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12 months ago in Sihanouk(ville) in Cambodia I was astounded by the amount of Chinese development. Rent had increased 10 fold, with something like 30 Chinese Ca

12 months ago in Sihanouk(ville) in Cambodia I was astounded by the amount of Chinese development. Rent had increased 10 fold, with something like 30 Chinese Casino's being built as well as heaps of accomodation. Unfortunately this doesn't help the local economy much, forcing the locals out due to price increases, and Chinese development companies bringing over their own Chinese workers.

3131s 7y ago
Since I live in Cambodia I'm not sure, but how much awareness is there elsewhere about the recent building collapse in Sihanoukville? I saw the BBC wrote some articles: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48729072 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48729072 There are some shoddy-looking construction sites in Phnom Penh too, and precarious conditions for construction workers even on the more modern construction projects.
- tomglynch 7y ago
  I was not aware of this at all but I am not surprised. It definitely seems like a race to finish, without much focus on anything else. To get from Sihanoukville to where we were staying we had to take a main road that was constantly used by trucks getting to and from construction sites. It was a dirt road that had been torn to pieces, including major major potholes, diversions into oncoming traffic to avoid these, huge traffic jams due to this, and at one point the powerlines had collapsed across the road, and had been left there, running live with cars literally driving over them all day long. Definitely a huge accident waiting to happen. The local infrastructure is just not able to sustain this level of development. And the unfortunate thing was, the development companies were not giving back enough to actually fix up the roads and other chaos they caused, so the locals end up worse off.
  - 3131s 7y ago
    The roads are bad everywhere. There's really nothing resembling a highway in the entire country despite the massive development happening in Phnom Penh too. Tons of people die in road accidents because semi trucks, construction vehicles, buses, cars, motos, bicycles, pedestrians and animals all share the two lane "national roads". I have personally seen a lot of dead or dying people on the road here unfortunately.
duxup 7y ago
>Chinese development companies bringing over their own Chinese workers The same pattern in Africa, development projects staffed by Chinese workers in segregated company run communities. They built a train line in Africa, had a big opening day ceremony with a local running the train. After that day... the local guy never ran the train again.
- api 7y ago
  Did the British and Americans do this kind of thing all over the world too? Or is this a new level?
  - duxup 7y ago
    I couldn't tell you what the British did in detail although their companies certainly were paid to build railroads for other nations.... but that's just a matter of the engineering / railroad expertise not being there. That aspect I think is unavoidable.
    - KineticLensman 7y ago
      > their companies certainly were paid to build railroads for other nations To be precise, the first railways in India were paid for by local British magnates / companies, e.g. to transport materials for other construction projects. From 1849 British companies still paid to build the railways themselves but they were given the land for free and guaranteed a 5% rate of return [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_I...
  - sytelus 7y ago
    I haven't lived in those times but in British colonies, virtually all positions of power and money were reserved for the people from Britain. You could be Mr. Nobody in Worcester, go to India and suddenly turn in to upper class tax officer with bungalow and half dozen servants taking care of your property. On the other hand, a person of Indian origin could have spent large sums of family wealth to get educated in Oxford and have to settle for some lowly clerk when they come back regardless of how well they did. Many freedom movements were actually started by these England-educated Indian people who realized there was no place for meritocracy in British colonies when they came back.
tyng 7y ago
I have worked in many overseas development projects run by Chinese companies. It's not that the Chinese companies only want to hire their own workers, but the fact that the local workforce do not have the skill/equipment/capital to handle large scale development projects. Some countries require by law that the Chinese developers have a minimum number of local workers. This mitigates the problem somewhat and hopefully over time the locals will develop the skills to run their own projects. In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > It's not that the Chinese companies only want to hire their own workers, but the fact that the local workforce do not have the skill/equipment/capital to handle large scale development projects. I've often thought that but caught myself thinking I was just buying into the narrative - refreshing to hear it might be slightly less cynical than my brain would have me believe (though still undoubtedly to some degree). My assumption being the skillset to build a transnational highway and scalable mining infrastrcuture is different than doing those things at localised levels.
  - 3131s 7y ago
    It really depends on what is being called "infrastructure" and how much the local government is extracting from the foreign governments that will benefit (and if those funds are redistributed to the benefit of the people obviously too).
- adventured 7y ago
  > In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it. That's only true if the economy develops to a high enough level, fast enough, to afford to maintain the infrastructure being built that isn't actually natural to the present scale of the economy. That's a large assumption and the consequence of being wrong is disastrous for a poor country. Any time you try to force-leap a country forward, there are immense risks if the underlying economy doesn't keep up, and it won't be China that pays for it later on.
dageshi 7y ago
I was there 10 years ago and 2 years ago. I describe it 2 years ago as if a tidal wave of chinese money hit the place. I am really quite glad I visited 10 years ago, it certainly wasn't a perfect place but it had a charm to it that's currently being annihilated, such is progress.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  So far this is a Manila-only phenomenon, isn't it? Manila is populous, but "annihilating" it would no more annihilate Philippines than annihilating NYC or LA would annihilate USA.
  - dageshi 7y ago
    I was referring to Sihanoukville.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  Manila is many things, but "charming" is not a common choice of adjective. Some bits of Intramuros aside, in my experience there's not a whole lot there between "shiny and new" and "slum".
  - dageshi 7y ago
    I was referring to Sihanoukville.
Spooky23 7y ago
That's how colonialism works.

