Cambodia

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, Charles McClean, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. China sends more oil rigs to already-tense South China Sea. Two rigs are now stationed between China and the Taiwan-occupied Pratas Islands, and one has been given coordinates to be towed just outside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone. Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang asked China to remove the rigs that are in disputed waters. China has been increasingly assertive in its claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands, all of which are off Vietnam’s coast, and is reportedly moving sand onto reefs and shoals to support buildings and surveillance equipment. In Hanoi, Chinese and Vietnamese officials met on Wednesday for the first time to discuss the disputed waters, without much progress. The talks come on the heels of deadly protests in Vietnam against Chinese companies in May. 2. Japan protests Korean live-fire drills near disputed islands. On Friday, South Korea held a live-fire naval exercise thirteen miles south of the islands known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in Korea. Korea has maintained administrative control of the islands since 1954, but Japan also claims sovereignty over the islands.Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga “strongly demanded that the South Korean government stop its plans,” and called the decision to go ahead with the drill “extremely regrettable.” In response, a South Korean defense ministry spokesman said that “when it comes to conducting a military drill for the self-defense of the Republic of Korea, any outside demand or interference is not a subject for consideration.” The South Korean navy went on to say that the drills were not meant to be aimed at Japan, but rather to practice targeting North Korean submarines. 3. Tens of thousands of Cambodian migrant workers flee Thailand. A month after the Thai army seized control of the country, rumors of a crackdown on undocumented workers have sent at least 200,000 Cambodians in eastern Thailand fleeing over the course of just twelve days. Many of the workers are leaving voluntarily, but the police have reportedly also forced many on buses and charged a 3,000 baht ($92) fine. The Thai government denied any new policy, saying, “No crackdown order targeting Cambodian workers has been issued.” According to the International Organization for Migration, most of the 2.2 million migrant workers in Thailand are from Myanmar and approximately 438,000 are from Cambodia. Thailand has a very low unemployment rate at 0.9 percent and could face a labor shortage if more workers flee. 4. Modi faces his first foreign policy test. Forty Indian expatriates were abducted in Iraq when the Islamic militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. A spokesman for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs announced today that the forty kidnapped workers had been found, but did not provide further details. In addition, forty-seven Indian nurses are stranded at a hospital in Tikrit, abandoned by their employers when ISIS stormed the city. The Ministry of External Affairs issued a travel advisory and set up a twenty-four-hour call line for families with missing relatives in Iraq. With over ten thousand expatriates working in Iraq, ISIS’ victories are chilling news for India. 5. China executes thirteen in Xinjiang. Thirteen people were executed in the restive province of Xinjiang, convicted of “organizing, leading and participating in terrorist groups; murder; arson; theft; and illegal manufacture, storage and transportation of explosives.” It was also announced that more than sixty terrorist and extremist suspects had been captured in the past month. The executions and arrests are part of the Chinese government’s intensifying response to a series of deadly attacks blamed on Uighur separatists in Xinjiang and other places in China, including Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and a train station in Kunming. Bonus: China says “House of Cards” is an accurate illustration of corruption, calls the United States “the Matrix.” On Tuesday, China’s Discipline Inspection Commission published an article linking the abuse of power seen on television to reality. The author said that corruption in shows like “House of Cards” and “American Gangster,” is real and widespread in Western societies like the United States. Some netizens criticized the article, saying that corruption in the West is only seen on television, while most Chinese “feel corruption in real time every day of [their] lives.” The pop culture references continued when, in unrelated news, a spokesperson from the Chinese foreign ministry called the United States "the Matrix," in response to U.S. Department of Justice indictment of five alleged Chinese hackers and in reference to the NSA’s Internet surveillance programs.

What has gone wrong in Southeast Asia? Between the late 1980s and the late 2000s, many countries in the region were viewed by global democracy analysts and Southeast Asians themselves as leading examples of democratization in the developing world. By the late 2000s, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore all were ranked as “free” or “partly free” by the monitoring organization Freedom House, while Cambodia and, perhaps most surprisingly, Myanmar had both taken sizable steps toward democracy as well. Yet since then, Southeast Asia’s politics have been stuck in neutral or reverse. Asia Sentinel today has an excellent adaptation of my recent CFR working paper on the regression of democratic politics in Southeast Asia. The Asia Sentinel adaptation is available here.

