Barefoot Diplomats

 

Phnom Penh bombed by the KR, 1975

January 1979. The Vietnamese are closing in on Phnom Penh. A messenger from the Khmer Rouge leadership arrives at the Chinese embassy: the KR army has collapsed, there’s nothing between the Vietnamese and the capital. Prepare to evacuate within four hours. Papers are burnt, food prepared, and at midnight a convoy of diplomats, not only Chinese but the Yugoslavs, Burmese and others (in truth not that many) leaves the city headed for Battambang. Once there a new message from the KR government: the threat has been overstated, please return to Phnom Penh. Most of the embassies decline the invitation, but recognising that his duty is to represent Beijing to his hosts, the ambassador and his staff return to PP  immediately. The date is January 4.

The situation in Phnom Penh continues to worsen. Artillery can be heard in the distance and Vietnamese reconnaissance aircraft are overhead. On January 6 a Chinese Boeing 707 arrives. There are 180 people at the airport pleading for seats, among them Prince Sihanouk, Princess Monique, and some two dozen members of the royal household. The aircraft can safely carry only 150.

Now read on.

That’s just the first five pages of this document, The Collapse of the Pol Pot Regime, January-April 1979. It’s the story of the Chinese embassy as they retreated with the KR into the Cardamom Mountains in the face of PARVN (Peoples Army of the Republic of Vietnam), and was written, I gather, as part of an internal history of the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The  Chinese tried to stay with Pol Pot and keep on being an embassy, but in April they crossed the border into Thailand. It’s an extraordinary story – you’ve heard of barefoot doctors, but here’s barefoot diplomats.

Nice blogspot here with photos of Phnom Penh when it fell to the PARVN – this is what the Chinese would have seen as they left the city. The photos used here are from another blog, Travis J Thompson’s Ten Pics a Day – unfortunately I don’t know who took the actual pics, especially that one at the top.

Vietnamese troops enter Phnom Penh, 7 January 1979

 

The Playground

ABOUT

Kindle single, $1.99. (Kindle Singles are short pieces of non-fiction – journalism, really, the kind that used to appear in the better newspapers way back and then went out of fashion for some reason).

The author is Terrence McCoy – “Terrence M. McCoy is the Gordon Grey Fellow of International Journalism at Columbia University. He contributes frequently to the Atlantic, Washington Monthly, and Salon, and is currently a staff writer for Village Voice Media at the New Times in Miami. He served in the United States Peace Corps in Cambodia between 2009 and 2011.” And speaks Khmer. See also a good You Tube video here. And while we’re not quite on the subject, I dare you to read this and not feel afraid.

BOOK DESCRIPTION (From Amazon)

We’ve heard of China’s buying sprees. That it’s plowed billions of dollars into some of the poorest nations in the world. But the story we don’t know is what this money means for the people there. In Cambodia, the cost has been devastating. More than 700,000 people have lost their homes — others their lives — while China buys the former killing fields for resorts, hotels, and exclusive residences. And as this country of genocide descends into another era of chaos and violence, some whisper it’s the second coming of Pol Pot. 
But one woman has fought back. In this fast-paced narrative, Terrence McCoy follows Vanny Tep’s quest to save Cambodia from China’s money. Leading a small, fiery group of women, Vanny has sparked a grassroots movement from one of the most daunting slums in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Her battles are against the Cambodian government, Chinese companies, and a male-dominated society. Powerful and profound, “The Playground” takes us across Cambodia to discover the true meaning of a global Chinatown.

REVIEW

Let me say up front that I found the author’s style a bit irritating at first. It’s self-consciously Fine Writing in that way they teach in journalism schools – “Cicadas called rae buzzed like thousands of pencil sharpeners…” Wouldn’t “cicadas buzzed like pencil sharpeners” have done?

But McCoy has a good story to tell. In the first few pages he’s off to visit a remote coastal settlement in Koh Kong called, informally, China Town. Why China Town? The road – the dirt track – to China Town is guarded by the Cambodian army: why are the soldiers here instead of pointing their AKs at the Thais or the Vietnamese on the borders? And why is McCoy’s moto driver passing him off as a French tourist?

There’s a beach. There are Chinese engineers. There are five star hotels under construction, golf courses and villas and tourists in the offing, the smell of money in the air. And poverty and land-grabbing and the threat of violence. Terminal violence, the kind that leaves no traces.

My advice to Mr McCoy, at this point, is to read more Hemingway. When you have a story that sells itself, you don’t have to spice it up with adjectives.

There’s a longish section dealing with the general picture of the Chinese presence in Southeast Asia, and it comes down to this: China outspends America and asks no questions and attaches no strings. Even Australia, though it hosts US bases, knows that China is its largest trading partner. And though everyone can see this elephant, nobody knows quite how big it is or what it plans to do next. And while China attaches no conditions to its investment in terms of human rights, there are very definite expectations of what the recipients will do when required.

The hero of this story is Vanny Tep, once a fashion model, now a political activist. I won’t tell any more, as The Playground is pretty short anyway.

VERDICT

Highly recommended, despite the chasing after style. This is one of the major social evils of Cambodia today, and the more light it sees, the better.