China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence

Abstract

China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, by Sophie Richardson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. xii + 332 pp. US$50.00/£34.50 (hardcover). Sophie Richardson argues in her study of Sino-Cambodian relations that the Five Principles of peaceful coexistence, articulated at the dawn of the new Communist era in the 1950s, are not just rhetoric and are grounded in a view of the world that has been remarkably consistent. The Five Principles (of peaceful co-existence, mutual respect of territory and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in the affairs of others, and mutual equality and benefit) were rooted, as she explains, in China's traumatic experience of colonialism and invasion. They managed to balance the need for preserving sovereign integrity while managing external threats from more powerful nations when the People's Republic was being formed. In that sense, they gave China a unique and cohesive foreign relations strategy, one that defended its own interests while allowing it to build international links with countries that were similarly poor, developing and recovering from a history of economic, military and political aggression from developed countries. This book is the result of Richardson's PhD thesis, but it benefits from her extensive use of Chinese-language primary source materials and, equally importantly, a range of interviews with Chinese and Cambodian officials and academics who had firsthand experience of the history that she records. China's relations with Cambodia from the 1950s onwards were highly problematic. As Richardson notes, there was no compelling reason, initially, that China, led by Communist rulers, should have cultivated good relations with what was then a conservative monarchy. Of course, the US was becoming an increasingly important player in the region, and that did play some part in China's strategic minking, but the Chinese elite developed links with almost all the main players in Cambodian society, reaching above and beyond mere pragmatic, self-interested bonds. As part of this overall strategy of engagement, in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a leader of one of the parties more ideologically close to the Chinese Communists, Pol Pot, visited China. Scholars like David Chandler have argued that this exposure was to give the Khmer Rouge the inspiration for their own extreme form of internal revolution, which, once they had gained victory over the Lon NoI regime in 1975, was to lead to three tragic, catastrophic years. Somehow, Beijing had managed to balance good relations with both Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge, prevailing on the King to return to Phnom Penh in 1975. Behind their public support for the regime, which was consistent with the Five Principles' emphasis on non-interference, no less a figure than Zhou Enlai, then suffering from cancer, warned the Khmer Rouge not to go too fast (a warning evidently not heeded). Richardson explains later that this public support for the Khmer Rouge was to be hugely damaging to China, laying it open to accusations it was the main funder and international supporter of one of the most murderous regimes in history. …