Department of History, National University of Singapore

The Chinese in Kampuchea

Author(s): W. E. Willmott
Source: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia
(Mar., 1981), pp. 38-45
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, National University
of Singapore
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The Chinese in Kampuchea

W.E. WILLMOTT

Throughout the Nanyang and beyond, Chinese communities have been under
attack of one sort or another at various times. The anti-Chinese riots in Batavia in
1740 and in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 are but the first and last major examples of
violent attacks by indigenes on Chinese communities. More routinely, most coun
tries in the region have resorted to legal restrictions that "nationalize" various occu
pations and professions. Some of these countries have also required their resident
Chinese to clarify their citizenship, choosing between Chinese and local citizenship,
some even forcing them to adopt the citizenship of their country of residence, as
occurred inVietnam in 1978.
The history of Kampuchea (Cambodia) is remarkably free of such anti-Chinese
incidents, and its culture was almost free of anti-Chinese sentiment among the
Khmer, the majority population. This is all the more surprising in the light of the
fact that the Chinese rural traders were the major group exploiting the Khmer pea
sants, 85 per cent of the Kampuchean population. The disappearance of a Chinese
minority in recent years has resulted, therefore, not from any ethnic prejudice but
from the revolutionary policies directed against certain classes by the Communist
Party of Kampuchea (Pol Pot's regime) and from the Vietnamese invasion that
ended its rule in 1979.
This paper will summarize the position of the Chinese in Kampuchea prior to the
Vietnamese-American invasion of 1970, then outline events as they affected them
during the 1970s, ending with an estimation of the situation today. Readers will, of
course, recognize that many of the statements about the past decade will be based on
deduction and inference from scanty evidence, for there is very little direct informa
tion available on the Chinese between 1970 and 1978. Nevertheless, it seems worth
while to summarize what we do know at the moment so that future researchers can
fill in the details as they become available and correct any errors of analysis or pre
diction that I have made here.
The situation for the Chinese residents in Kampuchea was, in my opinion, about
the same at the beginning of 1970 as when I studied them in 1962/63.' As the Kam
puchean government moved towards the right after 1965, there may have been
growing advantages for the richer urban bourgeoisie, and probably exploitative rela
tionships in the countryside sharpened somewhat, but structurally the Chinese

1
See W.E. Willmott, The Chinese in Cambodia (Vancouver, 1967); idem, The Political Structure of
the Chinese Community in Cambodia, London School of Economics Monographs in Social Anthropo

logy, no. 42 (London, 1970).

38

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 The Chinese inKampuchea 39

remained in more or less the same position vis-?-vis the Khmer as they occupied in
1963. This position is summarized in Table 1.

TABLE 1 ECONOMIC CLASSES AMONG THE CHINESE IN CAMBODIA, 1962-63

Chinese All Cambodia Chinese as

Economic Class No. % No.
% % of total

Peasants &
fishermen ? ? ? 86
4,950,000
Working, 64,000 \5Vi 209,000 314
of which:
industrial 24,000 5 54,000 44 1
commercial 30,000 7 42,000 71 1
rural 2,000 Vi 102,000 2 2
service* 8,000 3 11,000 73?
Commercial, 359,000 84 379,000 6Vi 95
of which:
rural 173,000 41 183,000 953
urban 186,000 43 196,000 IVi 95
Professional &
government 2,000 Vi 202,000 V/i 1

Totals 425,000 100 5,740,000 100

7.4

*
Including restaurant workers.

It can be seen from Table 1 that Kampuchea in 1963 represented perhaps the most
clearcut example in Southeast Asia of a plural society; that is, ethnic and class divi
sions coincided to a considerable degree.2 About 90 per cent of the Chinese were
involved in commerce, and 92 per cent of those involved in commerce were Chinese.
Within the commercial sector, i>5 per cent of the merchants were Chinese. In con
trast, 86 per cent of the population were peasants and fishermen, and none of them
were Chinese.3 Similarly, at the other end of the hierarchy, among the 3/2 per cent

