When Hun Sen handed Cambodia’s premiership to his eldest son, Hun Manet, in August 2023, many diplomats and regional observers noticed the succession as a possibility for change. The rigorously stage-managed handover fuelled hopes {that a} new era of leaders, headed by a chief minister educated at West Level, New York College and the College of Bristol, may reopen Cambodia’s political area after many years of authoritarian rule.
Writing at the time, I argued that this optimism was misplaced, not as a result of the management was altering, however as a result of the political system was not. Western policymakers had been wanting to consider {that a} dynastic switch may create room to recalibrate relations with Phnom Penh. However they didn’t recognise how deeply the Cambodian Folks’s Celebration’s survival relied on preserving the very establishments that had compelled opposition figures corresponding to me into exile. Hun Sen’s sweeping crackdowns on the opposition, impartial media and civil society weren’t aberrations, however expressions of a governing mannequin he had constructed and the ruling elite continued to maintain: one based mostly on patronage, coercion and the elimination of political competitors. So long as that mannequin remained intact, there was little motive to count on a brand new chief to rule any otherwise.
Three years on, this evaluation has been borne out. Hun Manet has not ruled because the liberal reformer many hoped he would. As an alternative, he has preserved the foundations of his father’s rule whereas making its repressive equipment much less seen and extra institutionally subtle. Though violence has change into much less conspicuous, the regime more and more depends on elite patronage, authorized repression, digital surveillance and tighter management over communications. The result’s a quieter however arguably extra resilient authoritarian state.
This technocratic improve is probably most seen within the regime’s remedy of civil society. In July 2024, 5 of Mom Nature’s younger leaders – Ly Chandaravuth, Lengthy Kunthea, Phuon Keoraksmey, Thun Ratha and Yim Leanghy – had been sentenced to between six and eight years in jail on trumped-up prices together with “conspiring towards the state” and “insulting the king”. Their actual offence was exposing environmental destruction and corruption, together with unlawful logging and sand-mining operations that straight enrich the ruling elite. At this time, they continue to be in overcrowded provincial prisons throughout the nation, successfully remoted from their households and authorized counsel, with their appeals delayed indefinitely.
What stays of Cambodia’s political opposition has confronted comparable persecution. The Candlelight Celebration and the Nation Energy Celebration have confronted routine authorized harassment and administrative obstruction, whereas their leaders and supporters have been subjected to arbitrary arrests and politically motivated prosecutions, making significant electoral competitors unattainable. Rong Chhun, a veteran labour chief and senior Nation Energy Celebration adviser, was sentenced to 4 years in jail in 2025. Though the Supreme Court docket later suspended the rest of his sentence, it upheld his conviction and barred him from voting or collaborating in politics for 5 years.
Unbiased journalism has fared no higher. Reporters investigating corruption, land seizures, unlawful logging and the cyber-scam operations which have proliferated throughout Cambodia function underneath fixed stress. In late 2024, environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng was fatally shot whereas investigating unlawful logging inside a protected wildlife sanctuary. That very same 12 months, Mech Dara, who helped expose the nation’s function as a worldwide hub for on-line fraud and human trafficking, was arrested on incitement prices extensively considered as politically motivated. Though Dara was later launched on bail, his detention despatched a transparent warning to journalists investigating the regime’s alleged hyperlinks to an business that now generates billions of {dollars} yearly by defrauding victims throughout Asia, Europe and North America.
Taken collectively, these developments present that the consolidation of Hun Manet’s rule has introduced not a political opening, however only a minor refinement of Cambodia’s authoritarian mannequin. But many Western governments proceed to pursue diplomatic engagement and supply financial incentives within the hope that sustained dialogue will persuade Cambodia to rebalance its international coverage and progressively reopen political area. This expectation rests on a basic misunderstanding. It treats Cambodia’s rising alignment with China as a foreign-policy desire that may be moderated by engagement, when it has in truth change into central to the ruling social gathering’s technique for preserving energy and shielding itself from Western stress over democracy and human rights. In contrast to Western companions, Beijing supplies funding, diplomatic backing and safety cooperation with out demanding democratic reform, giving the ruling social gathering higher room to resist exterior stress.
The depth of this alignment is seen in each Cambodia’s financial and safety partnerships with Beijing. The Funan Techo Canal, backed by a $1.2bn financing settlement with Chinese language companions, has change into emblematic of China’s financial footprint in Cambodia. Chinese language buyers accounted for 54 % of the nation’s permitted funding capital in 2025. The Chinese language-funded enlargement and reopening of Ream Naval Base level to the identical development. Though Phnom Penh insists the ability stays underneath Cambodian sovereignty, Chinese language financing and building have fuelled persistent issues that Beijing is securing a long-term strategic foothold on the Gulf of Thailand. Regardless of the base’s eventual navy significance, it underscores how deeply China is now embedded in Cambodia’s safety structure.
This actuality ought to immediate a change in Western coverage. For too lengthy, Western governments have prioritised diplomatic entry over leverage, assuming that technical cooperation and sustained dialogue would progressively encourage political reform and imposing few penalties when that assumption proved false. Future cooperation ought to as an alternative be explicitly tied to measurable democratic progress. Judicial capacity-building programmes that lend legitimacy to compromised courts must be suspended. Focused sanctions must be expanded to incorporate officers, navy commanders and enterprise elites implicated in severe human rights abuses and Cambodia’s cybercrime financial system. Western participation in high-level boards hosted by Cambodia, together with the Francophonie Summit in November, must be made contingent on the discharge of political prisoners, credible motion to dismantle rip-off compounds, an finish to politically motivated prosecutions and stronger protections for impartial media.
For years, the worldwide neighborhood has mistaken generational succession for political reform. Hun Manet’s Cambodia demonstrates that authoritarian methods can modernise with out liberalising. Solely by recognising that actuality can Western governments cease reinforcing the establishments which have closed off democratic competitors and start serving to to create the circumstances for Cambodia’s democratic renewal.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
