A Helping Chinese Hand: Trade and Aid with Southeast Asia

Brian McCartan

Introduction

Long applying a carrot and stick approach to winning diplomatic allies in a sometimes ludicrous contest with Taiwan over diplomatic recognition, today China strives to establish itself as a “status quo” player in the international arena. “Softpower” replaces ideological approaches to the world, as in the sponsorship of scores of Confucius Institutes throughout the world, in hosting the Olympic Games, and even through the advent of mass Chinese tourism. “Resource diplomacy,” that is the quest to secure natural resources, is emblematic of the scale of China's economic reach. At the same time, China is increasing participation in international peacekeeping missions, notably the dispatch of civilian police to such locations as East Timor, Haiti, and Lebanon. In 2000, China established a peacekeeping training center in Hebei province. China can also be proactive on international issues, as with its leading role in the 6-Party Talks on North Korea nuclear weapons, and its 3 May 2009 call for the establishment of a peacekeeping role in Somalia. While China's “string of pearls” approach to the construction of ports and naval bases across the Bay of Bengal to the Indian Ocean may alarm, the projection of its naval assets to the coast of Africa should not surprise given the international character of the “war” against piracy. In short, with China's accession to WTO and other international fora, alongside its sustained economic growth and its position as the largest owner of foreign reserves in the world, including U.S. debt in the form of treasuries, the nation of over a billion people is carving out a central position in world affairs.

But, by taking on the world, and most notably Southeast Asia as an aid donor, as Brian McCartan outlines, China has ratcheted up. Applying a global view, we observe that, through the China Development Bank, Beijing has extended loans worth over $50 billion to the national oil companies of Russia, Kazakhstan and Brazil, alongside cooperation with Venezuela and Cuba. As a “resource investor,” China is careful to lock in long-term supply contracts. Australia also looms large in recent Chinese resource acquisitions. Such an approach differs from China's more controversial policy of investing in oil projects in unstable African states. While Nigeria, Angola, and the Middle East (Iran and Saudi Arabia) supply most of China's oil needs, China's national oil companies have also acquired interests in exploration and production.

So it should not surprise that Chinese economic integration with ASEAN is already a reality. Just as China's aid to the region now surpasses that of the U.S., we are reminded that, even prior to the current recession, Japan has slipped back in the ranks of aid donors. [Though refuted by Tokyo, Japan ranks last among developing countries according to the Washington-based Center for Global Development]. With Japan hobbled by domestic politics in its ability to sign meaningful free trade agreements with the ASEAN countries, trade pacts with China appear more attractive to many nations.

Although China cannot match Japanese investment levels in Southeast Asia reaching back to the 1960s, Japan will nevertheless be obliged to work harder to maintain its niche as the economic shadow of China looms larger. Japan is also feeling pressure from China's push to use its own currency for trade settlements in Asia and beyond. In response, on 3 May 2009, at a forum in Indonesia, Japan offered to provide 6 trillion yen in loans to financially stricken Asian countries. According to Yuzuru Takano, writing in the Asahi Shimbun (5 May 2009), the measure is “essentially a bid to entrench the yen as the region's benchmark currency at the expense of the Chinese yuan.” However, there is reason to be skeptical concerning the political reception of such a move on the part of the ASEAN countries, not to mention the U.S. Geoffrey Gunn

CHIANG MAI - A new investment fund and loan package to help alleviate the impact of the global financial crisis for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) represents the latest overture of China's "soft power" campaign towards the region. Many believe the aid package unveiled in Beijing this month was strategically announced to steal a commercial and diplomatic march over the economically ailing United States.

The aid package includes a US$10 billion investment fund, geared for cooperation in infrastructure construction, energy and natural resources development, and improvements in information and communications. China also announced it would extend a $15 billion line of credit over the next three to five years to needy ASEAN countries. Although the terms were not made public, the loans include preferential terms for $1.7 billion in cooperation projects.

An additional $39.7 million was earmarked for "special aid" to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, the 10-member groupings poorest members and closest China allies, to meet "urgent needs". China also announced it would donate $5 million to the China-ASEAN Cooperation Fund and an additional $900,000 to the ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea cooperation fund.

Beijing also announced increases in other forms of cooperative aid, including an offer of 2,000 government scholarships and 200 Master's scholarships for public administration students over the next five years from developing ASEAN countries. One thousand agricultural technicians will also have the chance to receive training in China over the next three years. Beijing also donated 300,000 tons of rice to an emergency East Asia reserve intended to boost food security and proposed a China-ASEAN scheme to create high-quality, high-yield crop demonstration farms in ASEAN countries.

The aid package underscores accelerating economic integration. China's trade with 10-member ASEAN has nearly doubled from $105.9 billion in 2004 to $202.5 billion in 2007. Even with the mounting global economic crisis, trade rose 14% last year to US$231.12 billion, making ASEAN China's fourth-largest trading partner. Gao Husheng, China's vice commerce minister, said at a preparatory meeting for the 6th China-ASEAN Expo on April 9 that ASEAN would likely replace Japan as China's third largest trade partner in the near future.

A proposed China-ASEAN free-trade zone would pave the way for faster trade flows. The last step in those negotiations, the signing of an investment agreement, was expected to be completed on the sidelines of the botched ASEAN summit at Pattaya, Thailand, earlier this month. Once the agreement is signed and implemented as early as 2010, annual bilateral trade volumes are expected to reach $1.2 trillion, according to figures projected in China's state-controlled media.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi unveiled the economic aid package for the region on April 12 during a meeting with ASEAN envoys. On announcing the package, Yang said, "As always, China firmly backs ASEAN integration and community building, and firmly supports ASEAN to play a leading role in regional cooperation."

The proposal was supposed to have been announced by Premier Wen Jiabao at the postponed ASEAN summit, which was disrupted by anti-government protesters who stormed the meeting's venue. Yang went on to call for joint efforts to reach an investment agreement conducive to the establishment of the China-ASEAN free-trade zone.

Friend in need

Economists say China's proposal would potentially give ASEAN nations hard hit by the global economic and financial crisis other emergency funding options beyond the International Monetary Fund or Asian Development Bank. The IMF's rescue packages in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis were strongly criticized for measures perceived to favor foreign over local interests. Beijing's recent aid offers are similar and notably more generous than the $4 billion it offered to financially distressed ASEAN states, including Thailand and Indonesia, in the wake of that crisis.

Many remember how China held its fixed rate currency steady while ASEAN countries depreciated their units, allowing several countries to export themselves back to financial health. That marked a difference from Western approaches at the time, which demanded economic and financial reforms that would pave the way for greater foreign participation and ownership in distressed Southeast Asian economies.

Those economic and financial gestures underscored an important policy shift from Beijing's past destabilizing approach towards the region, marked in particular by its past support for communist insurgencies, including the radical Maoist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and communist guerillas in Thailand. That often confrontational policy was also seen in the 1979 invasion of Vietnam and the conflict with ASEAN states over the ownership of islands in the South China Sea.

While the new measures will go some way towards facilitating a quicker regional recovery from the global economic and financial crisis, some analysts see a more opportunistic side to China's aid announcement. China's soft power campaign has taken the form of increased foreign aid, economic networking, including the establishment of free-trade areas, and cultural transmission to encourage pro-China sentiment in the region.

China's aid to the region, by some reports including a November 2008 estimate from Taiwan's Center for Asia-Pacific Studies, has now surpassed that of the US. For China the benefits of greater integration are as much political as economic. For instance, a rising tide of pro-Chinese sentiment in the region has made it easier for Chinese companies to secure deals for natural gas exploration in Myanmar, land large scale agriculture projects in the Philippines, and build transportation infrastructure in Thailand and Laos.

It all meshes with China's so-called "going out" policy, which aims to secure natural resources and economic opportunities that serve local development goals. That said, China's foreign aid activities often lack transparency; despite the rising outflows, Beijing still lacks a centralized foreign aid body or a regularized funding schedule. Nor does China publicly disclose data related to foreign aid expenditures. Some aid disbursements more closely resemble foreign direct investment (FDI), while other projects undertaken by companies with strong government ties more closely resemble aid.

Surging assistance

What is clear, however, is that China's foreign aid and government-supported economic projects have grown dramatically in recent years. Research done by the New York University Robert F Wagner Graduate School of Public Service indicates that Chinese assistance to Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia grew from less than $1 billion in 2002 to $27.5 billion in 2006. The same research shows that sum fell modestly to $25 billion in 2007.

Although the researchers caution that some figures may be inflated, certain pledges and loans may not have been fulfilled and some multi-year projects could have been double-counted, the dramatic increase in aid flows is unmistakable. According to a February 25 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, many of China's aid operations don't correspond to the usual definition of development assistance and that many of China's economic activities in developing countries are supported by the government.

