Pivot to the South: Cambodia in an era of contested development and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Loading...
Citations
Altmetric:
Altmetric::
Download
Associated Records
File Licence
Editors
Date
2025
Source Title
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Melbourne Authors
Affiliation
Architecture, Building and Planning
Document Type
PhD thesis
Subject Code
Citation
Access Status
This item is embargoed and will be available on 2028-01-23. This item is currently available to University of Melbourne staff and students only, login required.
DOI
Access URL
Open Access URL
Open Access at PMC
Linked Resource URL
NHMRC Grant Code
ARC Grant Code
Description
© 2025 Hannah Esther Fitzroy McNicol
Abstract
The past two decades have witnessed a rivalry, coined as the ‘new’ or Second Cold War (SCW), emerge between China and the United States over technology, intellectual property rights, trade, and geopolitics. Underpinning this rivalry has also been China’s increasing internationalisation, manifest in policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and emerging throughout low-income countries in the global South. The BRI has not only underscored China’s alternative international development model, underpinned by state-capitalism and infrastructure-led development, but has also been understood by scholars as a challenge to the dominant post-1945 development model and North/South axis of global development. This doctoral thesis contributes to current scholarship on China’s increasing internationalisation. In particular, this thesis examines China’s increasing role as an international development actor through development policy-making in Cambodia under the BRI.
To do this, this thesis is made up of three discrete articles: Article 1 evaluates conceptual debates concerning the contemporary existence, parameters or relationship between the Chinese and post-1945 dominant development model. Article 2 analyses national Development policy-making in Cambodia through South-South Cooperation and Triangular Development Cooperation between Cambodia, China and the United Nations. And Article 3 presents a grounded analysis of China’s influence on processes of development, namely the territorialisation of Sihanoukville at regional and city scales.
The thesis argues that we are in an age of contested development whereby China’s international development modalities, particularly state-led connective infrastructure, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), industrialisation and a focus on export and trade, are influencing development policy-making in Cambodia and more broadly. China’s international development modalities and processes of development, particularly the integration of overseas territories into global value chains via infrastructure, are increasingly understood as an appropriate development model and South-South exchange by Cambodian policy-makers who are facing significant development financing and infrastructure gaps. Moreover, China’s increasing material, ontological and ideational power as an alternative development actor is not merely confined to Sino-Khmer relations but is also influencing dominant institutions and actors, such as the UN, within a development landscape defined by evolving power and political economy dynamics. Importantly, however, these processes of China’s internationalisation must not be understood as solely facilitated through a bilateral or homogenous “China strategy”, or naturalised conceptions of South-South empowerment. Instead, they are underpinned by much more diverse technologies, discrete agendas, and diffuse constellations of Chinese and Cambodian actors, with complex and varying development outcomes.
Notes
Terms of Use
Keywords
International development, Global development, China, Cambodia, Aid, United Nations, South-South Cooperation, South-East Asia