2
For a discussion of the important features of plural society as they apply to Kampuchea, see
Willmott, The Chinese in Cambodia, pp. 8-11. The reader should note that there are disagreements
between scholars concerning the definition of overseas Chinese. I have argued elsewhere that the only
definition that ismethodologically and sociologically sound is one that relates to participation in Chinese
associations (ibid., p. xii). Since some Chinese were assimilated into Khmer their
society throughout
history of residence, the community did not grow in size, despite natural once
increase, immigration
ceased in 1952 or 1953 (ibid., pp. llff.).
3
The Chinese vegetable farmers and pepper planters, numbering about 15,000, cannot be classified
as peasants because their specialized agricultural pursuits were aimed at profit rather than subsistence as I
will explain two paragraphs later. See also Willmott, op. cit., p. 51. A very small number of Hakka
Chinese rice peasants lived in Takeo Province (ibid., p. 48).

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40 W.E. Will mot t

of the population who were in the professions and government, only one per cent
were Chinese.
Only in the working classes was there much mixture of Chinese and Khmer, and
they constituted only 4 per cent of the total population. About one-third of the
workers were Chinese almost entirely urban and primarily commercial. A little
under half of the one per cent that could be called industrial working class was
Chinese.
In almost all Southeast Asian countries, very few Chinese were living in rural
areas. Kampuchea was the exception to this rule, for over two fifths (41 per cent) of
the Chinese lived outside the cities and towns.-Some (about 9 per cent of them)
were market gardeners and pepper planters, but these can be better classified as
engaged in commerce, unlike the Khmer peasants, who grew rice for subsistence
rather than for profit. Most rural Chinese were not agricultural, however, for the
vast majority were merchants, buying rice from the Khmer peasants and selling them
commodities from the cities as well as lending them money at high interest rates.
Jean Delvert, the French geographer who published a major study of the Kampu
chean peasantry in 1961, concluded that about ninety-five per cent of the peasants
owned the land they tilled, and rent therefore constituted only a minor form of
exploitation.4 Most of them were in debt to rural money-lenders, however, who were
usually the same people that bought their rice harvest. These merchants were almost
all Chinese, as I have already mentioned. The major form of rural exploitation was
therefore across ethnic lines.
Unfortunately, the analysis of Kampuchea rural society made by the Kampuchean
marxists (e.g., Khieu Samphan) completely ignored ethnicity, basing itself entirely
on class divisions.5 The ethnic separation of exploiter from exploited is significant
because it inhibits the emergence of any concept of injustice.6 Since the Chinese were
foreign to Khmer society, they could be treated as an aspect of the environment
analogous to the weather: late, not the greed of men, determined the amount of

4
Jean Delvert, Le Paysan Cambodgien (Paris, 1961), esp. p. 501, where he states that "in the most
densely populated regions, 90 to 100% of the peasants are owners". Summing up his discussion of

peasant society, he states on p. 533: "With some important nuances which contribute towards regional
diversification (large properties in Battambang, Prey-Veng and Svayrieng, small peasants in the process
of emancipation in Takfo and Kandal), Cambodian peasant society is a democracy of small owner-tillers,
under the commercial domination of Chinese and at a low standard of living" (my translation).
5 as it applied to Vietnamese
The Vietnamese Communist Party also ignored ethnicity society until
1978, except for the establishment of an association of patriotic Hoa (the Vietnamese term for residents
of Chinese extraction) as part of the united front against French colonialism. Only when the Sino-Viet
namese conflict became severe and large numbers of residents left southern Vietnam by boat in 1978 did

they mention the fact that many of the businessmen who benefited from the American presence and later

disrupted the socialist economy of the region were Hoa. See Those Who Leave (Hanoi, 1979), p. 25:
"The militaristic and bureaucratic regime in Saigon which was born of the war and grew rich as the war
proceeded, was closely tied to the Hoa comprador bourgeoisie." The lack of conflict before 1978 is corro
borated by the refugees themselves: "Virtually all the northern Hoa interviewed in Hong Kong described
relations between the two ethnic groups prior to 1978 as 'normal', 'good', or 'warm' ", according to The
Boat People, An "Age" Investigation with Bruce Grant (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 94.
6 occurs and it is accepted as part of the normal order of things unless it
Exploitation in all societies,
becomes defined as unjust. For a discussion of how peasants perceive exploitation in Southeast Asia, see
James C. Scott, "Exploitations in Rural Class Relations: A Victim's Perspective", SEADAG Papers on
Problems of Development in Southeast Asia 75-1 (New York, 1975).