Darcie Draudt, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Cambodian police fire on garment protesters, killing at least three. Police fired on garment workers and their supporters as they protested for higher wages on Friday. A spokesman for Phnom Penh’s police department said that three were killed and two wounded, while the United National special rapporteur to Cambodia claimed four were killed and dozens injured. Tensions began when police cracked down on a small demonstration outside a South Korean-owned factory on Thursday. Clothing accounts for $5 billion worth of exports per year in Cambodia, making it the country’s largest industrial sector. Labor unions have been fighting for a minimum wage of $160 per month; the government has offered to raise it to $100 per month. The strike comes amid protests by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party against Prime Minister Hun Sen’s administration and challenging the results of a July election. The party said that it plans to hold another demonstration on Sunday. 2. Kim Jong-un’s New Year address outlines North Korea’s 2014 goals. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivered a New Year’s speech, his second in what is to be expected a revived annual tradition. Many North Korea observers look to it as a thermometer of Pyongyang’s domestic and international intentions for the coming year. Beginning last year, Kim revived the annual tradition of his grandfather, which his father did not continue. The speech did not announce major shifts in policy; the dual approach (byungjin) policy was upheld. Several media stories caught on to the mention of the recent execution of his uncle and former advisor Jang Song-taek, purportedly conciliatory language toward South Korea, and intentions to beef up military capabilities. The speech also outlined several specific plans for domestic economic development, including in agriculture, heavy and light industries, and culture and sports. 3. Chinese helicopter rescues fifty-two from stranded ship in Antarctic. A helicopter based on the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long retrieved fifty-two passengers from an icebound Russian research ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, on Thursday. The Xue Long, along with icebreakers from Australia and France, were unable to reach the ship, requiring an airlift. The Xue Long was stationed twelve miles away as the passengers, trapped since December 24, were ferried twelve at a time back to the ship. The operation was scheduled to take place earlier in the week, but harsh weather conditions prevented the rescue effort. The rescue effort was overseen by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and has been hailed widely as an example of successful international cooperation. 4. Supporters of Bangladesh’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) clash with police at polls. Two people died during protests and clashes between opposition BNP supporters and police. The protesters demand that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down and install a neutral government. The leader of the BNP party, Khaleda Zia, called for a march on the capital on January 5 in defiance of a police ban. Police surrounded the home of Zia, a former prime minister, and prevented her followers from rallying outside partyheadquarters in Dhaka. More than one hundred have died and 650 have been detained as a result of election protests over several weeks. The government has vowed to hold elections on Sunday despite the protests and a boycott by opposition candidates, and winners have already been declared without contest in more than half of the assembly seats because of the boycott. 5. China’s central auditing agency releases report on local government debt. The National Audit Office report [in Chinese] found that the total debt of local government in China has climbed to nearly $3 trillion, further raising concerns about the country’s debt levels. Debt and guarantees issued by local governments were 17.9 trillion yuan as of the end of June, up 67 percent since the end of 2010 when it totaled 10.7 trillion yuan. The June 2013 amount represents a 12.7 percent increase on local government debt from December 2012, according to the report. Almost 40 percent of the current amount will mature by the end of this year, spurring the National Development and Reform Commission to announce that local governments will be allowed to issue bonds as a way of rolling over their debt to avoid defaults. Bonus: Eighteen-meter rubber duck bursts in Taiwanese port. The giant yellow duck, created as an art installation by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, deflated on January 1, just eleven days after arriving Keelung Port in northeastern Taiwan. Versions of the floating sculpture had previously been shown in Kaoshiung and Taoyoun County; the latter version also burst and had to be replaced by the Kaoshiung duck. The Keelung duck was scheduled to be in the port until February 28 and was expected to draw millions of visitors. Hofman says his ducks represent “peace and harmony” and has brought them to Hong Kong, Osaka, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Auckland, and Amsterdam. City officials have yet to discern the cause of the burst.

Darcie Draudt, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Japanese prime minister pays his respects to Yasukuni Shrine. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid his respects at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including over a dozen “Class A” war criminals. It was the first visit to the Shinto shrine by a serving prime minister since 2006, when Junichiro Koizumi went. Abe tried to play down the visit, saying it was an anti-war gesture, but Abe’s actions were widely and swiftly condemned; the Yasukuni Shrine is seen by the region as a symbol of Imperial Japanese aggression. China called the visit “absolutely unacceptable to the Chinese people”; South Korea expressed “regret and anger”; and the U.S. embassy in Tokyo said in a statement that it was “disappointed” and the prime minister’s actions would “exacerbate tensions” with Japan’s neighbors. 2. Move of U.S. base at Okinawa gains approval. After years of disagreement, Governor Hirokazu Nakaima of Okinawa approved the relocation of the U.S. Marine base on the island to a less populous area. Residents of Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based, have long complained of base-related crime, noise, and accidents; some protestors still seek the complete removal of U.S. troops from the island. It could take close to a decade to build the new base, which will be located on a landfill. The agreement comes at a crucial time for both Tokyo and Washington, as the former seeks to strengthen ties with the United States amid rising tension with China and the latter continues the U.S. rebalance toward Asia. 3. Satellite images indicate further development at North Korean nuclear plant. A facility for producing fuel rods at Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, north of Pyongyang, now appears to be operational. Last month, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano said the agency has observed activity at a North Korean nuclear site that indicates effort to restart a reactor. Since April this year, North Korea has repeatedly asserted it is strengthening its nuclear weapon capabilities. The five-megawatt reactor, which was verified to be shut down by IAEA inspectors in July 2007, has previously supplied sources of plutonium, a component for nuclear weapons. Though IAEA has not had access to the site since North Korea banned IAEA inspectors from entering in October 2008, the IAEA continues to monitor the Yongbyon plant via satellite imagery. 4. Protesting garment workers and police clash in Cambodia. Violence broke out between police and protesters in the capital Phnom Penh on December 27, as military police attempted to move the striking workers. Police fired warning shots into the crowd, which incited the protesters to throw rocks in response; about ten police officers and ten protesters were injured. Thousands of garment factory workers have been protesting nationwide for weeks, upset by inadequate minimum wages. Unions have demanded a raise to $160 minimum monthly wage, but the national government decided to raise the minimum wage for the garment and shoe industry to $95 (a 19 percent increase on the status quo). In addition to calling for increased wages, the striking workers have joined the Cambodian opposition movement that demands the resignation of Prime Minister Hun Sen. 5. Thai election body calls for delayed vote amid violence. The Election Commission of Thailand is urging the country’s February 2 vote to be postponed as protests and chaos continued to grip Bangkok. One police officer was killed and dozens injured on Thursday in the first violent incidents in almost two weeks. Protestors were trying to stop election preparations, as the current government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra most likely will win another term; the protestors’ ultimate goal is her resignation and the establishment of an unelected “people’s council.” The government has rejected the proposed postponement, citing concerns that it could lead to “prolonged violence.” Bonus: Rodman visits North Korea, but doesn’t see Kim Jong-un. Retired NBA player Dennis Rodman wrapped up his third visit to North Korea this week, during which he trained North Korean basketball players and helped plan a proposed exhibition game in early 2014, allegedly coinciding with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s birthday celebrations. He did not, however, see the supreme leader this time, whom he has previously called a “good friend” while distancing himself from the issues dealing with security, politics, or human rights in North Korea.  Rodman’s corporate partner, the Ireland-based online betting site Paddy Power, announced on December 23 it would no longer support Rodman or his planned game, citing increased international concern over the North Korean regime. Likewise, the U.S. Department of State has distanced themselves from Rodman’s “basketball diplomacy.”

