Cambodia–Vietnam relations

Cambodian-Vietnamese relations

Cambodia	Vietnam

Bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam were for long strained due to territorial issues, mutual ethnic minorities, and historical attempts by Vietnam to change or dominate Cambodia's government. Both nations have since taken steps to establish friendly ties.

Country comparison

	Cambodia	Vietnam
Population	14,478,000	87,840,000
Area	181,035  km2	331,210  km2
Population Density	81.8/km2 (211.8/sq mi)	259/km2 (668/sq mi)
Capital	Phnom Penh	Hanoi
Largest City	Phnom Penh – 2,301,725	Ho Chi Minh City – 7,396,446
Government	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy	Marxist–Leninist single-party state
Official language	Khmer	Vietnamese
Main religions	96.4% Buddhism, 2.1% Islam, 1.3% Christianity, 0.3% Other	81% Unaffiliated, 7.9% Buddhism, 6.6% Christianity, 1.7% Hòa Hảo, 0.9% Cao Đài
Ethnic groups	90% Khmer, 5% Vietnamese, 1% Chinese, 4% Other	Ethnic Groups of Vietnam
GDP (PPP)	$36.010 billion, $2,560 per capita	$320.874 billion, $3,549 per capita
GDP (nominal)	$14.204 billion, $1,245 per capita	$135.411 billion, $1,498 per capita
Expatriate populations	2,200,000 Vietnamese born people living in Cambodia	1,300,000 Cambodian born people living in Vietnam
Military expenditures	$445 million	$2.48 billion

History

Early history

See also: Dark ages of Cambodia

Both the Vietnamese and Khmer languages are distant cousins which split off from the Mon–Khmer family over a thousand years ago. However, Vietnamese society was heavily Sinicized and Khmer society Indianized, and the countries did not share a common border. Much of Vietnam's southward territorial expansion (or mo mang bo coi, "expand beyond the boundaries") from the 7th century came at the expense of the indigenous Khmer Krom people. After gaining territory from Champa, the Vietnamese court began an official settlemnt campaign from 1075, which was accelerated by conflict between the Ly and Tran dynasties. Today, Cambodia shares a 1,137 kilometres long border with Vietnam in the east and southeast.

In the 16th and 17th centuries especially, Kinh people (ethnic Vietnamese) flooded into the southern Mekong Delta, displacing the Khmers and then ruling their land. In 1658, a military campaign by Nguyen Phuoc Yen opened up more Khmer land for Vietnamese settlement; in 1674, a campaign by Nguyen Phuoc Lam consolidated Vietnamese control over the Prey Nokor (modern Ho Chi Minh City) region; in 1732, a Vietnamese triumvirate conquered the Mesa (modern Mỹ Tho) and Longhor (modern Vinh Long) provinces; and in 1754 and 1755 Nguyen Thien Chinh's and Nguyen Cu Trinh's armies had reached the southern Mekong. After the Manchu conquest of China (1618-1683), a group of Ming loyalist refugees led by Mac Cuu (1655-1735) helped the Nguyen lords settle Ha Tien, wresting it away from the Khmers.

By 1775, certain Khmer kings had ceded the areas of Praah-Trapeng (Tra Vinh), Srok Trang (Sóc Trăng), Meat Chruk (An Giang) and other areas without bloodshed. In 1834, the Vietnamese emperor Minh Mang (1820-1841), who considered the Khmers "stupid", "ignorant", and "lazy", sent his general Trương Minh Giảng to "civilize" the "barbarian" Cambodians. Truong reported back: "we have decided that Cambodian officials only know how to bribe and be bribed. Offices are sold. Nobody carries out orders; everyone works for his own account". The Cambodians were placed under direct Vietnamese rule, and a policy of cultural Vietnamization ("Nhat Thi Dong Nhan") forced Khmers to wear their hair in buns like the Vietnamese, to change their names to Vietnamese names, and to speak the Vietnamese language. State-encouraged Vietnamese settlement in Phnom Penh ("Tran Tay") accelerated, and Vietnamese occupying forces spirited away native Cambodian leaders like Ang Mey to inland Vietnam, in order to weaken Khmer resistance. However, Khmer uprisings in southern Vietnam from 1840 to 1845 made this policy of direct rule inconvenient and expensive for the Vietnamese court, which opted to keep Cambodia as a tributary state after the death of Minh Mang.