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The Chinese inKampuchea 41

rainfall and the rate of interest. As in other plural societies, ethnic differences in
Kampuchea therefore mitigated class struggle and thereby diminished the revolu
tionary potential of the Khmer peasant. In my opinion, this is one of the two funda
mental errors of analysis made by the Communist Party of Kampuchea, an error
that later cost both the party and the people dearly.7
Within their class positions, the Chinese developed a community structure of
some considerable complexity. In brief summary, this structure was made up of
manifold voluntary associations, particularly in Phnom-Penh itself. Associations
based on clanship, provenance, education, welfare, sports, culture, and religion
were linked together through interlocking boards of directors, at the apex of which
the Chinese Hospital Board undertook coordinating responsibilities. The entire
Chinese community of Phnom-Penh could be mobilized quickly through the opera
tion of this associational structure, as I saw inApril 1963, when President Liu Shao
qi visited Phnom-Penh on five days' notice. In the smaller cities and towns, com
parable organization was provided through school boards and other associations
that enabled a small number of leaders to direct community activities efficiently
from the top.
At the pinnacle of Kampuchean society stood a small urban elite that dominated
the capitalist economy and the government bureaucracy. This elite, apart from the
royal family itself, was predominantly Sino-Khmer (of mixed descent), and many of
them maintained active participation in the Chinese community. Several of the
leaders of the Communist Party of Kampuchea were in the same category, including
Hu Nim, who maintained relations with the Chinese community until he joined the
maquis in 1967.8
In 1970, Kampuchean society was shocked into an all-out civil war by the coup
d'etat that deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk and the consequent Vietnamese
invasion to support the new Lon Nol government. Communist-led guerrilla bands
had coalesced into an army of about two thousand in 1969 and were fighting govern
ment troops in several provinces already; the move against the prince gave them a
sudden and enormous increase in popular support. Then Vietnamese troops, invited
into Kampuchea from Saigon by Lon Nol, moved through the Southeastern pro
vinces, pillaging and destroying villages as far west as Kompong Speu. The actions
of these Vietnamese troops strengthened peasant support for the maquisards.
As in neighbouring Vietnam, the war was waged primarily in the countryside, and
American carpet-bombing forced the rural population to choose between whole
heartedly joining the guerrillas or fleeing to the cities. It has been estimated that
there were over two million refugees in Phnom-Penh by 1975,9 perhaps another half

7
The other major error in analysis was the identification of some 40% of the rural population as
"poor peasants". This error led the communists to assume that their popular support during the civil war
was a mandate for revolutionary change of the rural social structure, for they thought that "poor
peasants" would support collectivisation, as in China, because they had suffered under the old society. I
shall elaborate this point in a subsequent paper.
8
It is significant that Hu Nim's "confession", extracted under torture before he was executed on 6
July 1977, makes no mention of the Chinese community (Chantou Boua and Ben Kiernan, "Bureaucracy
of Death", New Statesman 99, no. 2563 (2 May 1980):669-76). This reinforces my argument that the
Kampuchean marxists ignored ethnicity in their analysis and policy.
9
George G. Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (New York and
London, 1976), pT42.