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Turkey and China might coproduce air missile defense system. Turkey, a member of NATO and a U.S. ally, is in discussions to coproduce a long-range air and missile defense system with China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation, a Chinese firm that is under U.S. sanctions for violations of the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act. The United States is “very concerned” by the $3.4 billion deal and its potential ramification for allied air defense, as the Chinese system would not integrate well with existing NATO defense infrastructure. Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey would be open to new offers from other companies, including the American company Raytheon, if the deal did not come to pass. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Friday that the United States should not “politicize the relevant normal commercial competition.” 2. Cambodian opposition organizes protests against election fraud. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) organized a three-day rally in Phnom Penh, attended by tens of thousands of protesters, calling for an independent investigation into alleged election fraud. Thus far the protests have been peaceful. The CNRP also solicited opinions on the political deadlock from the United Nations and countries such as the United States and the UK. Prime Minister Hun Sen and his new government have rejected these calls; the CNRP, which is boycotting parliament, already gained far more seats in July elections than anticipated, and the Mr. Hun Sen is unlikely to relinquish his twenty-eight years of rule. 3. Japan secrecy bill worries free speech advocates. Japanese prime minster Shinzo Abe is drafting a state secrets act that would expand the definition of official secrets and charge journalists convicted of disobeying the act with up to five years in jail. Abe argues that the law is vital to establishing a more robust national security framework, which will include creating a U.S.-style National Security Council to coordinate across various national security and intelligence agencies. The  prime minister’s Liberal Democratic Party has previously sought but failed to enact such a law—critics fear that it will restrict the ability of the media to serve as a watchdog. Some activists have drawn parallels between this law and World War II-era Japan. Japan is currently less punitive towards leaks that many other countries, where civil servants who divulge secret information to the media are only subject to one year in prison. 4. Wal-Mart to expand China operations. The world’s largest retailer announced on Thursday that it plans to add as many as 110 new stores over three years in China, many of them in third- and fourth-tier cities. Wal-Mart has around 400 stores in China with about 90,000 staff; the new branches will create as many as 19,000 new retail jobs. The Arkansas-based retailer will be closing less profitable stores and overhauling others in the face of stiff local competition. 5. Starbucks the latest target of Chinese state media. CCTV ran a special report this week accusing Starbucks of price-gouging and charging “outrageous” prices for its coffee, leading some to speculate that the Seattle-based company will be the next foreign company to face scrutiny in the Chinese market. The report faced wide derision on Chinese social media, where many users ridiculed CCTV’s decision to attack Starbucks instead of deal with substantive social issues. Bonus: Move over, iPad. Here comes North Korea’s tablet. The Korea Computer Center in North Korea has created a tablet computer for “people to study revolutionary ideas.” The tablet has a multilanguage dictionary, games, and an encyclopedia of North Korean “immortal history.” It is not able to connect to the internet but is allegedly able to connect to North Korea’s intranet. You can find a comprehensive review of the device here.

A short piece by Agence France-Presse (AFP) run in the Straits Times yesterday, buried amidst the big international stories on Syria and the stand-off in the Philippines and others, caught my attention. The short piece, titled “Poor and Homeless in Costly Yangon” discussed how, because of Myanmar’s political and economic opening, and the lack of quality office and apartment and factory space in Yangon, rents for any decent property have soared through the roof. AFP estimates that land prices in Yangon have risen since 2010, the beginning of Myanmar’s opening, to as much as $700 per square foot now, far more than the price per square foot in Bangkok, which is vastly richer and has twenty-four hour electricity water, and all other modern conveniences. Other articles have suggested that some properties in central Yangon are renting for more than $1000 per square foot, more than rentals in Manhattan. Conversations over the past three weeks with several executives from American and Japanese companies that have considered investing in Myanmar or are indeed investing confirmed for me the unreality of property prices in Yangon, an unreality I had seen myself too on recent visits. Some of these properties that are attracting London-type rental prices are not much more than bare metal and brick buildings that do not even have regular utilities; much of Yangon remains without electricity, water, or decent roads. But what is much more disturbing, and what the article raises, is that the skyrocketing rent is not only deterring investment and hitting the pockets of expatriate managers moving into Yangon; the rents are forcing thousands of families out of their simple places in Yangon, as landlords realize they can rent even the most basic apartments or buildings out to new investors for huge sums. How many people are being pushed out of their homes in Yangon—where GDP per capita is still only around $1,300—is impossible to estimate, although the government has become so concerned about the skyrocketing rents, and the impact on ordinary Burmese, that it is considering imposing new property taxes. Although many advisors to the president’s office are not in favor of this idea, at such an early stage of trying to attract investment, Myanmar already is running a serious risk of becoming like Cambodia in the 1990s, where massive investment and inflows of expatriates created such high inflation for rentals and, ultimately, even everyday essentials, that huge numbers of average Cambodians were driven out of the capital.

