Paul Marks, “China’s Cambodia Strategy”, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn 2000)
This part of the article by Paul Marks written in 2000 caught my eye. I have reproduced the text here along with the citation contained therein:
Hun Sen's personal interest in reviving Cambodia's ethnic Chinese community likely grew from a combination of economic and personal factors. Economically, Hun Sen was convinced by 1990 that only capitalism could bring development to Cambodia.[20] Personally, Hun Sen and his wife both grew up in villages along the Mekong River in an area of Kampong Cham Province rich with ethnic Cham and Cambodian Chinese. It may be more than coincidence, then, that the first Chinese-language school to open in Cambodia in 21 years, in November 1991 in Memot, was in a remote part of Kampong Cham Province where Hun Sen's brother was governor and where Hun Sen had been based as an insurgent years before.
[20] Hun Sen received a Ph.D. from a Vietnamese university for a dissertation that included a discussion of using elements of capitalism within a socialist system. Political realities would have prohibited him from referring to Deng Xiaoping or the Chinese experience in this area, so he chose Lenin's New Economic Policy of 1921 as the theoretical basis for his ideas. Most of the dissertation is reproduced in a book by him only available, to my knowledge, in Chinese. See Xing Heping, "Why Did Hun Sen Write Cambodia: 130 Years? --Prime Minister Hun Sen Responds to his Translator," HSRB, 26 March 1999. In this interview Hun Sen states that he used the Ph.D. as a political tool to persuade more conservative members of his party to move toward capitalism. Also see "Singapore Company Presents Prime Minister Hun Sen with the Chinese Edition of Cambodia: 130 Years," HSRB, 15 March 1999.
You can access the paper here. Enjoy reading!
Anirudh Bhati