ReportingCities, industrial areas, military bases… the kingdom is experiencing a construction frenzy with the “new silk roads”.
It’s a wide, unmarked, dual four-lane road that cuts through the rainforest for 80 kilometres, before swerving to a white-sand coast where you can make out a golf course and a European-style neighborhood. This is Dara Sakor – “starry ocean”, in Khmer. This 380 square kilometer site carved out of a national park that descends from the Cardamom Mountains to the Gulf of Thailand was granted in 2008, in the form of a ninety-nine-year concession, to a private Chinese company. , Union Development Group (UDG), a real estate group in Tianjin founded in 1995.
Past the checkpoint, we discover the Longbay casino, whose red ribbons at the entrance recall the very recent inauguration, on November 18, 2021, with its adjoining duty free. A few kilometers to the south, another golf course and a “French style” hotel. A laterite runway leads, 20 kilometers further, to the future Dara Sakor international airport, whose terminal is in the process of being finished. “Two billion dollars [1,8 milliard d’euros] have already been invested here since 2008. In thirty years, 3 million people will live in Dara Sakor”, says Jiang Lu, the young Chinese who runs a luxurious showroom on site for the Coastal City Development Group, a subsidiary of UDG.
On a gigantic model, we recognize, in the center, Dara Sakor City and its “business district”; to the east, a logistics zone as well as an “international trade city” and a container terminal; and further west, a “city of the future” dedicated to high technologies and a petal-shaped housing estate on a body of water. To all these projects are added those of a port for ships of 100,000 tons and a “city of health”, with a hospital and nursing homes. “Dara Sakor stretches over 90 kilometers of coastline, a fifth of the entire Cambodian coast [435 kilomètres] ! », proudly explains Jiang Lu.
“We can’t wait”
Chinese interest in southern Cambodia is not without economic relevance: it is a question of relieving the hypertrophied sites of Phnom Penh, the capital, and the tourist hub of Siem Reap, where the temple of Angkor Wat is located. . With Dara Sakor, one would believe to attend the genesis of Singapore or Hong Kong, these creations of the British Empire in the XIXand century, which have become powerful commercial and financial metropolises. “Without China, we couldn’t grow so fast. We can’t wait. The West constantly speaks of human rights, of democracy, but we drive on Chinese roads! », reacts, in Phnom Penh, Kin Phea, Director General of the Institute of International Relations of the Royal Academy of Cambodia.
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