The rapid change in Sihanoukville illustrates the risks of that approach, both for Hun Sen and for Beijing. China’s move into this city, at remarkable speed and scale, has fostered resentment among Cambodians toward new arrivals who, locals complain, flaunt laws and treat long-time residents with contempt. The changes here illustrate the costs to China—tangible and intangible—of its hefty outward expansion, both through its Belt and Road initiative, and with the huge numbers of Chinese who are moving to fast-developing places such as Sihanoukville to capitalize.

Many Cambodians I spoke with voiced concerns about Sihanoukville turning into a de facto Chinese colony, and the consensus was that they were being treated like second-class citizens in their own homeland. At one restaurant, when I told a Cambodian employee that I was visiting from Taiwan, he referenced the opposition in other locales where Beijing has sought to impose its will. “Taiwan says no to China, Hong Kong says no to China,” he told me, “but Hun Sen only says yes to China.”

There are roughly as many Chinese as Cambodians in downtown Sihanoukville, perhaps more, and this sudden influx has sent the cost of living skyward. Small, basic rooms that had a few years earlier rented for $25 a month now rent for four times as much in a country where the monthly minimum wage in the garment sector, a key export industry, is just $190. Vegetables, once cheap, are now prohibitively expensive—one roadside restaurant I stopped at charged $8 for a small plate of stir-fried broccoli. Yet few Cambodians appear to have benefited from this economic boom. Native residents have been more or less relegated to the lower rung of the city’s service economy, employed as tuk-tuk drivers, parking attendants, and restaurant and hotel staff. Small-building construction tends to use Cambodian labor, but the colossal casino-and-resort developments being built in parts of Sihanoukville like Zhongguo Cheng (“China Town”) primarily use labor imported from China’s largely rural southwestern provinces. These regions, especially Sichuan and Yunnan, are well represented among the Chinese restaurants found throughout the city, whereas Cambodian restaurants are almost impossible to find. And the English-speaking Cambodians who served the tourist industry here in years past have found themselves incapable of communicating with most of the Chinese who have arrived in their city.

The Chinese push into Sihanoukville has not only changed the economic landscape of the city, but the actual landscape, too. Cranes and scaffolding are ubiquitous, hills and forests have been bulldozed, and a lake that was once vital for drainage during heavy rains has been filled, causing flooding. Most of the city’s road network has been heavily damaged by the constant traffic of heavy trucks and cement mixers. Even the omnipresent SUVs driven by the more moneyed Chinese here must carefully navigate potholes that resemble lunar craters, often filled with water. With development far outstripping wastewater treatment and other vital infrastructure, piles of trash are everywhere, and sewage is often piped out to the city’s three miles of beachfront, which are now covered in garbage as well. China’s development of Sihanoukville has not only proven unsightly, but deadly: In June, a seven-story building that was under construction on a Chinese-owned site collapsed, killing 28 workers sleeping inside. Five Chinese nationals were charged over the high-profile tragedy.