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 42 W.E. Willmott

million divided among the other major cities (Battambang, Kompong Cham,
Kompong Chhnang, Kompong 'Thorn, Kampot). I believe it altogether likely that
most of the rural Chinese merchants were among these refugees. There are two
reasons for this belief. One is that the livelihood of rural merchants would have dis
appeared as agriculture was disrupted by bombs, fighting, and the rural programme
of the Khmers Rouges. Being unable to support themselves economically, their
obvious move would have been to flee to the cities, where many of them had rela
tives and where all of them could call on associational links for welfare. The other
reason was the fact that their class position as petit-bourgeois businessmen running
small family enterprises would have inclined them towards the government that
opposed the communists, even though China was supporting the guerrillas. For
these reasons, I estimate that almost the entire Chinese population of Kampuchea
was urban by the beginning of 1975.
There are no studies that I know of on the Chinese community in the Khmer
Republic (1970-75). It is safe to assume, I believe, that the structure of the com
munity in Phnom-Penh continued to function much as before, with a small number
of leaders able to make their influence felt through a large number of associations.
The Sino-Khmer elite that dominated commerce in the Kingdom of Cambodia
(1953-70) continued to exercise their economic power as the economy became
increasingly dependent on American aid, since government agencies and private
companies were intimately related by ties of kinship and interdependence. Corrup
tion was rampant,10 and one may therefore speculate that the Chinese community
structure took ori more economic functions as well as political, giving its leaders
even greater power. The thousands of newcomers from the countryside would have
been dependent on relatives and associations for their survival, and could therefore
have served as a reserve army of manpower for any political struggle within the city.
''
Itwas a time of great suffering by all accounts.
If we have little information on the Chinese in the Khmer Republic, we have even
less on the few Chinese in the regions under the control of the Royal Government of
National Unity of Kampuchea (GRUNK), as the communist-led guerrilla forces
became known once Sihanouk had joined them as head of state. We do know that
by 1973 GRUNK had begun to transform agriculture from family farming to co
operatives,12 and this programme completely eliminated all vestiges of commerce
from their areas of control. Without an identity as a class, and isolated from the
urban centres of organization, it seems likely that the remaining rural Chinese would
have lost their ethnic identity into the mass of peasants by assimilation into the
Khmer culture. After all, this process of assimilation had been going on for decades,
as evidenced by the peasants in Battambang Province who had originally been
3
Chinese but had been completely assimilated by the 1960s. The revolutionary pro

10
Ibid., pp. 30-33.
11
Because of later events, Western commentators seem to forget that people were starving in Phnom
Penh in 1974 and that disease was epidemic, owing to the crowded conditions of the refugees, the corrup
tion of the government, and the inhumanity of the massive American bombing in 1973. See "Cambodia:
An Assessment of Humanitarian Needs", US Congressional Record, 20 Mar. 1975, p. S4619.
12
Hildebrand and Porter, op. cit., p. 71. See also "The Class Nature of Agricultural Cooperatives",
News from Kampuchea (Australia) 2, no. 2 (Nov.-Dec. 1978): 12-14.
13
Willmott, Chinese in Cambodia, p. 48.

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The Chinese inKampuchea 43

gramme of GRUNK would have greatly accelerated this process by positive incentive
and negative sanction during the years of the maquis.
There were something like 400,000 Chinese in the Kampuchean cities at the
beginning of 1975 if my assumptions are correct. Immediately following the capture
of Phnom-Penh by the GRUNK forces on 17 April 1975, they were forcibly rusti
cated along with the rest of the urban population. The several accounts of this pro
cess differ considerably in their estimation of the chaos, suffering, and slaughter
that accompanied this exodus,14 but there is no evidence that suggests the Chinese
were singled out for special treatment: they were simply included with the rest of the
urbanit?s, of whom they formed a significant fraction.
When the GRUNK administration took over a town, it immediately disrupted the
local market, either by promulgating a drastic reduction of all prices by 90 per cent
or by physically destroying the market stalls.15 This eliminated retail trade over
night, and the traders (almost all Chinese) became indistinguishable from the unpro
pertied urban classes. Some time later, money was eliminated altogether, which
ruled out any possibility of privately conducted commerce. One can assume, of
course, that such measures produced a black market in various commodities, but the
administration's Draconian methods of social control must have kept them to a
minimum. Except for peasants, the possibility of surviving became negligible in
Kampuchea in 1975, unless one was in the army or government, where Sino-Kampu
cheans would have discarded their Chineseness completely, since there was neither
advantage in keeping it nor opportunity to exercise it. Speaking Chinese opened one
to suspicion of middle-class origins, at times a capital offence in itself in some
regions of Kampuchea.
There is some argument among Western observers over whether or not the
Chinese were subject to discriminatory policies during the four-year period of
Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79).I61 have found no evidence to indicate that they
were. Certainly, the plural society existing before 1970 exposed them to persecution
as middle-class merchants. Furthermore, the fact that three-fifths of them were
urban and a far higher proportion of them were educated would indicate that they
suffered a larger proportion of casualties than did the Khmer majority. Neverthe
less, it was not ethnicity but class that counted against them under the regime of the
Communist Party of Kampuchea. Party policy statements ignored ethnicity com
pletely, although their policies at the local level clearly discriminated against Viet

