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In this context, the regime’s closest partners tend to be investors
who are either Chinese or Chinese origin. They not only control the
country’s key economic sectors, but they also dominate the economic
zones and the casinos. The three Sihanoukville zones, for example, are
entirely in the hands of Chinese nationals, while a Cambodian of
Chinese origin controls Manhattan, in Bavet. Research has shown that
Chinese groups tend to be dominated by “Godfather” figures, with
family relays in major Southeast Asian and South China ports that are
able to link trade circuits–more or less legally–to decision centers in
Hong Kong or Taiwan. Very influential in the Mekong region, Chinese
32
networks are completely uninterested in developing regional value
chains, leading them to invest exclusively in assembly plants with low
wages and unskilled, mostly women laborers or women involved in
trafficking contraband or prostitution.
33

These economic patterns find considerable support at the level of
ASEAN, due to a regional policy that focuses exclusively on the growth
of trade cooperation, with no accompanying social policies. Because it
concentrates entirely on developing internal markets and international
trade and because it avoids any hint of interference in member states’
internal affairs due to its strict policy of non-interference, ASEAN’s
hands are tied. The organization’s overtly apolitical character ultimately
ensures that it provides a secure environment in which local
dictatorships are able to prosper. Indeed, as Jones argues, “ASEAN was
34
founded to help defend the prevailing social order” that Acharya
attributes to a form of “patrimonial regionalism” and that is associated
with under-institutionalized organizations operating under a system of

32 Joe Studwell, Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and
Southeast Asia, New York, Grove Press, 2008
33 Martin Stuart-Fox, 2009 “Laos: The Chinese Connection,” Southeast Asian
Affairs, n° 1, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009, pp. 141–169, Tan, 2011
34 Lee Jones, 2010, “ASEAN’S unchanged Melody ? The theory and practice of
“non interference” in Southeast Asia’”, The Pacific Review, 23 : 4, p. 485

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