Hun Manet is refining Cambodia’s authoritarian model

When Hun Sen handed Cambodia’s premiership to his eldest son, Hun Manet, in August 2023, many diplomats and regional observers saw the succession as an opportunity for change. The carefully stage-managed handover fuelled hopes that a new generation of leaders, headed by a prime minister educated at West Point, New York University and the University of Bristol, might reopen Cambodia’s political space after decades of authoritarian rule.

Writing at the time, I argued that this optimism was misplaced, not because the leadership was changing, but because the political system was not. Western policymakers were eager to believe that a dynastic transfer might create room to recalibrate relations with Phnom Penh. But they failed to recognise how deeply the Cambodian People’s Party’s survival depended on preserving the very institutions that had forced opposition figures such as me into exile. Hun Sen’s sweeping crackdowns on the opposition, independent media and civil society were not aberrations, but expressions of a governing model he had built and the ruling elite continued to sustain: one based on patronage, coercion and the elimination of political competition. As long as that model remained intact, there was little reason to expect a new leader to rule any differently.

Three years on, this assessment has been borne out. Hun Manet has not governed as the liberal reformer many hoped he would. Instead, he has preserved the foundations of his father’s rule while making its repressive machinery less visible and more institutionally sophisticated. Although violence has become less conspicuous, the regime increasingly relies on elite patronage, legal repression, digital surveillance and tighter control over communications. The result is a quieter but arguably more resilient authoritarian state.

This technocratic upgrade is perhaps most visible in the regime’s treatment of civil society. In July 2024, five of Mother Nature’s young leaders – Ly Chandaravuth, Long Kunthea, Phuon Keoraksmey, Thun Ratha and Yim Leanghy – were sentenced to between six and eight years in prison on trumped-up charges including “conspiring against the state” and “insulting the king”. Their real offence was exposing environmental destruction and corruption, including illegal logging and sand-mining operations that directly enrich the ruling elite. Today, they remain in overcrowded provincial prisons across the country, effectively isolated from their families and legal counsel, with their appeals delayed indefinitely.

What remains of Cambodia’s political opposition has faced similar persecution. The Candlelight Party and the Nation Power Party have faced routine legal harassment and administrative obstruction, while their leaders and supporters have been subjected to arbitrary arrests and politically motivated prosecutions, making meaningful electoral competition impossible. Rong Chhun, a veteran labour leader and senior Nation Power Party adviser, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2025. Although the Supreme Court later suspended the remainder of his sentence, it upheld his conviction and barred him from voting or participating in politics for five years.

Independent journalism has fared no better. Reporters investigating corruption, land seizures, illegal logging and the cyber-scam operations that have proliferated across Cambodia operate under constant pressure. In late 2024, environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng was fatally shot while investigating illegal logging inside a protected wildlife sanctuary. That same year, Mech Dara, who helped expose the country’s role as a global hub for online fraud and human trafficking, was arrested on incitement charges widely viewed as politically motivated. Although Dara was later released on bail, his detention sent a clear warning to journalists investigating the regime’s alleged links to an industry that now generates billions of dollars annually by defrauding victims across Asia, Europe and North America.

Taken together, these developments show that the consolidation of Hun Manet’s rule has brought not a political opening, but just a minor refinement of Cambodia’s authoritarian model. Yet many Western governments continue to pursue diplomatic engagement and offer economic incentives in the hope that sustained dialogue will persuade Cambodia to rebalance its foreign policy and gradually reopen political space. This expectation rests on a fundamental misunderstanding. It treats Cambodia’s growing alignment with China as a foreign-policy preference that can be moderated through engagement, when it has in fact become central to the ruling party’s strategy for preserving power and shielding itself from Western pressure over democracy and human rights. Unlike Western partners, Beijing provides investment, diplomatic backing and security cooperation without demanding democratic reform, giving the ruling party greater room to withstand external pressure.

The depth of this alignment is visible in both Cambodia’s economic and security partnerships with Beijing. The Funan Techo Canal, backed by a $1.2bn financing agreement with Chinese partners, has become emblematic of China’s economic footprint in Cambodia. Chinese investors accounted for 54 percent of the country’s approved investment capital in 2025. The Chinese-funded expansion and reopening of Ream Naval Base point to the same trend. Although Phnom Penh insists the facility remains under Cambodian sovereignty, Chinese financing and construction have fuelled persistent concerns that Beijing is securing a long-term strategic foothold on the Gulf of Thailand. Whatever the base’s eventual military significance, it underscores how deeply China is now embedded in Cambodia’s security architecture.

This reality should prompt a change in Western policy. For too long, Western governments have prioritised diplomatic access over leverage, assuming that technical cooperation and sustained dialogue would gradually encourage political reform and imposing few consequences when that assumption proved false. Future cooperation should instead be explicitly tied to measurable democratic progress. Judicial capacity-building programmes that lend legitimacy to compromised courts should be suspended. Targeted sanctions should be expanded to include officials, military commanders and business elites implicated in serious human rights abuses and Cambodia’s cybercrime economy. Western participation in high-level forums hosted by Cambodia, including the Francophonie Summit in November, should be made contingent on the release of political prisoners, credible action to dismantle scam compounds, an end to politically motivated prosecutions and stronger protections for independent media.

For years, the international community has mistaken generational succession for political reform. Hun Manet’s Cambodia demonstrates that authoritarian systems can modernise without liberalising. Only by recognising that reality can Western governments stop reinforcing the institutions that have closed off democratic competition and begin helping to create the conditions for Cambodia’s democratic renewal.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.