Phnom Penh is Cambodia’s capital and largest city.
Hardly any of this prosperity reaches the Phnom Penh government in the form of taxes, and the government is therefore sorely pressed to provide basic services like electricity, water, and sanitation to its people-to say nothing of education, new roads, or proper medical care. The new prosperity does “trickle down” to many poor Cambodians who find jobs in building construction, restaurants, tourist services, and markets unthinkable in the more austerely socialist atmosphere of the early 1980’s. As Vietnamese troops departed, and the government relaxed its dependence on Vietnam, it became unclear to what extent any Cambodian government could influence events outside the capital, or control the economic boom that seemed to have overtaken Phnom Penh.
Benefits are very uneven, and many Cambodians in the 1980’s balanced on a thin edge between death and survival. Hundreds of thousands of them had too little to eat, worked long hours for pitiful rewards, and succumbed easily to disease. These hardships darkened the picture of an economic boom based on trade and speculation, reported by many visitors to Phnom Penh and to areas along the Thai border.
This “boom”, if it really is one, is based largely on informal trade with Thailand and between Thailand and Vietnam, and also on increasing revenue from tourism, real estate speculation, and the possibility of renewed foreign investment, particularly by Thailand, Hong Kong, and Japan. With the relaxation of Vietnamese influence, many Cambodian government officials have become wealthy, as have individual traders, themselves often Vietnamese, Chinese, or Chinese-Cambodians.
Prospects for the Future
These developments have also widened the gaps between Cambodia’s rich and poor, and, some would say, between the Vietnamese and Chinese minorities on the one hand and Cambodia’s urban and rural poor on the other. Some visitors saw the changes as evidence of a new openness and new opportunities for Cambodia, and as a chance for Khmers to benefit from relative political freedom and from the prosperity of the early 1990’s. The rebirth of Buddhism, and Buddhist festivals, was seen by many as a hopeful sign and as evidence of the resilience of Cambodian culture and the flexibility of its supposedly Communist leaders. Others claimed that the collapse of the old monarchy, the pressures of world economics, and Cambodia’s hardships in the 1970’s and early 1980’s had all been too much for the country, and that its very survival was in doubt.
Bicycles, motorbikes, and pedicabs flood the streets of present day Phnom Penh.
Throughout its recent history, then, Cambodia has had to come to terms with its location between two powerful and often antipathetic regimes, each seeking to turn it into a kind of buffer zone. Prince Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot sought to neutralize this situation by seeking protection from powers outside the region, particularly China and the United States. Other regimes have sought to escape the threats of one neighbor by becoming the client of the other.
Still others perceived the changes in the late 1980’s as a return to the widespread corruption of pre-Revolutionary times, when gaps developed between the richest and poorest members of Cambodian society, and particularly between high officials in the government and ordinary people. Some resented the favored treatment they claimed was being given to the Vietnamese inhabitants of the country. In the 1970’s similar injustice led many young people to join the revolutionary forces led by Pol Pot. After the “killing fields” of the early 1970’s, sweeping social change was no longer a real possibility, but if widespread corruption continues, it could easily erode the confidence that has been built up in the 1980’s between the government and the people.
These economic threats, changes, and opportunities, as well as the evolving relationship between the government and the people, must be seen, in the short term, against the background of an ongoing civil war and in the context of the economic boom that has overtaken so much of the region. The future will also be affected by the breakdown of Communist parties in Europe and the pressure against those that survive in Asia, especially in China and Vietnam. If Cambodia is to become a non-Communist country, as seems likely, what kind of government will it have?
In the longer term, the rapid changes of the 1980’s need to be seen in the context of Cambodia’s history, for which written records extend back for nearly two thousand years.
Current Statistics and Data
Basic Facts
Official name Kingdom of Cambodia (Kampuchea)
Capital Phnom Penh
Area 181,040 sq. km
Major cities (Pop)
Phnom Penh 369,000
Batdambang 94,412
People
Population 10.3 million
Region Southeast Asia
Pop. growth rate 3%
Pop. density 57 persons per sq. km
Percent urban 20.7% of the pop.
Percent rural 79.3% of the pop.
Life expectancy, female 53 years
Life expectancy, male 50 years
Infant mortality rate 130 deaths per 1,000 live births
Ethnic divisions
Khmer 90%
Vietnamese 5%
Chinese 1%
Other 4%
Languages Khmer (official), French
Religions
Theravada Buddhism 95%
Other 5%
Government
Government Constitutional monarchy
Independence 9th November 1949 (from France)
Constitution 24th September 1993
Voting rights Universal at age 18
Economy
GDP per capita U.S $96
Major trade partners for exports & imports
Vietnam, former Soviet republics, Eastern European countries,
Japan, India
Exports
Natural rubber, rice, pepper, wood
Imports
International food aid, fuels, consumer goods, machinery
Industries
Rice milling, fishing, wood products, rubber, cements, gem mining
Agriculture
Mainly subsistence farming except for rubber plantations; main crops-
rice, rubber, maize, food shortages-rice, meat, vegetables, dairy
products, sugar, flour
Natural resources
Timber, gemstones, some iron ore, manganese, phosphates,
hydropower potential
? Encarta 97 Encyclopedia
Funk & Wagnails
? Brittanica Encyclopedia
? 1994
? Encyclopedia Americana
? 1993
? “A history of Cambodia” (1983)
Michael Vickery & David P. Chandler
Cambodia 1975-1982 (1984)