中资在柬埔寨引发民间不满
柬埔寨港口城市和度假胜地西哈努克市(Sihanoukville，简称：西港)有不少赌场，包括Oriental Pearl和New Macau。
This city of fewer than 100,000 people will soon boast 30 casinos, with 10 built last year alone, according to local officials.
据当地官员介绍，这个人口不足10万的城市很快将拥有30家赌场。仅去年一年就建成10家。
But with Cambodians prohibited from gambling, the complexes primarily serve Chinese tourists and often employ Chinese staff, angering locals in a poor country where jobs are scarce. An estimated 120,000 Chinese visited Sihanoukville last year, double the number of 2016.
但由于柬埔寨禁止本国人赌博，这些综合性赌场主要服务中国游客，往往也都雇佣中国员工。这让当地人愤怒，因为柬埔寨是一个就业机会少得可怜的穷国。据估计，去年有12万中国人光顾西港，较2016年翻了一番。
Sihanoukville’s casino boom is one of the most vivid consequences of the forthright embrace of China by Hun Sen, the prime minister. Beijing backs the authoritarian leader politically and has extended loans for the construction of dams and roads, even as his crackdown on the opposition, media and civil society groups has been condemned by the EU and the US.
西港的赌场繁荣是柬埔寨首相洪森全面拥抱中国的最鲜明后果之一。中国在政治上支持这位威权领导人，还为柬埔寨修建大坝和道路提供贷款，即便洪森打压反对党、媒体和公民社会团体的行为受到欧盟和美国谴责。
The Chinese tourist influx has boosted the city’s property prices and spawned a growing number of high-rise buildings but it has also brought problems.
中国游客蜂拥而入，推高了西港的房价，越来越多的高楼拔地而起，但也带来了问题。
“The Chinese don’t go out in the daytime; they go out at night,” says Sok Song, a Cambodian hotel owner and vice-president of the Sihanouk Province Chamber of Commerce. While he stresses that the Chinese presence is “more positive than negative”, he says that “at night, sometimes they have a drink and they fight and shout at each other”.
“中国人白天不出门;他们晚上出门，”柬埔寨一家酒店的老板、西哈努克省商会(Sihanouk Province Chamber of Commerce)的副会长Sok Song说道。尽管他强调，中国人的到来“积极影响大于负面影响”，但他形容，“到了晚上，有时他们一喝酒就开始互相斗殴叫骂”。
Ma Lin, a manager at a beachfront café whose lease will be taken over by a Chinese investor at the end of this month, says that because he “can’t speak Chinese . . . it’s hard for me to get a job with Chinese owners”.
马林(Ma Lin，音译)是海边一家咖啡馆的经理。这家咖啡馆本月底租约期满，之后将由一位中国投资者接手。他表示，由于“不会说中文……他很难在中国老板手下找到工作”。
Expanding Chinese influence is a fact of life across Southeast Asia. China is the biggest source of tourists in Thailand, and Beijing is financing infrastructure projects from Myanmar to the Philippines.
中国影响力的不断扩大已成为东南亚的一个普遍现实。中国目前是泰国旅游业最大的客源国。从缅甸到菲律宾，中国为很多基建项目出资。
Cambodia is not alone in weighing the mixed blessings of Chinese investment, which elsewhere has been welcomed for its scale and relative lack of conditions attached but criticised for leaving construction and other jobs in Chinese hands.
柬埔寨并不是唯一对中国投资喜忧参半的国家。其他地方欢迎中国相对没那么多附带条件的大手笔投资，但批评中国把建筑及其他工作岗位留给中资企业。
What is unusual about Sihanoukville’s transformation is that tension in the town has coalesced into a public backlash — unusual in a country where personal freedoms are fading — and drawn a stern response from Cambodian authorities as well as from China’s ambassador.