Many economic investments could be considered aid since "they are secured through bilateral agreements, do not impose real financial risks upon PRC [People's Republic of China] companies involved, or do not result in Chinese ownership of foreign assets", the research said. In Southeast Asia, some analysts suggest that China has become one of the largest sources of economic assistance, even though it is not considered a major regional provider of traditional overseas direct assistance.

Wagner School researchers compiled a list of Chinese aid and related investment projects or offers to ASEAN from 2002-2007 and arrived at a combined total value of $14 billion. They estimated that 43% of that figure went to infrastructure and public works projects, 32% for natural resource extraction or development, 3% to military, humanitarian and technical assistance and the remaining 22% to unspecified activities.

China's assistance and economic interaction with ASEAN has come largely without the political, legal and environmental strings attached to Western country aid. It is also provided comparably faster and without the bureaucratic procedures that major aid donors, multilateral financial institutions and multinational corporations usually require.

The lack of interference in domestic affairs is especially appreciated by ASEAN's more authoritarian regimes, including Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and has earned a measure of public appreciation since it appears to be more respectful of national sovereignty than Western donors. China has enhanced its local reputations through various goodwill investments, including outlays for national stadiums, cultural centers and friendship roads and bridges.

These projects are often very publicly announced at regional summit meetings - such as the package planned for the Pattaya summit - and used to project an image of Chinese fraternity with its developing world brethren.

Some analysts perceive China's soft power foray with ASEAN as a struggle for dominance with the US, which for many years has been strategically linked to ASEAN. They suggest that the balance of power is starting to tilt in China's favor, as it increasingly leverages soft power initiatives into hard power gains. Certain ASEAN nations are known to view China as a useful hedge against US and Japanese influences.

China's improved relations with ASEAN are broadly geared towards providing a security hedge in the event of a conflict with the US. The majority of China's oil and gas imports still pass through the narrow Malacca Straits, a potential strategic chokepoint. With China's ascension in 2003 to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in 2003, and the US still not a signatory, its not clear what stance ASEAN would take should the US and China ever become engaged in a regional conflict.

To be sure, Southeast Asian opinion is still very much divided over China and its rising influence. The maritime nations of Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam are known to be uneasy over Chinese intentions, particularly with the recent advances in its naval capabilities and the unresolved claims to the disputed and potentially fuel-rich Spratly Islands.

China has made firmer inroads with the mainland countries of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, although even these countries try to balance Chinese influence with other big countries, including the US and India. At the same time, there is deep suspicion and angst over China's opaque plans for building a series of hydroelectric dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong River, which flows through and sustains the livelihoods of large populations in many mainland ASEAN states.

While some ASEAN countries may still be wary of China's rising regional clout, its recent aid proposal will no doubt be warmly welcomed across the region. And as the gathering economic and financial crisis hits the US's and Europe's ability to provide aid and assistance, ASEAN nations will have little choice but to rely more on its increasingly magnanimous northern neighbor.



Brian McCartan is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist. He may be reached at brianpm@comcast.net. Read more!

Cambodian dengue fever patients rise sharply

PHNOM PENH, The number of dengue fever patients of Cambodia rose to about 1,500 until May, 960 more than the same period of last year, or an increase of about 50 percent, national media said on Monday.

The 1,500 victims were mainly spotted in Phnom Penh with 343 cases, Kampong Cham province 259 cases and Kandal province 161 cases, Chinese-language daily newspaper the Commercial News quoted officials of the Ministry of Health (MoH) as saying.

Moreover, three people died of the disease all over the kingdom, two of them died in the early of the year and the third in May, according to MoH.

The MoH has already received the assistance from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB), and plans to buy some mosquitocide and propaganda material to enhance the public understanding, according to MoH.

The rainy season from May to November is the period of the outbreak of the dengue fever nationwide. Usually, children under the 15 years old were the most fragile group to be attacked by the illness, and some 71 percent of the contaminated cases used to be children.

The government has called on the people to clean their water-saving tanks frequently, kill mosquito eggs in their tanks with pesticide, and sleep in anti-mosquito nets.

According to official figures, in 2007, a rampant year for the disease in the kingdom, 407 children died of it, out of a total of 39,851 infected cases of minors. And in last year there were 9542 people infected with the disease in the kingdom, out of them 65 were killed.
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UN study advises caution over dams

MICHAEL CASEY

AP Environmental Writer= BANGKOK (AP) — A dam-building spree in China poses the greatest threat to the future of the already beleaguered Mekong, one of the world's major rivers and a key source of water for the region, a U.N. report said Thursday.

China is constructing a series of eight dams on the upper half of the Mekong as it passes through high gorges of Yunnan Province, including the recently completed Xiowan Dam, which — at 958 feet (292 meters) high — is the world's tallest. Its storage capacity is equal to all the Southeast Asia reservoirs combined, the U.N. report said.

Laos, meanwhile, has started construction on 23 dams expected to be finished by 2010 on the Mekong and its tributaries, the U.N. said, as a means to spur development and lift the country from poverty. Cambodia and Vietnam also have ambitious dam-building plans.

"China's extremely ambitious plan to build a massive cascade of eight dams on the upper half of the Mekong River, as it tumbles through the high gorges of Yunnan Province, may pose the single greatest threat to the river," the report said.

The report went onto to say that the impacts of the proposed dam development include "changes in river flow volume and timing, water quality deterioration and loss of biodiversity."

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a regular briefing the government pays equal attention to the development of the Mekong and its protection. The Mekong is known as the Lancang river in China.

"I would like to point out that the Chinese government attaches great importance to the exploration and the protection of cross-border rivers and conducts the policy of equal attention to development and protection," Ma said.

The proposed dams would add further pressure to the Mekong, which runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The 307,000-square-mile (795,000-square-kilometer) river network is home to dozens of rare bird and marine species, including the Mekong giant catfish, and is a source of food and jobs for the 65 million people who live in the river basin.

The river and its vast tributary network already face threats from pollution, climate change and the effects of earlier dams that were built in China and have caused water levels to drop sharply on the upper Mekong.

Still, the U.N. report said for the time being, the Mekong's pollution levels were not at "alarming levels" while water shortages and conflicts over water on the Mekong have so far not emerged.

"The Mekong is in good condition at this time and can take more pressure such as irrigation development or industrial development," said Mukand S. Babel, one of the reports' authors.

The report, however, found several river basins in the Mekong that are under threat, including the Tonle Sap in Cambodia, Nam Khan in Laos and Sekong-Sesan Srepok in Vietnam and Cambodia due to increasing development and demand for water.

It called for countries bordering the Mekong to work more closely together to ensure that the region's growing population and expected economic development doesn't further strain the capacity of the delta.

"The time to tackle these challenges is now, otherwise the projected growth and development may impact on the basin's ability to meet future water needs," said Young-Woo Park, a U.N. regional director.
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California sex offender faces new charges in Cambodia

Formerly a patient at atascadero state hsopital, he is suspecting molesting four young boys

Jack Louis Sporich was living an idyllic retirement, splitting his time between a luxury condo in Sedona, Ariz., and a sprawling home he was having built in a tourist mecca in Cambodia.

The 74-year-old retired engineer appeared to have escaped his past, which included his classification as one of California’s most dangerous sex offenders, one who authorities suspect may have molested more than 500 young boys over the years.

Now, officials say Sporich, who won his release from Atascadero State Hospital in May 2004 without spending a single day in treatment, may have reoffended.

He has been charged in Cambodia with indecent acts against minors in a case involving four young Cambodian boys, according to an official in Phnom Penh whose organization helped investigate Sporich.

Cambodian news accounts of his arrest indicate Sporich denied the allegations, which included the claim he lured the children — ages 9 to 13 — to his home with toys and candies. The Cambodia Daily reported he also attracted youngsters by dropping dollar bills in the street.

He was arrested Feb. 2 and remains in custody in the tourist town of Siem Reap, according to Seila Samleang, executive director of Action Pour Les Enfants-Cambodia.

APLE-Cambodia is a nongovernmental organization that works closely with Cambodian police to target foreign pedophiles who exploit youngsters in that country, and Sporich had been under investigation by the group.

Samleang said in an e-mail to The Sacramento Bee the charges are misdemeanors punishable by a prison sentence of one to three years.

Sexual exploitation of children has been a problem in Cambodia for years, where the age of consent is 15.

Todd Melnik, the defense attorney who won Sporich’s release from Atascadero, said he knew nothing of the Cambodia charges. An e-mail to Sporich this week seeking comment did not receive a response.

Troubling history

Sporich is no stranger to charges of sex with kids.

He spent nine years in prison after his conviction in Ventura County on seven counts of lewd acts upon children under 14. Then, he was committed to Atascadero State Hospital as a “sexually violent predator” deemed too dangerous to be released upon completion of his sentence.

David Lehr, a Ventura County defense attorney who originally prosecuted Sporich, said he may have had as many as 500 victims, and he typically befriended boys through their parents and offered to take them on camping trips.

The parents frequently would pay Sporich for gas and the time he spent on the trips, Lehr said last week.

