Controversial Chinese projects in Cambodia bow to public pressure

Two Chinese state-owned companies held back from their investment projects in Cambodia under public pressure, a sign China is paying more heed to international opinion.

China Southern Power Grid (CSG) has pulled out of controversial dam projects in the country after local villagers protested that the dams would ruin their fisheries.

And a luxury real estate project by the other Chinese state-owned firm, Inner Mongolia Erdos Hongjun Investment, has only resumed after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed to set aside land to relocate residents evicted to make way for the project.

'There has been a growing sensitivity [by Chinese state-owned firms] to the way China is perceived across the world,' said Professor Shaun Breslin, associate fellow of the Asia Programme at British NGO Chatham House. 'There is an understanding that to be in it for the long term and to make access [to overseas projects] sustainable, sometimes short term gains might have to be foregone.'

CSG, a state-owned company established in 2002 to transmit and distribute electrical power in China's southern provinces, has quit all its potential power projects in Cambodia, said the company's spokesman Rambo Niu Feng.

The power utility had conducted feasibility studies for at least six proposed dams in Cambodia with a total power output of more than 3,300 megawatts, according to 3S Rivers Protection Network (3SPN), a Cambodian civil society organisation that works to support hydropower-dam-affected communities living along the Sesan, Srepok and Sekong rivers in northeastern Cambodia.