Hailing Datang's success, Cambodia wants more China energy investment

The Stung Atay Hydropower Project is a two-stage power plant with a total investment of $255 million. The first involves the installation on the dam toe of two sets of ten megawatt hydro turbines and generator units, while the second stage focuses on the lower dam's powerhouse, with four more units and another one hundred megawatt capacity. To build such a concrete-and-steel mammoth deep in the rainforests, only 22 kilometers away from Cambodia's second-highest peak, was an uphill task.

The Phnom Penh-Battambang 230kV Power Transmission Project was no less arduous as the power grid winds almost 300 kilometers across the mountain ranges, connecting the capital city Phnom Penh with the four provinces of Kandal, Kampong Chhnang, Pursat and Battambang, bringing light to local residents and driving economic development along its entire route.

Since both projects operated under so-called BOT contracts, their build-operate-transfer framework met Cambodia's pressing need for capital and technology at an early stage of development, helping cultivate 132 local power technology and management personnel and create more than 10,000 jobs.

As of May 2018, the Stung Atay power plant had supplied Cambodia with nearly 1.2 billion kWh of power and nearly one third of the country's power transmission last year was carried by the Phnom Penh-Battambang power grid. The country's electricity imports rate was reduced to 22 percent in 2016, and is still declining.

Infrastructure cooperation between China and Cambodia is riding on a high tide as the BRI enters its fifth year. Cambodia's biggest hydropower dam, the Lower Sesan II, which was built by China Huaneng Group, began operations last November. Construction of a new airport in Siem Reap began this spring while China Road and Bridge Corp is ready to start a highway project from Phnom Penh to the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone as soon as this month.

As China's reform and opening-up policy reaches its 40th anniversary, a growing legion of Chinese State-owned enterprises, under the strategic leadership of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, China's top regulator for State assets, are venturing into bigger markets by going oversea, adding momentum to the BRI.

In Cambodia, PM Hun Sen's government has updated its Rectangular Strategy to Phase IV, prioritizing human resources, road, water and power sectors and priming the Southeast Asian Kingdom for even closer cooperation with China's BRI.

"We encourage Chinese investors to continue to start projects in Cambodia because the country has a lot of untapped potential in many different sectors," Hun Sen said at the expo investment forum.