“If I had to pick from a list of former and current SVPs, he would be, by far, the first one I would be most concerned about,” Lehr said in an interview for a 2006 series of stories in The Sacramento Bee about sexually violent predators.

Sporich was released from Atascadero in May 2004, after two juries were unable to agree on whether he would reoffend, and he immediately moved to Arizona, where the only requirement he faced was that he register as a sex offender once a year.

He is not listed on the current sex offender registry maintained by the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Sporich’s case was highlighted in The Sacramento Bee’s series, which revealed it was far easier for offenders to win release from Atascadero by refusing treatment than by undergoing the lengthy treatment program designed to prevent them from reoffending.

After The Sacramento Bee’s series, lawmakers introduced a number of proposed improvements to the system and voters later that year overwhelmingly approved Proposition 83.

That measure increased prison sentences for habitual and violent offenders and did away with the requirement that sexually violent predators be allowed a trial every two years. Instead, they now can petition annually for a hearing, but the burden of proof is on them to convince a court they no longer pose a threat.

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Cambodia finds three passengers traveling with A/H1N1 virus patient

PHNOM PENH, Cambodian health authorities have found the three passengers who arrived here on the same flight with a woman who was later confirmed to have A/H1N1 virus, a health official here said on Saturday.

The three, all Cambodian-Americans, were found Friday, and one of the old man now stays in Battambang province while the two others, a father and his daughter, in Kampot province, according to Sok Touch, director of the epidemic disease department at the Ministry of Health.

"We have got their samples and sent to the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh for testing A/H1N1 virus. The results would be available later today," he told reporters, adding that "the three's health are normal with no influenza symptoms now."

Sok Touch said that the Health Ministry has not took isolation measure to them, but asked them to have a self-isolation, and not to visit relatives as well as go to the public places in the next seven days.

The three arrived in Phnom Penh from the United States via South Korean on May 17. A Vietnamese woman traveled with them on the same flight feel unwell and hospitalized at Incheon, South Korea, and later she was confirmed of the disease.
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Cambodia, WHO declear no confirmed A/H1N1 virus in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) here on Friday issued a joint statement claiming there is no confirmed cases of Influenza A/H1N1in Cambodia.

"The ministry of Health would like to advise that as of May 22 2009, no cases of Influenza A/H1N1 virus have been confirmed in the country," the statement said.

Cambodian Health Ministry received an urgent letter Wednesday from South Korean Embassy warning that three Cambodian- Americans were on the same flight from the United States to South Korea with a passenger who was later confirmed to have Influenza A/H1N1. The three individuals subsequently flew on a separate flight to Phnom Penh on Sunday.

At the time of their arrival to Cambodia, the three passengers did not display influenza symptoms, according to the statement. The ministry officials are now seeking to locate these passengers to assess their well-being and to offer them testing.

"The Ministry of Health is working closely with all relevant authorities to continue to monitor the situation closely," it added.

The ministry also strongly advised people who has traveled from an affected area in the past seven days and has developed fever ...to contact with the ministry. 　
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Thai Deputy PM: Cambodia not issue passport to Thaksin

BANGKOK, Cambodia did not issue passport to ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, according to Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thuagsuban told reporters Friday.

"I was told by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen himself that there was no issuing a passport for Thaksin," the website by The Nation newspaper quoted Suthep as saying.

Suthep was reacting to remarks by opposition Pheu Thai Party MPChalerm Yoobamrung, who earlier said Thaksin showed him the Cambodian passport among six or seven passports during their meeting last week in Dubai.

Thaksin was ousted by the military coup in September 2006 in accusation of corruption, keeping him in exile since then. Thaksin returned to Thailand in February 2008 to face corruption charges, but he later fled into exile again and was convicted in absentia. Read more!

CPC in Talks to Buy Cambodia Oil Stake From China as Ties Warm

By Yu-huay Sun

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- CPC Corp., Taiwan’s state-owned refiner, is in talks to buy a stake in a Cambodian oil area from China and plans to “aggressively” bid for energy assets with mainland partners, company President Chu Shao-hua said.

The purchase is being negotiated with China National Offshore Oil Corp., the country’s third-biggest oil producer, from whom CPC bought a 30 percent share in a Kenyan block in December, spokeswoman Jessica Tang said. The company also plans to process more crude for China National Petroleum Corp., the parent of PetroChina Co., Chu said in an interview in Taipei.

CPC will ramp up exploration spending by 77 percent this year as part of efforts to secure supplies and meet a tenth of its petroleum needs by 2014. Warming political ties are encouraging companies in China and Taiwan to cooperate. China Mobile Ltd. agreed to buy a stake in Far EasTone Telecommunications Co. in April, the first planned investment by a state-owned mainland company in Taiwan in six decades.

China National Offshore “has a very good track record in exploration and production,” said Charles Chen, who helps manage the equivalent of $3.7 billion at JF Asset Management Co. in Taipei. “Its cooperation with CPC may help Taiwan gain oil resources in the future.”

Unlisted CPC competes with Formosa Petrochemical Corp., the island’s only publicly traded oil refiner, to sell fuels in Taiwan and in Asian markets, including China. The island imports about 99 percent of its energy needs.

‘Aggressively Pursuing’

The company may spend NT$4.6 billion ($141 million) on exploration and production this year, Chu, 61, said at CPC’s headquarters yesterday. It spent NT$2.6 billion in 2008. Current production meets 7 percent of its gas requirement and about 2.5 percent of its crude-oil needs, Chu said.

“Possible stake purchases in existing fields is an approach we’re aggressively pursuing,” Chu said. “Chinese companies are easier to communicate with than foreign ones.”

CPC and China National Offshore started a joint study in 1998 on possible cooperation in search for oil and gas in a block in the Taiwan Strait. The purchase of the block in Kenya paved the way for joint overseas exploration and the two companies renewed a 2002 agreement last year to jointly drill wells in the southern part of the Strait.

CPC may invite Chinese companies to jointly search for oil and gas in waters near the island to share costs, John Hsu, chief executive of the company’s exploration and production division, said in March.

‘Limited’ Gains

How much CPC could gain from cooperation in the near term is difficult to assess as very little information is available on the likely reserves and because exploration “requires large investments,” said Chen at JF Asset Management.

“Benefits for CPC may be limited for now, but you got to work together first and see what chances there may be in the future,” Chen said. Still, China National Offshore, “is a worthy partner.”

Relations between China and Taiwan have improved since the Kuomintang party’s Ma Ying-jeou took office in May last year as the island’s president and dropped the pro-independence stance of his predecessor, Chen Shui-bian. Ma said this week he will prioritize economic ties with China.

While China says Taiwan is part of its territory, the two have been administered separately since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled the mainland in 1949 after losing to Mao Zedong’s Communists in a civil war.

Refining for China
Formerly known as Chinese Petroleum Corp., CPC was formed by the Nationalists government in Shanghai in 1946 and relocated to Taiwan after Kuomintang’s defeat.

The refiner may process as many as 3 million barrels of Sudanese oil for China National Petroleum in exchange for fees and parts of the refined products, President Chu said. This would help CPC better utilize its spare capacity as Taiwan’s fuel demand falls amid the recession, he said.

CPC first refined crude for the Chinese company in 2002 and processed another cargo last year, he said.

CPC operates three refineries with a total daily capacity of 720,000 barrels of crude and has investments in Africa, Southeast Asia, the U.S., Australia and Latin America.

To contact the reporter on the story: Yu-huay Sun in Taipei ysun7@bloomberg.net .
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Study shows hidden birdflu cases in Cambodia

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus can infect people without causing noticeable symptoms, but only rarely, according to a report published on Thursday.

A survey of more than 600 people in Cambodian villages where two children died from the virus shows seven more were apparently infected, but without having known about it.

The study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, also suggests that people may become infected by swimming in ponds where infected birds have dabbled.

"Although these results cannot be considered to be representative without broader confirmation, they show that, in some settings, surveillance may substantially miss H5N1 virus infections," Dr. Sylvie Briand and and Dr. Keiji Fukuda of the World Health Organization wrote in a commentary.

The H5N1 avian influenza virus has been regularly causing outbreaks of disease in birds -- 250 outbreaks in February alone in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal and Vietnam, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

It only rarely infects people but is often deadly when it does. WHO says it has killed 261 people out of 424 infected since 2003.

The big fear is that is could change into a form that people can pass easily to one another, sparking a pandemic. These fears have been overshadowed at least a little by the near-pandemic of much milder H1N1 swine flu that started in March.

One big question has been whether some people have been infected without knowing it. If this is the case, the fatality rate would go down. With current numbers, the fatality rate appears to be around 60 percent but if there are more than 424 infections it would make for a lower rate.

Sirenda Vong of the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia and colleagues followed up on two deaths of children from H5N1 in 2006. They interviewed villagers and took blood samples.