Over the weekend, Cambodia’s opposition coalition, the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), held a large rally in Phnom Penh to protest the national election commission’s ratifying of the results of this summer’s election. The national election commission—which is controlled by the long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP)—essentially said that all the results of the summer national election were valid, that Prime Minister Hun Sen’s CPP had won 68 seats in Parliament, enough to form a government, as compared to 55 for the CNRP. Of course, 55 seats was an enormous gain for the opposition compared to previous parliaments, but opposition leaders Sam Rainsy, Kem Sokha, and others claim that the CNRP really won a majority of the seats, and only has been allotted 55 due to massive irregularities, fraud, and the toothlessness of the national election commission. The opposition brought over 20,000 people to Phnom Penh this weekend to protest the election commission’s ratification of results and to call, once again, for an international inquiry into the election results. The turnout was extremely impressive for Cambodia, but more importantly the CNRP showed that, unlike in the past, it would not play into Hun Sen’s hands, giving the prime minister the opening he needed to crush or co-opt the opposition. Hun Sen’s party clearly was preparing for some acts of violence during the rally, which they could use as a justification to crack down. According to the Wall Street Journal, “CPP officials have repeatedly discouraged Saturday’s protest, warning of potential civil unrest and pressing the CNRP to pursue its claims through bilateral talks … Police officials said tens of thousands of security personnel were deployed across Phnom Penh to maintain order.” At various points in the past, Cambodian opposition leaders have given Hun Sen this pretext, by overseeing violence, most notably when former Hun Sen adversary Prince Norodom Ranariddh in 1997, anticipating a Hun Sen attack, tried to launch his own attack on Hun Sen’s forces; Hun Sen responded by crushing Ranariddh’s forces and, eventually, destroying his party. At other times over the past two decades, Hun Sen has emasculated the opposition by co-opting its main leaders, a strategy he used with Ranariddh and, for a time, Sam Rainsy. But the opposition no longer seems so easy to handle. Unlike in the past, when opposition leaders fought openly among themselves and frequently turned to Hun Sen’s side after receiving rewards of patronage and appointments, now the opposition is more unified- Hun Sen, a wily survivor, surely has already tried to co-opt Rainsy or other leaders this time around, but they have not given in. In part, the opposition has not given in because it knows it has Cambodia’s young, urban population on its side, giving the CNRP—or whatever comes out of it—great hope for the future, even if CPP remains in power for now; Rainsy and especially Kem Sokha also seem to have matured as leaders, understanding that they have to keep their coalition together if they are to sustain a challenge to Hun Sen.  In addition, as in the rally this weekend, the opposition has vocally called for nonviolent tactics, and taken every effort to stop CNRP supporters from even scuffling with police – when police stepped up to protesters this weekend, demonstrators gave policemen food and other gifts, and the opposition also enlisted many monks to participate in the demonstrations to keep order. Next move, Hun Sen.

Over the weekend, tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy weaponry appeared in the Phnom Penh area, according to reports in the Cambodian press and in Asia Sentinel. Only a few weeks after Cambodia’s national elections, which the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) allegedly won in a squeaker and the opposition claims was fraudulent, why are tanks and APCs rolling into Phnom Penh? Cambodia has no battles in the capital; even its border skirmishes with Thailand over the disputed Preah Vihear Temple have calmed down in the past two years. No, the show of force is designed to intimidate opposition supporters, who tend to live in urban areas. Defense Minister Tea Banh of the CPP didn’t mince words. According to the Cambodia Daily, he said, “You don’t have to wonder, they [the weapons] will be used to protect the country, and crack down on anyone who tries to destroy the nation." Although the U.S. Congress has long maintained tough policies toward Cambodia, because of the authoritarian behavior of longtime prime minister Hun Sen—now the longest-serving leader in Asia—the Obama White House has pursued military-military ties with Hun Sen’s government, despite Hun Sen’s increasingly autocratic political style. Although, in the wake of the closest election in Cambodia in two decades, Hun Sen seemed to be conciliatory toward the opposition, he and the CPP now are returning to form. The military show of force is likely to be part of a broader crackdown on opposition politicians and supporters. The national election commission just decided it would not even investigate irregularities in the recent vote, despite obvious massive irregularities, and at least one opposition activist was murdered last week. Although Cambodia under Hun Sen has had high growth rates, aid still comprises almost half of the central government’s budget. Yet over and over, going back two decades, donors have criticized Hun Sen yet never halted the aid tap. After what looks like a stolen election, and the rumblings of a new crackdown, will this time be any different? Given that the White House and Pentagon still value military cooperation with Cambodia highly—although I believe that Cambodia has minimal strategic value, given that the United States has many other close partners in its neighborhood—don’t expect donors, including the United States to do anything this time either.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Cambodian opposition makes historic gains in election. Cambodia held elections last Sunday, with the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) almost doubling the number of seats it holds in the national assembly. The CNRP said on Monday that they rejected the results of the election, hoping to gain a majority in the national assembly, and accused the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen of large-scale cheating; a number of monitoring organizations reported voting irregularities. The leading Cambodian People’s Party won by its narrowest margin in its twenty-eight years in power, claiming to have received 55 percent of votes (in 2008, the party received 73 percent of the vote). Despite the political setback, the Prime Minister has so far been pragmatic and conciliatory, expressing a willingness to speak with the opposition and an acceptance of an independent electoral commission. 