13. The Chinese New Year

It is not a Holiday in Cambodia, but most of the shops are closed, many students did not go to school, so do many civil servants: they show up and leave. RFA broadcasts about the increase of Chinese investments in Cambodia. Also an article about the history of the Chinese migration that dated since early in the Khmer History.
     It seems that the New Cambodia is easely receptive to foreign influence. Many people in the market place called me Ah Cong and Ah Hea (?), as with my dark skin, I have nothing of a chinese descent. In this age of globalization with the opening of everything, the Khmer people may loose their roots and their culture... with that, may be their homeland. Cambodia may continue to exist but torn down from East and West, North and South as in the old time in a undeclared neo Cold War.
   The modern political relationship with Cambodia emerged since the mid 1950s with the trip of the late Premier Chou En Lai. And later the Khmer Rouge embraced the Chinese Cultural Revolution making their Angkar the most extreme organization blamed for the Killing Fields responsible for the death of over 1.5 plus million of people.
   January 7, 1979 the Khmer Rouge were kick out of power by the Vietnamese that opened a gate for Vietnamese colonization. The Chinese launched a brief punitive action against the Vietnamese at their Southern borders. After that Cambodia was left to the regional geopolical fight that was ended in 1991 with the Paris Peace Agreement signed on October 23, 1991. It is too bad that our Leaders ignored their values, the same way the Geneva accords of 1954 were not respected in their true spirit.
   Now Thailand attacked Cambodian forces protecting Preah Vihear: What China will do? - Yes the great China with many billions of inhabitants, the future economic and military power where Khmer Archives were kept since time immemorial, will help. But we have to help ourselves first, by protecting ourselves our culture, our independence and our territorial integrity. Kom tuk chet borrtess, kom tuk chet aphiness, kom tuk chet aphipraay... as an old Kmer saying goes.