ANTIBODIES IN BLOOD

"Seven (1 percent) of 674 villagers tested seropositive for influenza H5N1 antibodies and did not report severe illness," they wrote. This means their bodies had at some point fought off an H5N1 infection.

Most were male, 18 or younger, and were more likely than other villagers to have reported bathing or swimming in household ponds. They all lived in wooden houses on stilts with well or pond water as the only water source for the family and none had known contact with the two children who died.

Scientists know that birds can pass influenza viruses in their droppings and ducks, especially, can foul ponds with virus-infected droppings. The virus can live in droppings or water for up to six days.

"During the study period, most participants reported repeated direct and close poultry contact, including feeding or touching poultry (73.3 percent), collecting poultry feces for manure (50.9 percent), plucking feathers of sick poultry (31.1 percent), or collecting sick and/or dead poultry with bare hands (36.8 percent)," the researchers wrote.

But, they added, the findings suggest that transmission from sick bird to human in Cambodia was rare in 2006.

The found genetic material from the H5N1 virus in specimens taken from ponds and pond plants.

"Our results also indicate that swimming or bathing in household ponds could be a risk factor for influenza H5N1 virus infection. These small ponds are common and usually serve as a water source for backyard animals and gardening,' the wrote.

"Ducks usually have access to these ponds and may deposit large amounts of feces in ponds in which children commonly bathe and play." Read more!

Cambodia to send fresh soldiers for de-mining operation

(PHNOM PENH) – Cambodia, one of the world’s most heavily mined countries, is sending 52 soldiers to replace some members of its group who take part in landmines clearence in southern Sudan, defence officials said on Thursday.

The group of 52 de-miners is expected to arrive in war-recovering Sudan in early June, reported the government news agency Agence Kampuchea Press (AKP). An outgoing company of Cambodian de-miners is based in Malakal, Upper Nile.

They will join the international peacekeeping mission known as UNMIS, while the outgoing solders will return home in mid-June, Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Gen. Sem Sovanny was quoted as saying.

He said that the United States had trained most of the Cambodian soldiers who will be sent to Sudan, as well as others who are preparing to be sent to Chad and Central African Republic.

Gen. Sovanny is also a director general of the National Management Centre for Peacekeeping Forces and Explosive Remnants of War. His country witnessed three decades of civil war ended in 1998, becoming one of the world’s most heavily mined countries. Its military thus has extensive experience in removing land mines.

In the past 10 years, Phnom Penh has destroyed an estimated 1.6 million landmines. Cambodia’s first demining team had arrived in Sudan in February 2006.

The Sudanese government and the former rebel SPLM signed in January 2005 a peace deal ending two decades of war in southern Sudan. In March 2005, The U.N. Security Council voted to send 10,700 peacekeepers to Sudan to monitor the peace deal, which is known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

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Chevron seeks solution to Thai-Cambodia claim talks

By Nareerat Wiriyapong
Bangkok Post, Thailand


BANGKOK, THAILAND: The US-based energy giant Chevron has called on Thailand and Cambodia to speed up negotiations over the two countries' long-awaited overlapping claims area (OCA).

While committed to its ongoing investments, the company said the OCA's rich resources would benefit economic development and energy security in both countries.

"Clearly, there's an opportunity for both countries to go in and see what's there and to use those resources for their mutual benefit. Energy security depends on [a country's] resources," said Joseph Geagea, managing director of Chevron Asia South Ltd.

"We are ready to take part in developing the area as soon as the resolution is made," said Mr Geagea, who is in charge of Chevron's upstream activities in six countries in South Asia.

Decades of border disputes between the two countries have delayed offshore exploration in the 27,000-square-kilometre area in the northern Gulf of Thailand, where multinational energy firms have been granted concessions.

Chevron and its partners are working closely with the Cambodian government on a regulatory framework for the industry, said Mr Geagea.

Chevron is the biggest multinational oil-and-gas player in Thailand, producing about one-third of the country's demand for natural gas.

In 2008 the company produced 210,000 net barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) in Thailand. Its owned and operated Platong project is scheduled to start production in 2011 with total gas capacity of 420 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd).

Chevron's assets in South Asia also include operations in Bangladesh, China and Burma, as well as a US$4-billion gas project in Vietnam, he said. Chevron's assets in the six countries account for 48 percent of net oil and gas production in the Asia-Pacific region, where the company produces about 700,000 boed.

Chevron has confidence in the region's economy and its opportunities for the natural gas business, and ongoing projects have stayed on course despite the global recession, said Mr Geagea.

"Asia is expected to lead future energy demand growth. We do believe in Asia coming out quickest in the [economic] recovery and providing the fastest growth opportunity for Chevron," he said.

By 2030, Asia is expected to account for 52 percent of world economic growth in terms of gross domestic product, while the Asia-Pacific region will become the largest consumer of oil and gas.

The region's share of oil-and-gas demand will top 30 percent in 2030, up from 23 percent in 2005, driven mainly by increasing power generation.


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'Ghost' dollars offered for Pol Pot's shoes: report

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — A Cambodian photographer's attempt to sell the sandals of late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot has yielded only one bid -- 790,000 fake dollars offered in protest at the sale, a report said.

Nhem En, who photographed inmates at the regime's main torture centre and also snapped pictures at official regime ceremonies, announced last month he was selling the footwear along with two cameras.

The shoes belonging to Pol Pot, who died in 1998, were made of car tyre, while the two cameras were manufactured in Germany and Japan.

But "bidder" Pok Leak Reasey told English-language Phnom Penh Post newspaper that he was offering 790,000 fake dollar bills traditionally used to make offerings to spirits of the dead.

"And the reason why I have offered the money in ghost notes is because I want to say that all material remaining from the regime is worth nothing," he said, according to the paper.

Ghost money is used during funeral rites in many parts of Asia.

Up to two million people died of starvation, execution, overwork or torture as the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, dismantled society in a bid to forge a communist utopia.

The former chief of Tuol Sleng prison, Kaing Guek Eav -- better known as Duch -- is currently on trial for crimes committed during the regime.

Cambodia's UN-backed court also plans to try four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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Cambodia: Naga Corp, Post Tel Pick Up First Wins

The big boys are picking up points in Cambodia

Naga Corp FC and Post Tel Club each chalked up their first win of the 2009 Cambodia Premier League – three matches into the new season.

While Naga Corp did not have to struggle too much before scoring a 5-3 win over Build Bright United, the story was a little different for Post Tel when they had to comeback from being a goal down before posting a 3-1 victory over Phouchung Neak FC.

An third-minute strike from Sun Samprathna set the tone for the game as Naga Corp then raced to a 2-0 lead at the half with the second goal from Chhim Sambo in the 37th minute.

Chhim then made it 3-0 with his second strike of the afternoon in the 56th minute before Build Bright pulled a goal back off Prum Putsithy three minutes later.

Tiep Vathanak then made it 4-1 in the 73rd minute before Build Bright struck twice within four minutes to make the scoreline 4-3.

However, N. Friday made sure of the three points for Naga Corp and their first win of the season with their fifth goal deep in injury time.

In the meantime, Post Tel could not have started their game on a worse note when they conceded an early goal to Phouchung Neak through O. O. Joseph’s fourth-minute strike.

However, they bounced back in the 19th minute when Touch Sok Heng found the equaliser for the score to be at 1-1 at the break.

Eight minutes after the restart, Post Tel grabbed the lead for the first time in the game – with Sok Heng again on target.

In the 63rd minute, Phany Chamroeun then put the game beyond the reach of Phouchung Neak with the third goal for Post Tel.

With the wins, Naga Corp moved up to third at the table while Post Tel are now seventh.

1. PHNOM PENH 6 2. KIRIVONG SOK SEN CHEY 63. NAGA CORP 4 . Read more!

Cambodian PM to attend ASEAN-South Korea Commemorative Summit

PHNOM PENH, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen will lead a high-level delegation to attend the Commemorative Summit for the 20th Anniversary of ASEAN-Republic of Korea Dialogue Relation to be held on June 1-2, the official Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP) reported on Wednesday.

After the meeting, Hun Sen will also pay an official visit to South Korea from June 3 to 5, AKP quoted the press release of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation as saying.

During the official visit, Cambodia and South Korea will sign several documents, it added.

The delegation will include Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, Senior Minister and Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, Senior Minister and Minister of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction Im Chhun Lim and other members of the royal government.

ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.


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Gates Fights China Fakes, Drug Failure to Stem Malaria Disaster

By Simeon Bennett


Saron Samnith, 14, slouches in the doorway of his family’s thatched hut off a dusty track near Pailin, a city in western Cambodia. He has chills, diarrhea and a three-day-old headache -- signs of malaria.

The bout of the mosquito-borne disease, for which he tested positive, is his second in a month. The first left him comatose and in danger of dying, before medicines curbed the attack. Coursing through Saron’s veins may be the strain so dangerous that health officials --and the billionaire Bill Gates -- are racing to stop it from spreading before it kills millions.