2. China’s maritime disputes continue to make headlines. Tensions between China and Japan remain high, as China’s recently consolidated coast guard sent four ships and a turboprop early-warning airplane to patrol in disputed areas of the East China Sea last weekend. The ships proceeded to confront Japanese patrol vessels and “strictly declared” China’s sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Meanwhile, Chinese president Xi Jinping stated that China wants to resolve its territorial disputes peacefully but would not compromise on issues of sovereignty or defense. Beijng also lodged a formal complaint with the United States after the U.S. Senate passed a resolution expressing concern over disputes in the South and East China Seas. 3. South Korea announces aid for the North. Seoul promised $7.4 million in aid to North Korea, part of the new administration’s policy to continue humanitarian aid regardless of political issues. South Korea also proposed “final” talks on the fate of the shuttered Kaesong joint industrial zone, which has been dormant for several months. South Korean officials insisted that the offer of aid and the proposal to restart negotiations on Kaesong are unrelated. 4. China orders audit of government debt. The Chinese government, worried that government borrowing might be out of control, ordered a nationwide audit of all government debt. The last audit was published in 2011 and showed the debt level to be 10.7 trillion yuan as of the end of 2010. Though the amount of sovereign debt stands at around 8.4 trillion yuan (or 16 percent of GDP) as of the end of 2012, the amount of local government debt is unknown; private sector estimates of total public debt in China range from 46 percent to 78 percent of GDP. 5. Vietnam bans social media news posts. The government of Vietnam has ordered that social media websites like Facebook and Twitter should only be used to “provide and exchange personal information,” rather than political opinion or information on current events. It is not clear how the law will be implemented or what the penalties for breaking the law will be. The statement was signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Wednesday. This year, Vietnam (along with Bahrain, Syria, China, and Iran) was branded an “enemy of the Internet” by Reporters Without Borders, an organization that protects press freedom. Bonus: Taoist master or “vulgar magician”? Wang Lin, a spiritualist advisor who focused on Taoist qigong breathing techniques, was the target of a massive Chinese media offensive this week. He was the subject of two documentaries aired on state-run CCTV accusing him of selling bogus health techniques to the masses and celebrities. Wang fled to Hong Kong this week, and it is not clear whether he will face any charges.

Last week, in advance of Cambodia’s national elections, I noted that the election was a foregone conclusion, given that the long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party, led by increasingly autocratic prime minister Hun Sen, had awarded itself so many advantages in advance of the actual voting day. The opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party managed to overcome many of these obstacles, and the tally of fifty out of 120 parliamentary seats that it has won—the tally of CNRP seats that the government’s spokesman admitted the opposition won—is shockingly high, given the huge barriers placed in its way. These barriers included possible CNRP voters simply being turned away from registering to vote, hundreds of thousands of people deleted from the voter rolls, state media devoting almost no time to anyone but the CPP in the run-up to the election,  attacks on CNRP supporters, and much more thuggery. Now, CNRP leaders are alleging that the opposition actually should have won many more seats, if not for massive vote-rigging and other shenanigans on Election Day itself. They want an international inquiry into the election. The fact that the government refuses and wants to swear in a new cabinet as soon as possible suggests that Prime Minister Hun Sen and his allies know, too, that they had to scramble to get enough fixes in on Election Day, since they were confident that their pre-vote intimidation, and Hun Sen’s record of delivering peace and growth, would win them a huge majority of voters. More than any election since 1993, when a huge number of Cambodians came out to vote for the first election in years and actually voted for the opposition Funcinpec Party but found that Hun Sen was able to bludgeon his way into the leadership anyway, this election shows that the Cambodian people have not lost faith in the democratic process. It shows Cambodians are not willing to ignore the predatory elite developing in their country, are not willing to accept growth that also has come with widening inequality, and are not willing to simply vote for Hun Sen because he is strong and has provided a measure of stability after the killing fields. Unfortunately, Hun Sen is likely to get his cabinet sworn in anyway, and to continue serving what is now the longest term in office of any current leader in Asia. Despite increasingly violent protests in Cambodia, the U.S. and other major donors to the country have refused to call Hun Sen’s bluff and push for a serious recount – even though Cambodia is hardly a strategic asset like Egypt, where (though I don’t agree) one could at least make the case that despite the military’s bloody behavior, the country is too important to downgrade ties and cut off assistance. Unfortunately, this weak approach to Cambodia is not unusual; for years, the U.S (other than a few Cambodia hard-liners in Congress) have been accepting whatever Hun Sen does, and continuing to provide substantial aid to the country. Now, the U.S., like most other outside actors, has simply called for Cambodia’s own election authorities to investigate any irregularities, knowing full well that Cambodia’s own official election authority, like every other major institution in the country, is controlled by the CPP and is unlikely to take any of the opposition’s complaints seriously. So expect Hun Sen to be at the next U.S.-ASEAN summit, and top American leaders to shake his hand.