14
The most widely known account is provided in Ponchaud's Cambodia Year Zero
Francois
(London, 1978). For a very different account, see Jerome and Jocelyne Steinbach, Phnom-Penh Lib?r?:
Cambodge de l'autre sourire (Paris, 1976). The Steinbachs, who were also in Phnom-Penh on 17 Apr.
1975, describe an essentially organized and orderly exodus with a minimum of violence. Ponchaud recalls
on 18Apr. 1975 a "Khmer cadre explaining that
hearing Rouge
"
'the enemies of the Khmer people are the
Chinese merchants living in our country' (op. cit., p. 169), the single reference I have found to the
ethnicity of the urban bourgeoisie.
15
Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua, '"Interview with ethnic Chinese refugee from Kampuchea, Mrs
Tae Hui Lang" (typescript), p. 1. See also Ponchaud, op. cit., p. 49.
16
See Ponchaud's comment in note 14 above. On the same page he states that, "according to the
refugees, the Chinese merchants have been more abdominably treated than the rest of the urban depor
tees". Ben Kiernan disagrees (private communication), as do others. Perhaps the fact that many of the
refugees in Thailand were Chinese themselves accounts for this singular statement. See Le Monde, 7 Sept.
1977, p. 1.

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44 W.E. Willmott

??mese residents. Perhaps because of this, the Chinese suffered no discrimination

qua Chinese,
There is evidence from the overseas Chinese themselves that this opinion is
correct. By the beginning of 1978, political activity was growing among Chinese
communities in France, Thailand, and elsewhere, on behalf of the Chinese still in
Kampuchea. A letter written by a ''Pro-tern Committee for the Relief of Overseas
Chinese in Kampuchea" was submitted on 6 February 1978 to the Chinese ambassa
dor in Paris for transmission to Beijing. It described their plight as follows:
When the Khmer Rouge "liberated" Phnom-Penh, they immediately forced all the
people into the jungle by using the most barbarous revolutionary measures. The people
were left to lead a miserable life. Among them, our 600,000 overseas Chinese were brutally
persecuted, families being destroyed. A large number of us here have experienced these
sufferings and have fled at great risk. We have at our fingertips the details o? the inhuman
crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge....7

Apart from the exaggeration of the number of overseas Chinese in Kampuchea, this
description accurately summarizes the suffering*of all urbanit?s in Kampuchea, not
just the Chinese. The letter goes on to appeal for aid for the Kampuchean Chinese
on the basis of China's announced policy towards the overseas Chinese.
Another statement, issued on 18April 1978 by Chinese in refugee camps in Thai
land as an open letter to Liao Ch'eng-chih, Chairman of the Overseas Chinese
Affairs Commission in Beijing, points out that many of the refugees who fled to
Thailand and elsewhere pretended to be Khmer because they thought they would not
receive U.N. aid if they were identified as Chinese.18 Throughout the years 1975-78,
large numbers of Chinese left Kampuchea, tens of thousands to Vietnam (according
to the Vietnamese themselves),19 where they expected at least to avoid the miseries of
rustication. A few of these joined the "boat people" in 1978.20 Most of the Chinese
refugees from Kampuchea walked into Thailand, however, and according to them,
individual Chinese residents in Kampuchea had appealed on several occasions to
experts visiting from the People's Republic of China, but "without exception were
given an unsympathetic rebuke" by the visitors.21

An account by a Kampuchean Chinese refugee of her life during the four years of
the Pol Pot regime corroborates the view that the persecution suffered by the
Chinese was identical to that suffered by other Kampucheans, that there was no

11 Pao Y?eh K'an, no. 149 (May

"Letter of Appeal: Kampuchean Chinese Call for Justice", Ming
1978), p. 106. I am indebted to Dr. Leo Suryadinata for translating this letter for me. The letter states that
a meeting was held on 25 Dec. 1977 in Paris to set up the Pro-tem Committee for the relief of Overseas
Chinese in Kampuchea, which published an appeal in the European edition of Hsin Pao (6 Jan. 1978, p.