3131s 7y ago

Since I live in Cambodia I'm not sure, but how much awareness is there elsewhere about the recent building collapse in Sihanoukville? I saw the BBC wrote some articles: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48729072 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48729072 There are some shoddy-looking construction sites in Phnom Penh too, and precarious conditions for construction workers even on the more modern construction projects.

tomglynch 7y ago
I was not aware of this at all but I am not surprised. It definitely seems like a race to finish, without much focus on anything else. To get from Sihanoukville to where we were staying we had to take a main road that was constantly used by trucks getting to and from construction sites. It was a dirt road that had been torn to pieces, including major major potholes, diversions into oncoming traffic to avoid these, huge traffic jams due to this, and at one point the powerlines had collapsed across the road, and had been left there, running live with cars literally driving over them all day long. Definitely a huge accident waiting to happen. The local infrastructure is just not able to sustain this level of development. And the unfortunate thing was, the development companies were not giving back enough to actually fix up the roads and other chaos they caused, so the locals end up worse off.
- 3131s 7y ago
  The roads are bad everywhere. There's really nothing resembling a highway in the entire country despite the massive development happening in Phnom Penh too. Tons of people die in road accidents because semi trucks, construction vehicles, buses, cars, motos, bicycles, pedestrians and animals all share the two lane "national roads". I have personally seen a lot of dead or dying people on the road here unfortunately.

duxup 7y ago

>Chinese development companies bringing over their own Chinese workers The same pattern in Africa, development projects staffed by Chinese workers in segregated company run communities. They built a train line in Africa, had a big opening day ceremony with a local running the train. After that day... the local guy never ran the train again.

api 7y ago
Did the British and Americans do this kind of thing all over the world too? Or is this a new level?
- duxup 7y ago
  I couldn't tell you what the British did in detail although their companies certainly were paid to build railroads for other nations.... but that's just a matter of the engineering / railroad expertise not being there. That aspect I think is unavoidable.
  - KineticLensman 7y ago
    > their companies certainly were paid to build railroads for other nations To be precise, the first railways in India were paid for by local British magnates / companies, e.g. to transport materials for other construction projects. From 1849 British companies still paid to build the railways themselves but they were given the land for free and guaranteed a 5% rate of return [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_I...
- sytelus 7y ago
  I haven't lived in those times but in British colonies, virtually all positions of power and money were reserved for the people from Britain. You could be Mr. Nobody in Worcester, go to India and suddenly turn in to upper class tax officer with bungalow and half dozen servants taking care of your property. On the other hand, a person of Indian origin could have spent large sums of family wealth to get educated in Oxford and have to settle for some lowly clerk when they come back regardless of how well they did. Many freedom movements were actually started by these England-educated Indian people who realized there was no place for meritocracy in British colonies when they came back.

tyng 7y ago

I have worked in many overseas development projects run by Chinese companies. It's not that the Chinese companies only want to hire their own workers, but the fact that the local workforce do not have the skill/equipment/capital to handle large scale development projects. Some countries require by law that the Chinese developers have a minimum number of local workers. This mitigates the problem somewhat and hopefully over time the locals will develop the skills to run their own projects. In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it.

wastedhours 7y ago
> It's not that the Chinese companies only want to hire their own workers, but the fact that the local workforce do not have the skill/equipment/capital to handle large scale development projects. I've often thought that but caught myself thinking I was just buying into the narrative - refreshing to hear it might be slightly less cynical than my brain would have me believe (though still undoubtedly to some degree). My assumption being the skillset to build a transnational highway and scalable mining infrastrcuture is different than doing those things at localised levels.
- 3131s 7y ago
  It really depends on what is being called "infrastructure" and how much the local government is extracting from the foreign governments that will benefit (and if those funds are redistributed to the benefit of the people obviously too).
adventured 7y ago
> In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it. That's only true if the economy develops to a high enough level, fast enough, to afford to maintain the infrastructure being built that isn't actually natural to the present scale of the economy. That's a large assumption and the consequence of being wrong is disastrous for a poor country. Any time you try to force-leap a country forward, there are immense risks if the underlying economy doesn't keep up, and it won't be China that pays for it later on.

dageshi 7y ago

I was there 10 years ago and 2 years ago. I describe it 2 years ago as if a tidal wave of chinese money hit the place. I am really quite glad I visited 10 years ago, it certainly wasn't a perfect place but it had a charm to it that's currently being annihilated, such is progress.

jessaustin 7y ago
So far this is a Manila-only phenomenon, isn't it? Manila is populous, but "annihilating" it would no more annihilate Philippines than annihilating NYC or LA would annihilate USA.
- dageshi 7y ago
  I was referring to Sihanoukville.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Manila is many things, but "charming" is not a common choice of adjective. Some bits of Intramuros aside, in my experience there's not a whole lot there between "shiny and new" and "slum".
- dageshi 7y ago
  I was referring to Sihanoukville.

Spooky23 7y ago

That's how colonialism works.