China’s naval vessels are now permanently deployed at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, a leading expert has told Newsweek.
The base has come back into focus after the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published new satellite imagery on April 18 showing two People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessels still docked at the pier.
“The satellite imagery strongly indicates that the two vessels never left—the two gaps when they were not at the pier are short enough that it seems far more likely they were engaged in brief exercises at sea, not that they returned home and were replaced by other ships,” said the CSIS’s Gregory Poling, senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank.
“In that case, the most likely explanation for this five-plus-month deployment alongside other developments—construction that appears aimed at housing Chinese personnel and the 2019 memorandum of understanding that granted China exclusive access—is that a permanent Chinese military presence has started, and we will likely see naval vessels rotationally deploying to Ream for long stints.”
The Chinese ships were first shown at Ream in December of last year in a Facebook post by Cambodia’s Defense Minister Tea Seiha, which Radio Free Asia also reported.
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