In Pailin, a flood of counterfeit pills from China and elsewhere is helping to breed a superbug that resists even the most-effective medicine. The development threatens to unleash a global malaria “disaster” and undo decades of work to reduce illness, destitution and death, said Arjen Dondorp, a Thailand- based researcher.

“It’s a time bomb,” said Dondorp, the deputy director of the Wellcome Trust-Mahidol University Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme, with headquarters in Bangkok.

The World Health Organization plans to defuse the bomb with a screening and treatment program to contain and eliminate the resistant strain. The effort, in and near Pailin, may begin next month. The program is backed by $23 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, based in Seattle.

“There’s more money put into baldness drugs than is put into malaria,” Gates told an audience in February, in Long Beach, California. “Because the disease is only in the poor countries, it doesn’t get much investment. You can’t get the economies in these areas going because it just holds things back so much.”

Doom Scenario

The risk of failure raises what Dorndop calls a “doom scenario.” In that sequence of events, migrant workers would first carry the bug to Thailand, Myanmar and India. Later the strain would spread to Africa, which already has 90 percent of the world’s malaria cases.

“We rang the warning bell in 2005 and nobody believed us,” said Pascal Ringwald, the Geneva-based WHO’s leading specialist in the malaria parasite’s ability to resist drugs. “Many people were skeptical.”

The doom scenario may be a decade away from materializing, giving the world time to prevent it, said Charles Delacollette, the head of WHO’s Mekong Malaria Programme, which covers Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and part of China.

“We don’t have many alternatives” to the antimalarial drug artemisinin, to which the parasite is becoming resistant in western Cambodia, Delacollette said in an interview in Bangkok. “That drug should be protected.”

Interpol Operations

Interpol, the international police organization based in Lyon, France, traced counterfeit drugs in Southeast Asia to China in 2006 as part of an investigation called Operation Jupiter. Last year, under Operation Storm, Interpol arrested 27 people in raids across Asia and seized more than 16 million fake pills valued at almost $7 million.

Chemical analysis of pills bought in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam found several other pharmaceutical ingredients, charcoal, and a precursor of the illicit drug ecstasy, according to an account of Operation Jupiter published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine. Also present were spores and pollen from trees common in southern China, suggesting that at least some of the drugs were made there, the authors said.

“The evidence we have at the moment suggests China and India are sources of fake medicines, including in the case of China, fake anti-malarials,” said Paul Newton, a University of Oxford researcher who monitors counterfeit malaria drugs from an office in Vientiane, Laos.

Market Forecast

Interpol’s actions hardly dented the global market for counterfeit pharmaceuticals, which may reach $75 billion in 2010, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2005, according to estimates by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization based in New York. WHO says fakes, typically cheaper than real drugs, may account for as much as 30 percent of all medicines in developing nations.

“We’re talking about sophisticated, big syndicates, people who are very well organized,” said Aline Plancon, the Interpol officer who coordinated the operations. “It’s just insane. They’re making too much money, they’re betting too much on the health of people. We’ll do it again and again.”

Deadly Disease

Malaria strikes about 250 million people each year and kills more than 880,000, making it the world’s most lethal mosquito-borne disease, according to WHO.

The malady is caused by a microscopic parasite called Plasmodium, which is carried in the saliva of female mosquitoes. When an infected insect bites a person, the parasites multiply in the liver before entering the bloodstream. There they invade red cells, causing fever, chills, nausea and diarrhea. Unchecked, the bugs cause red cells to stick to the walls of capillaries, slowing blood flow. Without treatment, sufferers can die from organ failure.

The most-effective modern drugs against malaria are based on artemisinin, an ancient Chinese remedy derived from the leaves of the sweet wormwood tree. So-called artemisinin derivatives include artesunate and artemether, the key ingredients respectively in Sanofi-Aventis SA’s Coarsucam and Novartis AG’s Coartem.

Breeding Ground

While Cambodia accounts for only about 0.4 percent of the world’s malaria cases, the country is a breeding ground for strains that withstand medicines. Since the 1970s, at least three once-potent malaria drugs have failed in western Cambodia before becoming useless elsewhere in the world, according to WHO: first chloroquine and Roche Holding AG’s Fansidar, then mefloquine.

Now Dondorp and other researchers say the same thing is happening to artemisinin. In a study carried out last year and yet to be published, artesunate failed to clear malaria parasites within two days from the blood of about 70 percent of patients in Pailin compared with 7 percent in western Thailand.

For now, the drugs still clear the parasites, only more slowly -- a sign that resistance to artemisinin-based treatments is building. While Novartis, GlaxoSmithKlinePLC, Genzyme Corp. and Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. are developing new drugs and vaccines against malaria, those products are in the early stages of development and won’t be available for years.

Malaria ‘Disaster’

“If we lose the artemisinins at this stage, just now when we dare to mention the word ‘eradication’ again, it would be a disaster for malaria control,” said Dondorp, who led the study. “It would cause millions of deaths, without exaggeration.”

WHO aims to eliminate malaria from western Cambodia through the program backed by the Gates Foundation, the world’s biggest charity. The agency, an arm of the United Nations, plans to screen and treat about 25,000 people in the area next month, possibly expanding tests and treatment to hundreds of thousands later this year.

Those who test positive will probably be treated with Glaxo’s Malarone because it doesn’t contain artemisinin and will take the pressure off drugs that do, said Eva-Maria Christophel, a WHO medical officer implementing the plan.

In and around Pailin, Cambodia also plans to start treating patients with Chongqing Holley Pharmaceutical Co.’s Duo-Cotecxin instead of artemisinin-based drugs, said Duong Socheat, director of the nation’s malaria control program, by phone from Phnom Penh.

Fakes Abound

Fake pharmaceuticals abound in Pailin. At the city’s dusty, fly-blown Samaki Market, untrained vendors hawk cheap pills without a prescription at drugstores opposite stalls offering fried locusts. Shoppers on motorbikes squeeze through the busy, narrow lanes. The traffic moves past a woman sitting by a pile of dried fish, waving away flies with a swat made from a stick and plastic bags.

Anti-malaria pills bought by Bloomberg News at two Samaki market stalls for $5 were sold loose in clear plastic bags, with no labeling or printed information about what they contained or how to take them. Even if the drugs are genuine, taking too few of them may not cure patients and may contribute to drug- resistance, Oxford’s Newton said.

Counterfeiters have learned to fool the on-the-spot dye tests used to identify fakes by including small amounts of real medicine in the illegal copies, Newton said.

Murder

“If you make a medicine that contains no active ingredient for a disease you know can be fatal, at best that is manslaughter and at worst it is murder,” Newton said. As many as half of all artesunate pills available at shops in Southeast Asia may be fake, according to studies he has led.
While pills devoid of active ingredients won’t heal patients, those containing small amounts wipe out only the weakest parasites, enabling the hardiest to survive and spread resistance to genuine drugs.

A bigger contributor to drug resistance than counterfeiters is patients who don’t take medicines properly, according to WHO scientists.

So-called artemisinin-derivatives work by giving malaria a short, sharp shock, clearing most of the parasites from the blood within hours. The drawback is that the drugs don’t stick around in the body and, according to WHO guidelines, must be given with one of several less-powerful, longer-lasting partner medicines that mop up stragglers.

Adverse Effects

The problem is that those other drugs, such as mefloquine, an older product, cause adverse effects, including nausea, vomiting and nightmares. When the two drugs are sold side by side rather than in a single pill, some patients take only the artemisinin, paving the way for relapses and resistance.

“If you want to get rid of these resistant parasites, you in fact have to eradicate malaria from western Cambodia,” Dondorp said. “In the effort to reduce it, the last man standing will be the most resistant parasite.”

Apart from artemisinin-based drugs, there are few effective treatments for the disease. Some that do work, such as Glaxo’s Malarone, are too expensive for patients in developing countries, Dondorp said.

Insecticide-treated bed nets, credited with slashing cases and deaths in Africa, aren’t so effective in Southeast Asia, where the Anopheles diris mosquito that spreads the disease bites earlier in the evening, before its victims have taken shelter for the night.

In Pailin, Saron’s mother, Bot Yom, has lost faith in Western pharmaceuticals. She plans to rub a coin against her son’s skin until it becomes red. If the disease renders artemisinin-based drugs as useless as their predecessors, the folk remedy might be just as effective.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net

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South Korean man charged over Cambodian marriage fraud

Phnom Penh - A Cambodian court on Tuesday charged a South Korean man with falsifying official documents as part of an alleged scheme to broker marriages between Cambodian women and South Korean men, national media reported Wednesday.

Police arrested Lee Kyung Jun, 40, Monday in Phnom Penh after another South Korean man accused him of supplying false marriage certificates, the Cambodian Daily reported.

An Interior Ministry official said Lee was accused of supplying at least 14 false marriage certificates to the man, who owns a marriage agency, at a cost of 500 dollars per person.