Until the past week, Cambodia’s national elections, which will be held on July 28, 2013, looked utterly unexciting. The Cambodian People’s Party (CCP) of the increasingly autocratic Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country in various positions, for nearly three decades, seemed destined to win an almost-total victory. The CPP, which has increased its share of parliamentary seats in each of the past three elections, had used various autocratic tools to ensure that the July 28th elections bore no resemblance to free and fair polls. Members of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, which holds a small minority of seats in parliament, were harassed and served with a buffet of civil and criminal complaints. Their supporters, particularly in rural areas, were attacked by pro-CPP thugs, while the state media, which dominates the country, has been used almost exclusively to promote Hun Sen and his allies, according to Human Rights Watch. Then, last week, the election seemed to take a sudden turn. Under pressure from many democratic donors—despite strong economic growth, Cambodia’s budget is still highly dependent on aid—Hun Sen allowed opposition leader Sam Rainsy, the only viable other major national political figure, to return to the country. Rainsy had been living in exile while facing a variety of trumped-up offenses, and Hun Sen pushed King Sihamoni to grant him a royal pardon, which the pliant king immediately did. Now, Rainsy is returning to Cambodia this Friday and is investigating registering to run for an MP slot; even if he does not run, he will be heading up many rallies for the Cambodian National Rescue Party, and surely bringing a larger number of voters to the demonstrations and, possibly, the polls. Optimists are arguing that, with Rainsy back and a large percentage of Cambodian voters participating in their first election—more than half of registered voters are under 35 and do not remember the Khmer Rouge era, or Hun Sen’s role in ending it—the long-term rule of Hun Sen and his party may be threatened. Opposition supporters in Phnom Penh are jubilant, and young, middle-class Cambodians, who are increasingly using social media to organize for the opposition, think that all these new voters will be swayed by Rainsy’s charismatic presence and a desire for change. Don’t count on it. For one, though Rainsy has more democratic credentials, Hun Sen is a far smarter politician than the opposition leader. Several times in the past, Hun Sen has had his government bring charges against Rainsy, only to withdraw them when Rainsy capitulated to him on various issues, or when Hun Sen needed the veneer of a real opposition to maintain the fiction that Cambodia is a democracy. This veneer now has been provided again by Rainsy. In addition, even if the new voters are energized by the arrival of Rainsy—who shows up very late in the election campaign game—their votes may not matter anyway. The Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL) the main nonpartisan election monitoring organization, has already said that this national election will be the least free of the five that have taken place in the past two decades, due to padded electoral rolls, voter intimidation, and other dirty tricks. The European Union, which sent monitors to the last election in 2008, has decided not to participate this time, concluding that this vote is beyond redemption. Even if the vote was free and fair, would the opposition win? It would probably make even more inroads in Phnom Penh and some other larger towns, but it does not have the village by village grassroots organization of the CPP, which dominates local elections and local patronage. In addition, although the past decade has seen widening economic inequality in Cambodia, wanton destruction of natural resources, and growing authoritarianism, with the king no longer able to serve as any kind of check on Hun Sen, the economy has, overall, grown very strongly for ten years. GDP per capita has risen from around $275 a decade ago to nearly $1000 today, a significant jump based on around seven percent annual growth. Hun Sen remains popular outside of Phnom Penh, largely because of this development. A May poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in Cambodia found that 79 percent of Cambodians felt their country was headed in the right direction. So Hun Sen probably does not have to steal the election. Too bad that he will anyway.

Mr. President, as you start your second term, you have made clear that you will continue the “pivot” to Asia, which includes moving military assets to the Asian theater, bolstering relations with Asian partners, and generally re-establishing the United States as the major Pacific presence. Your new secretary of state, John Kerry, is a longtime advocate of closer ties with mainland Southeast Asia. Within the State Department and Pacific Command, support for the “pivot” is strong as well. In many ways, the pivot makes sense. Moving more U.S. military assets to Asia, and building closer ties with democratic partners like Australia, India, and South Korea, could help Asian nations feel more secure without necessarily sparking an arms race with China. The White House itself is not necessarily driving the pivot; Worried about China’s behavior, many Asian nations have looked to the United States as a balancer in the region. But, Mr. President, as the past two months have shown, the excitement in Washington over the “pivot” has overshadowed some serious human rights concerns among many of the United States’ new friends. Your second administration needs to do a better job of continuing the pivot while demonstrating that Washington will make closer ties with autocratic Southeast Asian regimes contingent on rights improvements.  I will list just a few examples here. I recently returned from Myanmar, a country which this past year you, for the first time, invited to join the U.S. and Thai-led multinational military exercise Kobra Gold. Some U.S. diplomats believe that military-military cooperation with Myanmar will grow so exponentially that by 2015 you will sign a comprehensive partnership with Naypyidaw. And indeed, Myanmar has changed significantly since the transfer of power from the military in 2010. Yet I saw, in Rakhine State, how a combination of local vigilantes and prodding from some in the security forces has led to wanton destruction of the Muslim Rohingya community, with tens of thousands driven out of their homes and large regions burned to the ground. Although the Rohingya disaster has been covered in some media, on the ground the situation actually is worse than described in most media reports, and the Rohingya are turning into Asia’s new “boat people,” fleeing en masse in rickety boats in hopes of getting to Malaysia. The Myanmar government also has upped its war against insurgents in northern Kachin State, allegedly bombing them with imprecise air strikes, and it remains highly unclear, from my conversations with diplomats and regional officers, whether President Thein Sein has control of his army commanders in the field. Meanwhile, similar worries have arisen in Laos, a country virtually ignored by the United States since 1975 but courted by your administration, including with a visit to Vientiane by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But Laos’ rights abuses often get ignored, since the country seems, on the surface, to be so placid and slow-paced. Yet last month one of the most prominent activists in Laos, a former winner of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, suddenly went missing. As I noted in a previous blog, according to several news reports, he was held at a police post in the capital and then taken away in another truck which had stopped at the police post. His whereabouts remain unknown, even though, by the standards of political activism in neighboring states like Thailand, Malaysia, or the Philippines, he was hardly even critical of his government. This follows on other crackdowns in Laos. Last year, the call-in show News Talk, basically the only even semi-independent broadcast media in Laos, was abruptly forced off the air. Finally, let’s look at Cambodia, Vietnam, and even treaty ally Thailand. As I noted in a piece for The New Republic, the administration has pushed for closer military-military ties with the Cambodian military (even paying for the son of autocratic prime minister Hun Sen to attend West Point), which has a record of assassinating domestic opponents. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently met with Cambodia’s Minister of Defense Tea Banh, yet in a comprehensive recent report, Human Rights Watch detailed how, over the past two decades, some three hundred people have been killed in political murders in Cambodia, many by soldiers or members of dictatorial Prime Minister Hun Sen’s personal guard. The Obama administration has also re-affirmed its longstanding alliance with Thailand, a country whose armed forces two years ago gunned down at least eighty civilian protestors in the streets of Bangkok.  Under new Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the Thai armed forces have hardly changed their tune: A group of soldiers, showed up, in full uniform, last week, outside the offices of a Thai media group, in an unsubtle attempt to threaten the group’s reporters, who had been critical of the armed forces—a highly inappropriate action for an army in what is supposedly a “democracy.”  And in Vietnam, where cooperation with the Pentagon is moving the fastest, the government last week jailed fourteen activists and bloggers, continuing a crackdown on online dissent that has been building for the past three years. In your second term, Mr. President, you certainly should not halt the pivot. It makes sense in terms of the dispersal of U.S. forces, it is desired by many Southeast Asian and Pacific nations worried by the increasing aggressiveness and opacity of the Chinese leadership, and it includes closer ties with important democratic partners like Australia, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. But, as I noted in TNR, do not overrate your own ability to change nations in the region, and underestimate the brutality of some regimes you are dealing with. In your second term, take a harder look at what the pivot is actually getting from mainland Southeast Asian nations, and whether it is worth abetting such brutalities. There is thus far little evidence that mil-mil cooperation with the United States has changed the Cambodian armed forces, for example. And these smaller nations offer little strategic benefit. Even if Cambodia was “lost” to China—which already is Phnom Penh’s biggest donor and investor, giving Cambodia some $500 million in soft loans last year—would that be a serious blow to America’s presence in Asia? Not really. Nor would it be a great loss if Laos, which also has come under increasing Chinese influence—China provides extensive training for Lao soldiers, and is probably now Laos’ biggest donor—tilted more clearly to China. By contrast, Vietnam, despite its poor rights climate, could be a critical ally due to its large and professional military, deep-water harbors, growing interoperability with U.S. forces, and natural distrust of China. Myanmar and Thailand are larger and more strategically located countries, and Thailand is a U.S. treaty ally. But Myanmar is unlikely to tilt toward China even if the administration had gone extremely slow in re-establishing military ties—the Myanmar generals began to engage with the West in 2010 in large part to reduce their dependence on China, which had become the dominant strategic, economic, and diplomatic force in Myanmar. So it is unlikely that, if the Obama administration goes slower on mil-mil cooperation in the second term until the Myanmar military is more clearly under civilian control, and has purged its worst offenders, the Myanmar government would suddenly cut off its engagement with the United States. Thailand, also, would be unlikely to downgrade ties with the United States if the White House were to take a harder line toward the Thai military. Many in the current government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra have no love for the Thai military, since the armed forces removed Yingluck’s brother in a coup just six years ago. If any Thai government were to go along with the United States in taking a hard look at how its aid helps a military that repeatedly interferes in politics and uses excessive force on its own citizens, it would be this one.

While much has been written about President Obama’s recent tour of Southeast Asia, less attention has been paid to the simultaneous visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to the region.  On November 15, during a stopover in Bangkok, Panetta reaffirmed the United States longstanding military ties with Thailand with a new agreement, the 2012 Joint Vision Statement for the Thai-U.S. Defense Alliance. The next day, the United States also reiterated its military ties with Cambodia during a meeting between Secretary Penetta and Cambodia’s defense minister, General Tea Banh. In my new piece for The New Republic, I examine how the Obama administration relies on the Pentagon to serve as diplomatic interlocutor in Southeast Asia, and argue against U.S. military cooperation with the region’s most oppressive countries. You can read the TNR entire piece here.

Nathan LaGrave is an intern for the Southeast Asia studies program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Last week, during his historic trip to Myanmar, President Obama demonstrated the United States’ continued commitment to the country’s transition with the announcement of a $170 million aid package. The announcement coincides with the reestablishment of a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Myanmar, which was suspended for twenty-four years during the brutal reign of the former military regime. Now comes the critical time in which Chris Milligan, the newly-appointed USAID mission director in Myanmar, must develop a strategy for the distribution of these dollars. It is vital that the United States recognize those hazards which can potentially surround the offering of aid and tread cautiously, understanding the issues that could stall a successful transition in Myanmar and negate the positive effects of aid. Firstly, the United States needs to acknowledge a reality that most official development assistance (ODA) providers would rather not: the historically mixed results of aid in Southeast Asia. One doesn’t need to look far to see an example of undesirable consequences brought on by an oversaturation and misallocation of foreign aid in the region. As Sophal Ear argues convincingly in his recently released book, foreign aid has thus far proved a detriment to development and democracy in Cambodia. Since Cambodia’s transition from a one party state in the early 1990s, billions of dollars in ODA has flowed into the country from international agencies, foreign governments and NGOs, making it one of the largest recipients of aid in the world. Ear notes that despite GDP per capita doubling since 2005, inequality has increased dramatically in Cambodia while health indicators have declined. Citing the clear failures of certain ODA projects —including the World Bank-sponsored land titling venture in Boeng Kak Lake— Ear demonstrates how aid has failed to result in successful, grassroots development and has instead entrenched what he calls an irresponsible culture of trial-and-error aid experimentation. In the Boeng Kak Lake case, aid funds were utilized by Shukaku Inc.