Cambodia in 2021: A Year of Ongoing Domestic Challenges and Western Pressure

Summary

Like many countries around the world, Cambodia continued to be hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Socio-economic impacts resulting from the pandemic and from the government’s responses to it, combined with rising Sino-US geostrategic competition, provided an opportunity for the banned opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) to reactivate its cells inside Cambodia and lobby Western governments in an effort to have the CNRP reinstated as a legal political party. In foreign relations, while 2021 saw ever closer Sino-Cambodian relations, tensions grew between the country and the United States. This chapter analyses the aforementioned challenges in three sections. The first section discusses the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government’s responses, and the subsequent effects on the economy. The second section analyses the efforts of the CNRP to stage a comeback and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s (CPP) reactions. The third section discusses Cambodia’s foreign relations, focusing on the ever-closer Sino-Cambodian relationship and its benefits for Cambodia, US pressure on Phnom Penh over its close ties with China and democratic backsliding, and Japan’s continued engagement to counterbalance Chinese influence in the country.

COVID-19 Pandemic, Government Responses, and Impacts

When COVID-19 infections were confirmed in Cambodia in early 2020, fear among the public mounted given COVID-19’s origins in China and the large numbers of Chinese travellers between the two countries. However, Cambodia was shielded from the pandemic until March 2021, when the number of infections and deaths began to surge. This forced the government to implement strict lockdowns, causing initial public panic and speculation over doomsday scenarios of a public healthcare system collapse. Government opponents claimed that the government’s policies of mandatory vaccination with mostly Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines was an experimentation with Cambodian lives. When these policies proved successful, many political pundits and government critics attributed the success to random luck.

The pandemic was the first crisis under the CPP’s hegemonic party authoritarianism that began in 2018 following the dissolution of the CNRP. Therefore, the efficacy of the government’s responses to the pandemic would have a significant impact on the CPP’s legitimacy. As such, the government systematically planned the nationwide mobilization of human and capital resources to combat COVID-19 with decisiveness and focus as though the country was at war.