to complete tasks.

In order to get more people to participate in the scam, these cyber fraudsters spread recruitment needs, claiming that they will pay $20,000 to $30,000 per person. With this trend of interest, many middlemen find ways to acquire people through deception, kidnapping, and controlling personal freedom and then sell them out. The situation puts Chinese people living in Cambodia at risk of being kidnapped and sold out at any time according to Jimu News.

Fraudsters in Cambodia, due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak and lack of personnel, now are reaching out to different ethnic groups in different countries.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.