—a firm owned by a senator in the ruling Cambodian People’s Party— to evict Cambodians with little or no compensation, a land-grabbing issue that is just one of many trends of inequality that persists in Cambodia’s development. Ear cites Cambodia’s budget as further evidence that aid has negatively affected the country’s transition. From 2002-2010, roughly 50 percent of Cambodia’s public spending came from foreign aid. This amount of financial support reduces the need for the Cambodian government to collect taxes and subsequently minimizes a sense of democratic participation and the accountability its citizens demand from their leaders. The fact that Cambodia consistently ranks among the lowest on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index and that human rights abuses are committed with impunity would seem to confirm Ear’s arguments. While there is of course no guarantee that aid will have this same negative effect in Myanmar, Washington should note those circumstances in the country which could push it onto a similar trajectory. Last year, President Thein Sein ordered construction on the Myitsone dam project in Kachin State stopped. More recent reports suggest that those villagers who have attempted to return to their homes have been forcibly evicted by the military while Chinese workers remain at the site, indicators that the project will likely move forward. This situation may involve foreign investment rather than ODA, but the incident suggests that central government may have limited control over local military and police forces. What stands in the way of the still-powerful regional military leadership from utilizing soon-to-arrive ODA funds to carry out similar policies of unequal development that benefit only a select few? At present, the mantle of democracy and progress seem to rest on reformer Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi, both aging and who, however committed, cannot be expected to carry the burden of democracy and development alone. Should ODA from the United States and elsewhere overwhelm this fragile and complicated process and somehow diminish an expectation of accountability from the people of Myanmar to its leaders as it has in Cambodia, Myanmar’s democratic transition will be at risk and its development will miss those who need aid most. Along with ensuring the international aid community’s experience in Cambodia is not replicated in Myanmar, the United States needs to construct its aid strategy in conjunction with other Western governments who have commenced aid. It’s obvious that the United States is not alone in hoping to gain favor with Myanmar. Instead of moving unilaterally to counteract aid overtures and risking its dollars and credibility in an increasingly important geopolitical region, the United States should seize this opportunity to demonstrate leadership in aid administration to transitioning states. Through soberly acknowledging past failures and moving forward with aid in concert with other donors, the United States will safeguard against redundancy and make certain that development dollars are disbursed effectively to even the country’s most remote regions—regions like Kachin State and Rakhine State— that need assistance the most.

As President Barack Obama sets off this weekend for a historic trip to Southeast Asia, he arrives at a high point for himself —and a low point for the region. Obama, making his first trip since winning re-election at the polls, will be the first sitting American president to visit Myanmar. The country has undoubtedly embarked upon historic reforms, yet is also embroiled in brutal ethnic violence. Thailand, another stop on Obama’s trip, is bracing for what could be a hugely disruptive leadership succession fight. In Cambodia, he will attend the East Asia Summit, as well as the Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization in the throes of a crisis. The violence in Myanmar’s southwestern Rakhine State may have been sparked in part by the security forces, who are eager to retain a sizable role in the new Myanmar, and it has also been facilitated by radical Buddhist groups that have been attacking Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State and have made it nearly impossible for aid organizations like Doctors without Borders to even provide aid and relief to the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing their homes there. Meanwhile, in other parts of Myanmar like Kachin State, civil war is ramping up again, raising the question of whether the president, Thein Sein, actually has control of his regional army commanders. Thus far, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has said little about the violence in Rakhine State, a great disappointment to rights activists in the state and around the world. Meanwhile, in Thailand, a U.S. treaty ally and another country on Obama’s itinerary, the situation is only marginally better. As the king of Thailand’s health continues to decline —rumors suggest he has had multiple strokes and is operating at minimal brain capacity, and in his few public appearances he looks extraordinarily frail— Thailand’s power centers are girding for the post-succession fight of the century. While the government of Yingluck Shinawatra enjoys a majority of popular support and control of parliament, Yingluck and her brother Thaksin, from exile, have been trying to slowly reduce the power of the country’s traditional unelected power centers, such as the military and the palace, in part by reshuffling the army to promote Thaksin loyalists. But the top army leaders remain staunchly anti-Thaksin/Yingluck and extremely royalist, and in recent weeks a new group of middle- and upper-class protestors have descended on the streets of Bangkok. Ostensibly, they are protesting corruption in the Yingluck government (though Yingluck’s government is not demonstrably any more corrupt than any previous Thai government) and they are protesting the possible return to Thailand of the exiled Thaksin, who still faces criminal charges back at home. In reality, the protestors, led by a former general linked to several Privy Councilors close to the king, are rallying Bangkokians to push to oust the government, preferably through another military coup —an openly stated goal of many of the protestors.  The protest group, known as Pitak Siam, has made wild claims about the size of its rallies, but thus far they have tended to be around 20,000 people. Still, as in 2006, when hundreds of thousands of Bangkokians came to the streets to push for the ouster of Thaksin and call for a coup, these demonstrations could get larger, once again showing that there is no compromise on the horizon for Thailand’s deadlocked politics. The poor, who support Thaksin, have the votes to win election after election; the middle and upper classes, so distrustful of Thaksin’s party and poor voters, will turn time and time again to extra-constitutional means to nullify elections. This deadlock, which has lasted since 2006, has paralyzed policymaking in a critical U.S. ally, undermined the economy, and scared off investors. Indeed, the Obama administration now has closer functional ties with Vietnam and Singapore, neither of which actually are treaty allies, than with dysfunctional Thailand. And above it all looms the crisis in ASEAN, the leading regional organization. Though ASEAN’s secretary-general, Surin Pitsuwan, is Thai, and previously served as Thailand’s foreign minister, he has had little success in helping to mediate Thailand’s political crisis. Similarly, even though Surin has pushed for a more assertive, regionally engaged ASEAN Secretariat, he has found himself unable to make much headway in addressing Myanmar’s deadly ethnic conflicts either. On the eve of the president’s visit to Southeast Asia, the CFR Southeast Asian studies program and the International Institutions and Global Governance program are jointly releasing my new Working Paper on ASEAN: “ASEAN’s Future and Asian Integration.” You can read “ASEAN’s Future and Asian Integration” here.