1). The Committee calls on the Chinese Government in Beijing to assure the life and safety of overseas
Chinese in Kampuchea, to help overseas Chinese elsewhere to contact their relatives in Kampuchea, and
to aid those who wished to leave the country to be reunited with their relatives. Gross exaggeration of
numbers is not unusual in overseas Chinese publications.
18 Pao Yueh K'en, loc. cit., pp. 107-6 (sic). This
"An Open Letter to Mr Liao Ch'eng Chih" Ming
letter was also translated by Dr. Leo Suryadinata.
19
Those Who Leave, p. 30.
20 in a refugee camp in Hong Kong.
In Aug. 1978, 1met several refugees from Kampuchea They had
left Kampuchea in 1975, but found life in Ho Chi Minh City and the possibility of further rustication

intolerable, so left by boat for Hong Kong.

:! 106.
"An Open Letter to Mr Liao Ch'eng Chih", p.

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The Chinese inKampuchea 45

special discrimination against the Chinese in Democratic Kampuchea. She and her
husband were rusticated, suffered disease and hunger just like the Khmer peasants
among whom they lived, and they trekked the jungle together for months after the
Vietnamese invasion in January 1979. Only when she arrived in Vietnamese-con
trolled Battambang in April did she experience policies that distinguished between
Chinese and Khmer. According to her account, there was considerable anti-Chinese
feeling among the Khmer by that time because they identified local Chinese residents
with the support China was giving to the Pol Pot regime. In these circumstances, the
Vietnamese authorities called a mass meeting, pointed out that the Chinese residents
had suffered along with everyone else under the Khmer Rouge, and offered to trans
port anyone wishing to fight Chinese to the Vietnam-China border.22 By this time,
the Vietnamese were apparently encouraging Chinese to leave Kampuchea, gathering
some twenty thousand of them in Battambang in March 1979 and urging them
across the border into Thailand.23
Until the Chinese gathered in Battambang at the beginning of 1979, there seems to
have been no community organization among them. Some refugees arriving in Thai
land were aided by the Chinese association in Aranyaprathet,24 the border town
where most of them crossed from Poipet, Kampuchea. There is no indication in the
refugee accounts of organization within Kampuchea aiding them in their flight.
Once the Vietnamese-sponsored government was installed in Phnom-Penh and other
cities, people returned to these cities, and commerce began again on a small scale. It
seems probable that this commerce is being conducted by those who had previously
been merchants, almost all of them Chinese. However, the anti-Chinese stance of

the Vietnamese government makes it highly unlikely that the new urbanit?s (or re
urbanites) would be willing to identify themselves as Chinese or to reassemble the
associational structure that gave life to the Chinese community in pre-revolutionary
Phnom-Penh. It seems therefore, to assert that today no one identifies them
safe,
selves as Chinese in Kampuchea. Over time, as the regime becomes more liberal,
some Chinese may emerge, but in the short run, only a
community organization
drastic of such as the return of a non-marxist, capitalist regime,
change government,
would permit a Chinese community to reappear. At the time o? writing, that seems a
very remote possibility indeed.

:}
"Interview with ethnic Chinese refugee from Kampuchea", p. 12. Her father also appealed to a
visiting delegation of Chinese experts but to no avail.
2-
"Chinese Fleeing Cambodia Pour over Thai Border", Washington Post, 18 May 1979, p. A32.
"The refugees recently sent a letter to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok saying the Vietnamese-backed
government 'used the same anti-Chinese policy which the Vietnamese used against the overseas Chinese
left in Cambodia" (ibid.). See also Ben Kiernan, "Vietnam and the Governments and People of
Kampuchea", Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 11, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1979):23. Kiernan also refers to
the letter addressed by the overseas Chinese to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok, and he states that the
Vietnamese officers in Battambang sent thousands of trucks to the Thai border loaded with Chinese
refugees, from whom they extracted payment in gold (ibid.).
24
"Chinese Fleeing Cambodia", Washington Post, 18May 1979.

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