The official said the certificates carried the signature of a provincial administrator but were proven to be falsified after the recipient checked their authenticity with the administrator.

The ministry did not say whether the complainant's marriage service was a legal business.

Lee was detained by the Interior Ministry while officials decided whether to release him on bail.

The government in November enforced a temporary ban on marriages between Cambodians and foreigners after an International Organization for Migration report claimed a high number of local women were being married to South Korean men through illegal agencies.

The ban was lifted in January. Read more!

New Exotissimo Tours Explore Hidden Charms of Southern Cambodia and Vietnam's Mekong Delta

Exotissimo unveils diverse local cultures and undiscovered gems of Vietnam and Cambodia in two spectacular programs.

Bangkok, Thailand (PRWEB), Exotissimo Travel, a leading tailor-made travel company in Southeast Asia, presents two exciting programs that traverse Southern Cambodia and Vietnam's Mekong Delta.

In these brand new tours, Exotissimo combines well-known attractions with off-the-beaten-path sites in the itineraries. A particular focus is placed on Cambodia's emerging south, which is home to unspoiled beaches and islands that were frequented by Cambodian royalty in the 1960s. The small towns in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, an alluring region marked by countless waterways, lush paddies and floating markets, are another featured highlight.

"Maintaining a balance of classic attractions with ventures into undiscovered destinations, these new tours are designed for intrepid travelers who wish to discover the true essence of the countries visited. Along the way, the programs offer opportunities to meet locals and engage in traditional customs, creating more than just a holiday but rather a rewarding travel experience," said Anne Cruickshanks, Group Product Manager of Exotissimo Travel.

The 15-day Journey Across Cambodia - Bangkok to the Mekong Delta is an overland program that connects the bustling cities of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam with unique excursions to unexplored sites. Besides Siem Reap's Angkor Archaeological Park and Phnom Penh's pagodas, other highlights include visits to Sihanoukville's Ream National Park, idyllic beaches of Rabbit Island and the colonial riverside town of Kampot. A cross-border cruise along the Mekong River, combined with boat trips through the waterways and excursions to local workshops in the Mekong Delta, afford in-depth glimpses into the traditional ways of life in the region.
To view the detailed itinerary, visit Journey Across Cambodia.

The 13-day South Vietnam and Cambodia Unveiled starts in dynamic Ho Chi Minh City before heading southwards to Phu Quoc Island, one of Asia's least developed beach destinations. Crossing borders via an overland journey, travelers are shown Cambodia's tranquil coast at Kep and Rabbit Island and natural landscapes and indigenous wildlife at Kirirom National Park. Venturing deeper into Cambodia, the program leads travelers to ancient Khmer temples at Sambor Prey Kuk and Angkor Wat as well as a unique trip to a floating village in Tonle Sap Lake. This tour program can also be conducted in the reverse direction.

To view the detailed itinerary, visit South Vietnam and Cambodia Unveiled.

For other touring ideas in Indochina and beyond, visit Exotissimo multi-country tour packages in Indochina and Beyond.

About Exotissimo TravelExotissimo Travel is a premier destination management company that specializes in tailor made tours in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Established in 1993, the company is now a network of 15 locally-based offices staffing over 500 travel professionals, and sales offices in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Melbourne. For more information, please visit http://www.exotissimo.com/.


Helvetica, sans-serif; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.exotissimo.com/">Maintaining a balance of classic attractions with ventures into undiscovered destinations, these new tours are designed for intrepid travelers who wish to discover the true essence of the countries visited. Along the way, the programs offer opportunities to meet locals and engage in traditional customs, creating more than just a holiday but rather a rewarding travel experience
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Cambodian farmers urged not to cut down palm tree

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia's palm wine producer urged farmers not to cut down palm trees, saying the trees could earn much money for them, the official Agency Kampuchea Press (AKP)reported on Tuesday.

Cambodian farmers could earn an income of 500 million U.S. dollars per year if the exploitation of the palm trees was made as fully as possible, AKP quoted Confirel Company, the palm wine "Jaya" producer, as saying.

The company launched its palm wine named "Jaya" in early May.

An income being earned by each palm tree could vary from 101 U.S. dollars to 224 U.S. dollars per year, the company said, urging that the Cambodian farmers not to cut down such trees.

According to the company, its palm wine named "Jaya" available for exporting to Asian countries, mainly Vietnam. The company also presented the quality of the palm drinks, and its taste could be as competitive as imported wines, it said. While the palm juice supply was provided by as many as 500 families of the Cambodian farmers in the provinces.

Besides palm wine, the company made other products from the palm juice including vinegar, sugar and jam, which had a success in the country and abroad.

As estimated, Cambodia has 2.5 million palm trees, but at least one million trees were tapped by the Cambodian farmers.
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China provides preferential loan for Cambodia's road development

PHNOM PENH, China on Tuesday provided about 73 million U.S. dollars of a concessional loan to Cambodia to build a part of main road in the northeastern part of the country to develop that area into a newly potential economic zone.

The fund will be used for building a 121km-long road, a part of national road 78 from Stung Treng province to Ratanakiri province, according to the Cambodian Ministry of Economics and Finance.

The road will be used for border-crossing trade activities, transport, and tourism with the neighboring countries in the framework of triangle development in the Great Mekong Sub-region (GMS), Keat Chhon, deputy prime minister and minister of economics and finance, said at the signing ceremony with Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Zhang Jinfeng.

The project will be contributed to integrate the internal road system in the country and linking the road to regional road networks, he said, adding that it will connect the northeastern part of the country with central Vietnam.

The road is a blood vessel for northeastern areas, Keat Chhon said. He also thanked the Chinese government for its persistent support to Cambodia's social and economic development.

Ambassador Zhang expressed confidence that the road will be sure to help the poverty reduction in Cambodia's northeastern area and to play an important role in promoting the economic development there.
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Israel announced the nomination of its first economic attaché to Cambodia

The economic mission in Phnom Penh will function under the charge of the Israeli economic attaché in Thailand

Israel's Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor announced last week the opening of Israel's first economic mission in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh.

The Government announcement noted that the economic mission in Phnom Penh will function under the charge of the Israeli economic attaché in Thailand, Tzahi Selzer. During March a first Israeli delegation of telecommunications companies visited the Southeastern Asian country. Some 15 companies took part in the delegation, including such high profile names as ECI, Gilat and Comverse, whose representatives met with top local Government officials.

The visit was part of an Israeli effort announced last year to expand economic and political ties with Cambodia. According to Selzer, Cambodia is mainly interested in Israeli companies involved in irrigation technologies, agriculture, infrastructure and medical devices.

Israel was ranked the fourth-largest foreign investor in Cambodia last year in terms of value of projects approved, with 2.75 percent of total investment, or 300 million U.S. dollars, according to Cambodian Investment Board figures.
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Flu fears, rains buoy Cambodia rat exports to Vietnam

By Ek Madra

CHREY THOM, Cambodia (Reuters Life!) - Stir-fried or grilled, Vietnamese can't seem to get enough of Cambodian rat meat, and the global influenza outbreak as well as recent heavy rains have proven a boon for both consumers and exporters.

In Chrey Thom, a Cambodian town on the border with Vietnam, motorbike after motorbike carries wooden cages full of hundreds of the plump, furry, brown rats.

The rains in the Mekong Delta area have helped boost the Cambodian trappers' catch, as more rats rush out from their flooded holes and into waiting cages.

"There were so many rodents we just can't eat them all, so we need to export lots more to Vietnam," Cambodian rat trader Kang Chanthan told Reuters. "It's good business."

"If you prepare them well and fry the meat with garlic and put some mint on it, they're tastier than chickens," he added.

Worries about swine flu, as the H1N1 influenza virus was first called, may have also spurred demand. The spread of H1N1 flu was not caused by pigs and pork, but many people and governments have reacted to the name.

"Rat meat substitutes well for pork these days," said Khe Le, adding that her family exported up to a tonne of live rats across the border on good days.

Rat meat was eaten in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s and for some time afterwards when little else was available. The poor took to rat meat last year when the price of other meat soared, but younger Cambodians tend to avoid it.

In Vietnam, rat meat is something of a delicacy.

Online Vietnamese newspaper, VietNamNet Bridge, said more than 35 tonnes of rat meat a day was imported from Cambodia.

Cambodian officials said they did not keep records of this aspect of bilateral trade but reckoned the figure was realistic.

"The high season for catching rats has returned for the farmers in my district, where I see several thousand kilos of live rats transported every day to Vietnam," said Ly Marong, an agriculture official in Koh Thom district on the border.

Live rats sold for $1 per kilo and dead ones -- used for feeding crocodiles in Vietnam -- went for $0.37, officials said.

"Some rats are as big as piglets, 2 kilos, and that has intrigued the Vietnamese. They see them as wild animals and they find them tasty," Marong said.

Bun Tuon Simona, a Cambodian official in the southern province of Kandal, said the Vietnamese appetite for rat meat has helped a government campaign to get rid of the rodents that were destroying rice fields.

