Cambodia is the smallest of the three Francophone communities in Southeast Asia, the others being found in Vietnam and Laos. In 2014, French was spoken by 423,000 people as a foreign language, which is 3% of the country’s population and by only 873 people as a mother tongue according to the country’s 2008 census.

1877

French protectorate of Cambodia

China has financed around 70 per cent of Cambodia’s much-needed roads and bridges — by 2017, Cambodia had received US$4.2 billion in Chinese grants and loans. China also promised to deliver 4 billion RMB (US$588 million) in aid between 2019–2021.

China has cultivated strong ties with Cambodia, gaining access to its sea ports that can allow China to exploit oil reserves in the Gulf of Tonkin. During the visit, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen described China as Cambodia’s “most trustworthy friend.”

Cambodia has sometimes been considered a client state of China. Laos has also been considered a Chinese client state, although this is disputed.

Cambodia–Vietnam relations take place in the form of bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The countries have shared a land border for the last 1,000 years and share more recent historical links through being part of the French colonial empire.

Cambodian Civil War

On 25 December 1978, 150,000 Vietnamese troops invaded Democratic Kampuchea and overran the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army in just two weeks, thereby ending the excesses of Pol Pot’s government, which had been responsible for the deaths of almost a quarter of all Cambodians between 1975 and December 1978 (the Cambodian …