Over the weekend, China and Cambodia kicked off the latest iteration of a bilateral military exercise between them in spite of continuing coronavirus fears in both countries and the wider world. The drills demonstrated the growing significance of defense ties between the two countries amid wider domestic and regional dynamics.
Although Cambodia has long had a defense relationship with the security aspect of ties between the two countries has nonetheless come under intensified scrutiny over the past few years amid wider developments, including Cambodia’s tighter embrace of Beijing amid its deteriorating rights record and fears of Chinese military facilities in Cambodia. One of these engagements has been Exercise Golden Dragon, which has expanded from the time it was first held in 2016 from just a few hundred people to thousands of personnel.