"Before, we rewarded farmers with milled rice in exchange for a rat's tail after they killed one. Now it's not a problem. They catch the rat and can sell it to make some money on top of what they get from farming," he said.

Cambodian farmer Chan Pakdeiratha, whose family has rather taken to the meat, said the rats gave birth three times a month and had about 15 babies each time.

"If we don't catch them this year, they'll destroy our crops next harvest," he said.

(Additional reporting by Lach Chantha and Chor Sokunthea) Read more!

Cambodian youth to participate in 2009 China-ASEAN Youth Camp

PHNOM PENH, A Cambodian youth delegation will join the 2009 China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations) Youth Camp, to be held on May 19-26 in Nanning and Guangzhou, China, at the invitation of the Chinese Youth Federation, the official Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP) reported on Monday.

The 10-member Cambodian delegation consists of two officials from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS), two young journalists, two young entrepreneurs, two best students and two artists.

The program aims at giving an opportunity to the China-ASEAN youth to exchange their knowledge and experiences and to discuss important topic related to impacts of the global economic crisis, youth challenges and government, civil and youth organizations' measures to support the youth, said a MEYS official.

The China-ASEAN youth delegation will also visit exhibition centers, museums, ports, industrial parks and economic development zones in China.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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North Hunterdon Students Raise Money To Build Cambodia Schools

by Hunterdon County Democrat


North Hunterdon High School students have raised about half the money needed to build a school in rural Cambodia.

Through the community service project Schools Building Schools, the English Department raised $6,066 for the American Assistance for Cambodia organization.

During spring recess in April, students were encouraged to read books, magazine and newspapers, and gather pledges for every minute of reading they did while out of school.The 221 participating students read for 1,840 hours. Lauren Sheldon's period 5-6 class earned a bagel breakfast for raising the highest number of pledges.

All of the money raised goes to American Assistance's Rural Schools Project program, which has led to the construction of more than 300 primary and lower secondary schools -- with matching funds from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank -- in rural Cambodia. Each school is sponsored by a donor to provide improvements, such as English/computer teachers, Internet connections and access to clean water.Information on the Rural Schools Project can be found at www.cambodiaschools.com/. Read more!

Survivors Shed Light on Dark Days of Khmer Rouge

Chum Mey, a mechanic, was spared because he was needed to make repairs. The two men are to testify against their torturer.

Bou Meng was singled out during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia to produce portraits of the group’s leader.

By SETH MYDANS

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Looking across the courtroom where he is on trial for crimes against humanity, the chief Khmer Rouge torturer cannot avoid seeing an artist and a mechanic who sit watching him but mostly avoid his gaze.

One short and forceful, his feet dangling just above the floor, the other melancholy and drooping a bit, they are rare survivors of Tuol Sleng prison, where at least 14,000 people were sent to their deaths three decades ago.

In the weeks ahead, the two survivors will take the stand to testify against their torturer, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, who commanded the prison, and both have stories to tell about a place of horror from which almost no one emerged alive.

Bou Meng, 68, the short one, survived because he was a painter and was singled out from a row of shackled prisoners to produce portraits of the Khmer Rouge chief, Pol Pot.

The other, Chum Mey, 78, was a mechanic and was spared because the torturers needed him to repair machines, including the typewriters used to record the confessions — very often false — that they extracted from prisoners like himself.

Duch (pronounced DOIK), 66, is the first of five arrested Khmer Rouge figures to go on trial in the United Nations-backed tribunal here. His case began in February and is expected to last several more months.

Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey are living exhibits — like a third survivor, Vann Nath — from the darkest core of the Khmer Rouge atrocities. They are tangible evidence, like the skulls that have been preserved at some killing fields, or like hundreds of portraits of their fellow prisoners that are displayed on the walls of Tuol Sleng.

The photographs were taken as detainees were delivered to the prison, before they were stripped and fettered and tortured and sent to a killing field.

Those ordered killed at Tuol Sleng are among 1.7 million people who died during the Communist Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 from starvation, disease and overwork, as well as from torture and execution.

Duch is accused of ordering the kinds of beatings, whippings, electric shocks and removal of toenails that Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey describe; indeed, he admitted in the courtroom to ordering the beating of Mr. Chum Mey.

Both men endured torture that continued for days, and Mr. Chum Mey said, “At that time I wished I could die rather than survive.”

But both men did survive, and in interviews they now describe scenes that almost none of their fellow prisoners lived to recount. “Every night I looked out at the moon,” Mr. Bou Meng recalled. “I heard people crying and sighing around the building. I heard people calling out, ‘Mother, help me! Mother, help me!’ ”

It was at night that prisoners were trucked out to a killing field, and every night, he said, he feared that his moment had come. “But by midnight or 1 a.m. I realized that I would live another day.”

Though many Cambodians have tried to bury their traumatic memories, Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey have continued to return to the scene of their imprisonment and torture as if their souls remained trapped there together with the souls of the dead.

During the first few years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Mr. Bou Meng returned to work in an office at Tuol Sleng, which was converted into a museum of genocide. Now he uses it as a rest stop, spending the night there on a cot when he visits the capital, Phnom Penh, from the countryside, where he paints Buddhist murals in temples.

Mr. Chum Mey, retired now from his work as a mechanic, spends much of his time wandering among the portraits, telling and retelling his story to tourists, as if one of the victims on the walls had come to life.

An eager and passionate storyteller, he will show a visitor how he was shoved, blindfolded, into his cell during 12 days of torture, and he will drop to the floor inside a small brick cubicle where he was held in chains.

“As you can see, this was my condition,” he said recently as he sat on the hard concrete floor, holding up a metal ammunition box that was used as a toilet. “It upsets me to see Duch sitting in the courtroom talking with his lawyers as if he were a guest of the court.”

Like many other Khmer Rouge victims, both men say they have no idea why they were selected for arrest or why they were tortured to admit to unknown crimes. Both men lost their wives and children in the Khmer Rouge years, and although both have rebuilt their families, the past still holds them in its grip.

Mr. Bou Meng does not wander like his friend among the Tuol Sleng pictures, but he does keep one in his wallet: a snapshot-size reproduction of the prison portrait of his wife, Ma Yoeun, who was arrested with him but did not survive.

“Sometimes when I sit at home I look at the picture and everything seems fresh,” he said. “I think of the suffering she endured, and I wonder how long she stayed alive.”

Mr. Bou Meng has since remarried twice, but he remains shackled to his memories. “I know I should forget her,” he said, “but I can’t.”

She visits him, he said, in visions that are something more than dreams, looking just as she did when he last saw her — still 28 years old, leaving Mr. Bou Meng to live on and grow old without her.

Sometimes she appears with the spirits of others who were killed, he said. They stand together, a crowd of ghosts in black, and she tells him, “Only you, Bou Meng, can find justice for us.”

Mr. Bou Meng said he hoped that testifying against Duch and seeing him convicted would free him from the restless ghosts and let him live what is left of his life in peace.

“I don’t want to be a victim,” he said. “I want to be like everybody else, a normal person.”

But he said he knew that this might be asking too much of life.

“Maybe not completely normal,” Mr. Bou Meng said. “But at least 50 percent.”

Read more!

Hennessy: An amazing story of an odyssey from the Killing Fields to the White House

Life dangled from a precipice. Your best chance of survival was to pass yourself off as an illiterate peasant.

If you were educated, you might die. If you wore glasses, suggesting you were educated, you might die. If you were seen foraging for food, even grass or insects, you might die.

It was Cambodia, 1976. A year earlier, the Khmer Rouge had taken power. Now they were determined to establish a primitive society, one easily ruled. When the decade ended, they were gone. But up to 2 million people were dead.

Or so it is thought. No one can make an accurate count.

But Sichan Siv, 27 years old, resourceful and brave, had survived. He was especially vulnerable, having once worked for the humanitarian group CARE and having helped refugees from the Vietnam War, which, if revealed, would have meant certain death.

Siv escaped Cambodia by walking 500 harrowing miles past land mines, Khmer Rouge patrols, decomposed bodies, wild jungle animals and booby traps. It took him almost a year to reach neighboring Thailand.

Separated from his family by the Khmer Rouge, he never saw his loved ones again, but he survived in part by recalling his mother's words: "No matter what happens, never give up hope."
It was a message that would carry him to the United States, the White House and the United Nations.

Coming to Long Beach

Sichan Siv will tell his remarkable story Tuesday in Long Beach as a guest of the Long Beach Library Foundation.

Meanwhile, I have interviewed him from his home in San Antonio, Texas, where he now lives and has written his story in a book called "Golden Bones."

Q: What is meant by "Golden Bones?"

A: Cambodians call somebody who is extremely blessed and lucky a person of golden bones.

Q: And you were extremely lucky to have escaped Cambodia. Why did you leave?