西港大变样的不寻常之处在于，这里的气氛已紧张到引发公众强烈不满的程度——这在个人自由日渐式微的柬埔寨实属罕见——并促使柬埔寨当局和中国大使都作出严肃回应。
Xiong Bo, Beijing’s envoy, this month acknowledged that “a small amount of low-educated people” from his country were breaking Cambodian laws. His rare press conference came after a document emerged in which the governor of the province where Sihanoukville sits listed both the “positive” and “negative” impacts of Chinese money and people.
中国驻柬埔寨大使熊波本月承认，“一些素质不高”的中国公民违反了柬埔寨法律。在他召集这次罕见的媒体吹风会之前，一份文件泄露——西哈努克省省长在文件中列出了中国资金和中国人带来的“正面”和“负面”影响。
“The price of renting rooms has risen, and that affects the standard of living of government officials, workers, and other people,” he wrote in a letter to the interior minister that was leaked to Cambodian media. He said “mafia groups” were behind kidnappings and “insecurity in the province”, and that tension between Chinese visitors and locals would give the opposition ammunition to attack the Cambodian-Chinese relationship, or to claim that Sihanoukville was becoming “a second Shanghai”.
“房租上涨，影响了政府官员、工人及其他人群的生活水平，”这名省长在写给柬埔寨内政部长的信中写道;该信被泄露给了柬埔寨媒体。信中称，该省许多绑架、不安全事件背后都有“黑社会团伙”的身影，而中国游客与当地人之间的紧张关系会让反对党获得口实，借以攻击柬中关系，或称西港正成为“第二个上海”。
“We want them to invest but we need more local people to have a chance to work, to get more money from this growth,” says Tang Sochetkresna, director of the provincial tourism department. He says the city is eager for investment beyond casinos and hotels, in attractions that can draw in tourists from other countries.
“我们希望他们来投资，但也需要更多本地人得到工作机会，以便从这种增长获得更多实际利益，”西哈努克省旅游局局长Tang Sochetkresna表示。他表示，西港迫切需要赌场和酒店业以外景点的投资，以吸引其他国家的游客。
Sok Song, the chamber of commerce official, says Chinese companies are building garment, footwear and other factories in Sihanoukville’s special economic zone.
前述西哈努克省商会副会长Sok Song表示，中国企业正在西哈努克港经济特区建造服装、鞋及其他商品的生产厂。
He says Cambodia’s interior ministry dispatched a task force to the town to study the problem of visitors who “do not obey the law”, and met Chinese embassy officials in January.
他表示，柬埔寨内政部派出一个工作组到西港调研“不守法”游客的问题，并在1月份会晤了中国使馆官员。
The Chinese are only the latest group of foreign tourists to throng Southeast Asia’s beach towns, bringing welcome money but also tension to poor countries with conservative societies. Western travellers engaging in behaviour deemed lewd or disrespectful continue to create periodic scandals from Cambodia and Laos to Malaysia and Thailand.
中国游客不过是最新一波蜂拥而至东南亚海滨城镇的外国游客，给这些民风保守的贫穷国家既带来了受欢迎的金钱，也带来了紧张。从柬埔寨到老挝，从马来西亚到泰国，那些举止下流或无礼的西方游客仍不时制造丑闻。
But the Chinese presence has a stronger geopolitical component, given China’s growing economic foothold in Cambodia and its continued support for Hun Sen at a time when he is flouting democratic rights.
但鉴于中资在柬埔寨的经济地盘与日俱增，并在洪森公然藐视民主权利之际继续支持他，中国人的身影具有更强的地缘政治色彩。
“There is a narrative at the elite level that points out the positive effects of the relationship with China but you are seeing some cracks in the enforcement of this overarching narrative,” says a western diplomat in Phnom Penh. “Sihanoukville is a one-country town, so it’s a stark example.”
“精英阶层有一种叙述，它会指出对华关系的积极影响，但你看到了，强迫人们接受这种主旋律叙述的逻辑出现了一些裂纹，”常驻柬埔寨首都金边的一位西方外交官表示。“西哈努克市是一个中资主导的城镇，所以它是一个鲜明的例子。”
Follow John Reed on Twitter: @JohnReedwrites 译者/何黎