After the Siamese-Vietnamese Wars, first in the 1830s and then a decade later, Cambodia became a vassal state under Vietnam and Siam, with the country becoming culturally and administratively Vietnamized. In 1863, the Thai-raised King Norodom of Cambodia (reign 1860-1904) signed a teaty with the French Empire, granting them mineral exploration rights if they would secure the country against Thai and Vietnamese attack. However, during the colonial rule of French Indochina, which would later come to include Vietnam, French authorities imported Vietnamese laborers to Cambodia, where the growing minority came to dominate businesses and water resources in the country. In the First Indochina War for independence, some Cambodians, including King Norodom Sihanouk, fought against Viet Minh forces because they feared Vietnamese colonial domination.

Vietnam War

After independence, the Kingdom of Cambodia maintained diplomatic relations with both North Vietnam and South Vietnam. However, the Viet Cong used Cambodia as a base to fight the Vietnam War, and the Southern Ngo Dinh Diem administration pursued political opponents even into Cambodian territory. In the Bangkok Plot, the Diem administration attempted to overthrow Sinahouk's government and replace it with a right-wing pro-South regime. The United States Army also bombed Cambodian territory in pursuit of Vietnamese communists, resulting in up to 150,000 Cambodian deaths. Despite attempts to negotiate with "whichever [Vietnamese state] will turn out to be most reasonable in... [demarcating] our common frontiers", Sinahouk failed to get a hearing from a Vietnamese government about latent territorial disputes in Cochinchina and especially Koh Tral (Phu Quoc) island. The king himself was accused of accommodating Vietnamese military bases in Cambodia, and widespread anti-Vietnamese riots culminated in the Cambodian coup of 1970. Referring mainly to Viet Cong operating in the border region, the new Cambodian president Lon Nol declared: "According to Buddhist religion, there must be a war. A war against the Vietnamese Communists who consider religion their enemy". However, Nol also attempted to expel the 40,000 South Vietnamese troops whose presence in Cambodia outnumbered Cambodia's own military forces. The Khmer Rouge opposition came to power in Cambodia in 1975, shortly before the Fall of Saigon to Northern forces.

Cambodian-Vietnamese War

In 1979, as a result of the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge and occupied Cambodia, establishing the puppet People's Republic of Kampuchea. Vietnamese state media published propaganda that justified the occupation with reference to Vietnamese history. For example, one book stated: "The Vietnamese have had cultural ties to the people of Kampuchea since at least the Dong Son era [850 B.C. to A.D. 280]. These ties have never stopped growing throughout history. [Therefore], the immigration of Kampucheans into Southern Vietnam and the settlement of Vietnamese in Kampuchea are natural manifestations of these ties."

Vietnamese occupying soldiers and journalists also discovered evidence of the Khmer Rouge's abuses, such as Tuol Sleng prison facility, and widely publicized them. The United States initially suspected the Vietnamese of falsifying this evidence, and warned them not to continue their army's march to Thailand, which they in fact did, in hot pursuit of the Khmer Rouge resistance.

Recent events

In 2005, Vietnam and Cambodia signed a supplementary treaty to the original 1985 Treaty on Delimitation of National Boundaries, which Cambodia has deemed unacceptable. As a result, Vietnam has made several claims to Cambodian land based on the treaty that raised allegations of Vietnamese encroachment. In a statement made by a government minister of the former French Indochina colonial administration, Cambodia would have to give up two of its villages to Vietnam in return for keeping two villages that was deemed Cambodian territory according to the 1985 treaty, Thlok Trach and Anlung Chrey. It is not known which two villages Cambodia would have to give up. To resolve the dispute, in 2011, the Cambodian government announced it would speed up the demarcation process with Vietnam. On June 24, 2012, Vietnam and Cambodia celebrated the demarcation of the last marker on their shared border, marker 314. Prime Ministers Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam and Hun Sen of Cambodia personally attended the celebration to unveil the new marker and reaffirmed the two countries' cooperation and friendship.

Bilateral relations and commerce

Since the 1990s, relations between both nations have begun to improve. Both Vietnam and Cambodia are members of multilateral regional organizations such as ASEAN and the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. Both nations have opened and developed cross-border trade and sought to relax visa regulations to that end. Both governments have set official targets of increasing bilateral trade by 27% to USD 2.3 billion by 2010 and to USD 6.5 billion by 2015. Viet Nam exported USD 1.2 billion worth of goods to Cambodia in 2007. While Cambodia is only the 16th largest importer of Vietnamese goods, Vietnam is Cambodia's third-largest export market.

Diplomatic missions

Of Vietnam

• Phnom Penh (Embassy)
• Battambang (Consulate)
• Sihanoukville (Consulate)

Of Cambodia

• Hanoi (Embassy)
• Ho Chi Minh City (Consulate)

See also

• Degar refugees in Cambodia
• Cambodia–Vietnam Friendship Monument