A: The Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a land of blood and tears. It was an enormous slave labor camp where people toiled for 18 hours a day with only one meal. It was deepest hell. I was sentenced to death twice, for trying to escape and for damaging a truck.

Q: Your life under the Khmer Rouge and while trying to flee Cambodia was nightmarish. Do you still dream about those days?

A: Not anymore. I used to have nightmares for a long while. As I woke up, I felt very relieved when I realized that I was in America.

Q: How did you escape Cambodia?

A: On Feb. 13, 1976, I jumped off a logging truck in northwest Cambodia and ran across the jungle for three days having nothing to eat or drink. I fell into a booby trap and was severely wounded. In Thailand, I was jailed for illegal entry before being transferred to a refugee camp. I spent a few months teaching English to fellow refugees and being ordained a Buddhist monk. I arrived in Connecticut on June 4, one month before the Bicentennial.

To the White House

Q: After being sponsored by a Connecticut family, you assimilated very quickly. How did you manage that?

A: I felt I had to adapt to be adopted. So I did everything that came my way to the best of my ability, from picking apples to driving a taxi. I got a scholarship to graduate school at Columbia. I worked on Wall Street and other places until 1988 when I volunteered in the (George H. W.) Bush campaign. I was one of the lucky few to be asked to serve at the White House in 1989.

Q: That's a remarkable career.

A: I was at the right place at the right time. The Bush transition was looking for someone to handle the communications aspects of our national security. I was born in a poor country, spoke several languages, and was familiar with international relations. When President Bush left the White House in 1993, I returned to the private sector and continued to work on global issues. This experience also helped me when George W. Bush nominated me to be a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in 2001. I was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

Q: What do you consider the achievements of the Bush presidents?

A: It's hard to describe them in a few sentences. At the White House, first among equals was President George (H.W.) Bush's decision to extend Most Favored Nation trading status to China and to receive the Dalai Lama. Then you have to give high marks on his management of the post-Cold War world. At the U.N., George W. Bush was the first president to increase foreign assistance by 50 percent since JFK, and the first head of state to bring human trafficking to the world's attention. I feel very privileged to have served two presidents, and through them the American people.

Q: In 1992, you returned to Cambodia as a member of the highest-level mission to that country since 1975. Describe what it was like to go back.

A: It was an emotional return. I had left 16 years before, on foot through the jungle. I returned as a presidential assistant in a U.S. government aircraft. I did not recognize anything. For a few hours, I was numb.

Q: Soldiers returning to their old battlefields sometimes say it is therapeutic to see them at peace. Has that been the case for you in returning to Cambodia?

A: It is therapeutic. I try to take my wife there once a year to reconnect and to show her new places. (Siv's wife, Martha, is Texan.) In November 2008, we went to Ratanakiri (a province) in the Northeast, a remote wild and mountainous region. I was there with my older sister 40 years ago. It brought back fond memories, as well as sad ones.

Q: What does Cambodia need to do at this point in its history?

A: Cambodia needs to address domestic issues such as injustice, crime and corruption. When these are resolved, it can be a politically mature nation.

Q: You travel often to American cities with large Cambodian populations. Why?

A: It's part of carrying my mother's wisdom of never giving up hope, as I describe in "Golden Bones," and encouraging others to continue to work hard, do great things, and lead a good life. I also try to connect all these communities so that they can compare and build upon their experiences.

Cambodia to Texas

Q: You now live in Texas, a far cry from life in Cambodia. How is that working for you?

A: I love Texas. While growing up in Cambodia, I enjoyed watching Western movies in French and was amazed at the "can-do" attitude of Texans. As we usually say, "I was not born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could." I also love California. Each time I am here, I say to myself, "I'll be back."

Last month, Siv was honored for his service by being given the George H.W. Bush Asian/Pacific American Heritage Association's Award. The award came with a letter from the former president, who wrote, in part: "When we think of you, we think about an outstanding leader and public servant; we think about honor, decency, and integrity....Well done, my friend and well deserved."

Tom Hennessy's column appears on the first and third Sundays of the month. He can be reached at 562-499-1270 or by e-mail at scribe17@mac.com.

HEAR HIS STORY

Former Ambassador Sichan Siv will speak from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Long Beach's Main Library, 101 Pacific Ave.

Admission: $30 benefiting the Long Beach Library Foundation. For reservations, call 562-628-2441.

The book: Barnes & Noble will sell copies of "Golden Bones." Read more!

Red Cross helping Cambodian family separated by war reconnect

Inside the Long Beach Red Cross offices, Cambodian refugee So Chhim,left, his daughter Bo Oum, and his grandson Brandon Oum, 3, get a first look at small photo of his sister and her aunt, So Sophan. The Red Cross is beginning a process that will help them reunite with So s sister, who became separated from her brother during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. (Stephen Carr/Staff Photographer)


By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer


LONG BEACH - So Chhim sat quietly with an international envelope and a passport-sized photograph of his sister clutched between his fists.

In a nearby seat, Mike Farrar, a volunteer case worker with the Red Cross' Tracing and Location services, explained the process for So to reconnect with his sister, So Sophan, in Cambodia.

The two have not seen each other since 1968 when So Chhim was a soldier in the Cambodian army. They have not had any contact since 1991 when they were able to communicate through an intermediary. When the go-between disappeared, so did any chance at communication.

In the 17 years since, So Chhim has gone about the business of making a living, raising his four children and seeing five grandchildren added to his family.

He buried the memories of his surviving sister along with those of the family he lost to the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for the deaths of upwards of two million Cambodians from execution, starvation and disease.

In August 2008, So Sophan reached out to the Red Cross, which offers a global free service to help reconnect families that have become separated by disaster, natural or man-made.

Red Cross officials say the service is offered whereever there is need.

After an exhaustive search, So Chhim was found through a brother-in-law at a liquor store in Norwalk.

Coincidentally, it was learned that So Chhim works at an airplane parts manufacturer just across the San Diego (405) Freeway from the Long Beach offices of the Red Cross.
It was joked that if the Red Cross had put his name on a balloon, he could have seen it from work and walked over.

Although So Chhim maintained a stoic exterior when Farrar first made contact, his daughter Bopha Oum said he later "teared" in his room.

"He tried to pass it off as something in his eye," Oum said.

As So Chhim talks about contacting his sister and as he recalls the harrowing circumstances of his escape from Cambodia and the slaughter of his family, there is no feigning a lack of emotion.

"It's very important to reconnect," he said through translation. "Now, even though physically we can't be close, emotionally and spiritually we can be connected."

So Chhim doesn't know if he will ever return to Cambodia. A military man trained in special forces, he was intensely sought by the Khmer Rouge.

Even though So Chhim and his wife, Chandy Ma, escaped to Thailand, the Khmer Rouge tried to have So Chhim turned over. They even sent family to try to cajole him.

So Chhim knew better. He says his name was posted on a kill list and that he was to be tortured for seven days before being put to death if caught.

He later learned that his three brothers and their entire families were executed by the Khmer Rouge. Only the younger sister, who was forced to marry a Khmer Rouge soldier, and an older brother, a simple farmer, survived.

Although So Chhim got in touch with his sister after the war, because of his notoriety he did not contact her directly for fear she might face reprisals. When the friend disappeared, so did their only connection.

On Friday, So Chhim drafted a simple letter to his sister.

Oum looks forward to learning more about the aunt she's only heard about.

"I'm very excited. I was in shock," she said. "I mean, we've grown up with the stories, but it never came to mind that we might contact her."


Farrar said he was thrilled to help reconnect the family.


"It's rewarding that we can do humanitarian work like this," Farrar says. "A lot of people think we only do blood work, but it's so much more."


In the case of the So family, it's about bring blood relatives together again.



greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291
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Cambodia's first Cannes buyer leaves town

By Patrick Frater


CANNES -- Sales companies seeking to make their first deals in Cambodia might have missed their chance this week as the country's first-ever buyer at the Cannes market left town Saturday, having snapped up a handful of titles.

"The market is very narrow and focused almost entirely on four genres -- action, horror, comedy and Korean romances," said Kmy Films founder Mariam Arthur, a U.S. film exec now residing in Cambodia.

Arthur picked up two Korean titles this week, including Prime Entertainment's 2006 romance "The Elephant on the Bike." The deals add to the seven movies she bought at Filmart, headed by "Parasomnia" from American World Pictures, "Last of the Living" from Quantum Releasing and others from Lonely Seal and Fries Films.

Cambodia, like neighboring Vietnam, is one of Asia's last undeveloped cinema markets.

"There are almost no 35mm projectors, there are no multiplexes at all, and the Hollywood majors do not distribute there, though this week I had meetings with Universal," Arthur said. "Piracy, with masters coming from Malaysia, is also a problem."

Most films are screened from 2K digital projectors. But distribution technology could skip a generation and further open up the market even if long-awaited multiplexes remain unbuilt. Phone companies are now streaming movies to hand-held devices as well. Read more!