A few kilometers downstream from the river port of Phnom Penh, the Mekong spreads over the plain a wide silver ribbon swollen by the monsoon rains. There, near a narrow canal that runs south, a huge banner is plastered over a grain factory. “We support the Funan Techo channel”, he proclaims, in rounded Khmer script. At the beginning of October, only an existing work was briefly expanded. It is this place that the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Manet, chose to inaugurate, on August 5, the construction works of the future canal, described as “living monument symbolizing the greatness of the ancient Funan Empire” – Chinese name of the first Khmer kingdom, which would have existed between the IAhem and the VIImy century.
The date of the inauguration, which became a holiday, was 72my birthday of Hun Sen, the strongman of Cambodia, who, if he resigned from the position of Prime Minister to his son in the summer of 2023, after having held it for thirty-eight years, he retains close control of the affairs of this kingdom of almost 17 million inhabitants. “Techo” is one of his honorifics, meaning “great commander.”
The Funan Techo, with an announced cost of 1.7 billion dollars (1.6 billion euros), 180 kilometers long and up to 100 meters wide, should ultimately allow the passage of transporters with a maximum load of 3,000 tons up to Sihanoukville, the capital of the country. Only deep water port. So Cambodia can “breathe through your own nose”as the official media insist, that is, it will no longer depend on the Vietnamese ports of the Mekong Delta for the transport of its goods.
Rarely has a simple canal project, however ambitious, sparked so much speculation in Southeast Asia. The suspected involvement of a Chinese state-owned company in the construction and management of this project raises concerns about Beijing’s strategic ambitions in the Mekong region. With a length of 4,350 kilometers, the river rises in the Tibetan peaks of the Himalayas in China under the name of Lancang, runs through Burma and Thailand, crosses Laos for its entire length and crosses Cambodia from north to south, before reaching to Vietnam, where it fades into the lethargy of a delta that distributes its brown waters over the green of the rice fields. Five neighboring countries over which China has sought to increase its influence for more than a decade.
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