Chinese exodus leaves Cambodia boomtown with 500 ’ghost buildings’

SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia -- An exodus of Chinese real estate companies has left this Cambodian seaside resort littered with hundreds of half-finished projects.

The concrete skeleton of one of these buildings stands on a piece of land owned by 51-year-old elementary school teacher Pan Sombo.

"This was completely unimaginable," Pan Sombo said, looking up at a high-rise with no prospect for completion.

A Chinese investor first came forward with a proposal to construct a 10-story apartment building in 2019, just when Cambodia was experiencing an unprecedented real estate boom. The investor wanted to use the teacher's roughly 750-sq. meter vacant lot.

With promises the building would be completed in 2021 and generate around 20 million riel ($5,000) a month in land usage fees -- 10 times the teacher's income -- Pan Sombo agreed to the project.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the investor returned to China, saying he couldn't come back to Cambodia. That was the last the teacher heard from the investor. Pan Sombo turned to the local authorities to start the process of dissolving the contract.

Sihanoukville has no shortage of such ghost buildings. According to the city government, there are roughly 360 unfinished buildings and about 170 others that are completed but remain empty.

With an enviable location on the Gulf of Thailand coast, Sihanoukville became a boomtown in mid-2010s on wave of Chinese money. Cambodia's pursuit of economic growth found a way forward in China's cross-border Belt and Road Initiative.

Cambodian developer Prince Real Estate Group began a string of construction projects, including a luxury hotel and a shopping mall. Sihanoukville was being called the second Macao as dozens of casinos cropped up.

Then the pandemic hit. Last year, Cambodia drew only about 550,000 Chinese tourists, down 77% from 2019, according to the Ministry of Tourism. Just 15,754 passengers arrived at Sihanoukville international airport last year, a 98% decline from 2019.

This is in stark contrast to the dramatic tourism recovery seen in Siem Reap, known for the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Money has been slow to return to Sihanoukville after the pandemic due to the Cambodian government's clampdown on casinos and China's real estate slump. It will take $1.1 billion in additional investment to complete the unfinished buildings, according to a government estimate.

In January, Prime Minister Hun Manet announced tax breaks and preferential treatment for permit applications to try to encourage investors to rescue Sihanoukville's ghost buildings.

But with the global economy expected to slow, those measures will struggle to be effective, said Ky Sereyvath, the director-general of the Institute of China Studies at the Royal Academy of Cambodia.

Chinese investors have poured money into neighboring Asian countries, leaving them more exposed to China's economy. Cambodia is not the only example. Chinese real estate giant Country Garden Holdings' debt crisis has spilled over to Malaysia, where the fate of a $100 billion mixed-use development in Johor is in limbo.

Cambodia has a heavy dependence on Chinese money. In 2022, the Council for Development of Cambodia approved about $1.9 billion worth of foreign investments. Roughly 90% came from China.

"It'd be hard to fill the hole left by China with investments from other countries," said the manager at a Cambodian construction firm.

Long Dimanche, vice governor of Preah Sihanouk province, said Sihanoukville needs to diversify both its industry and investor countries to have a more dynamic economy. Hun Manet's government has shown an openness to attracting foreign investment.

One possibility could be Japan. Japanese companies have a smaller presence in Cambodia than in larger Thailand or Vietnam, but Japan has provided support for the port of Sihanoukville -- Cambodia's only deep-water port -- for about three decades.