Cambodia 20260126
Mekong Memo Cambodia Weekly: Business, politics, finance, trade & legal news.
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Headlines:
Uncle Sam Parks at Beijing’s Pier
Seoul Brings Home the Scammers
Kingpin’s Fall Leaves Hundreds Stranded
New Route Cuts VN, TH Out of the Loop
Two Wheels Good, Trade Deals Better
Buddha Replaces Vishnu in Border Provocation
Plastic Cleanup Gets a Deadline
Uncle Sam Parks at Beijing’s Pier
Washington is testing whether Phnom Penh’s “open to all friendly nations” rhetoric holds water. The USS Cincinnati pulled into Ream Naval Base on Friday, the first American warship to dock at the Chinese-renovated facility since Beijing finished its facelift of the Gulf of Thailand site. The Independence-class littoral combat ship and its 100-odd crew is expected to stick around through January 28 for the usual diplomatic song and dance of ship tours, exchanges, and a sit-down between Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Paparo and Defense Minister Tea Seiha. Whether this welcome mat stays out for American vessels is an open question. This is just the second US naval call in eight years, following the USS Savannah’s stop at Sihanoukville’s civilian port last December.
Read more: Darien Times (arrival details), China Global South (Ream analysis), Barron's (Indo-Pacific context), Al Arabiya (video coverage)
Seoul Brings Home the Scammers
A chartered Korean Air flight touched down Friday carrying 73 nationals plucked from scam compounds in the largest single-country repatriation of criminal suspects South Korea has ever pulled off. The haul includes a couple who allegedly used deepfake technology to run romance scams netting $8.2 million from more than 100 victims, who then went under the knife (how on-brand of them) to dodge capture.
Read more: KDH News (repatriation details), SCMP (video coverage), Khmer Times (deportation figures), The Standard(investigation scope), Asahi Shimbun (regional context)
Kingpin’s Fall Leaves Hundreds Stranded
The scam empire seems to be crumbling faster than refugees can be processed. At least 1,440 Indonesian nationals fled or were freed from scam compounds between January 16-20 after the arrest and extradition to China of alleged kingpin Chen Zhi. Hundreds are now camping outside their embassy in Phnom Penh. They seem to have been freed from digital slavery but are now stranded without passports or cash for a flight home. The returnees will have an uncertain homecoming that captures the legal limbo of trafficking victims. Indonesia has no bilateral labor agreement with Cambodia, making them technically illegal workers who will need to be screened on arrival at Soekarno-Hatta Airport to try and figure out whether they are victims or accomplices.
Read more: CamboJA News (stranded survivors), Jakarta Globe (illegal worker status)
New Route Cuts VN, TH Out of the Loop
Chinese buyers just got a shortcut thanks to a transit and transshipment agreement signed yesterday lets them purchase Cambodian agricultural products and ship them through Laos directly to China, skipping Vietnam and Thailand. The deal will resolve Chinese companies’ complaints that routing exports through those countries involves complicated, time-consuming, and expensive procedures; they had asked Ministry of Public Works and Transportation to find alternatives.
Read more: Wood Central
Two Wheels Good, Trade Deals Better
Bicycle exports were recorded at $609 million in 2025, an increase of almost half again over the previous year’s $427 million haul. The boom now makes bicycles one of the top manufactured export products. Other hot items are garments, footwear, travel goods, and car tires. RCEP continues to deliver for member countries as well, ag exports climbed on increases in shipments of rice, rubber, cassava, mangoes, bananas, and other produce shipped to China under the deal, which gives preferential tariffs on farm products. The wins are showing success in a move away from pure garment assembly toward better manufacturing and agriculture chops, but both sectors are still largely reliant on preferential trade terms that could shift with little warning.
Read more: The Star (agricultural exports), Cambodianess (bicycle figures)
Buddha Replaces Vishnu in Border Provocation
Religious one-upmanship is ON. Thailand’s army erected a Buddha statue on Wednesday at the disputed An Ma/An Ses border site where it destroyed a Vishnu statue last month. Phnom Penh condemned the handiwork as “inconsistent with de-escalation measures.”
Read more: Channel News Asia (statue installation), BlogTO (Canada travel advisory), The Onion (Yes, we know…)
Plastic Cleanup Gets a Deadline
The Environment Ministry this week set a 2040 target to cut plastic pollution by almost 80% by 2040. Minister Eang Sophalleth proclaimed 2026 as a “year of action with tangible results.” The plan puts a lens on an outsized plastic problem as Cambodia produced 546,000 tonnes of plastic waste at last report - that’s 33 kilos per person every year.
Read more: Asia News Network
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