The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia

10The Search for the Next China

I killed many Vietnamese when I was in the Khmer Rouge, and I want to do it again!” the old man yelled at me, mimicking how he bayoneted people with sharp bamboo sticks. His breath stank as he leaned in toward me. He had rotting black teeth.

Age had not lessened the man's blood thirst: “The Cambodian government under President Hua Sen has sold our future to the Vietnamese. I cannot accept this. I will fight, and I hope soon.”

It was a deathly hot day in Cambodia about 35 years after Vietnam invaded the country and a decade-long occupation ensued. As I interviewed people like the old man, there boiled an undercurrent of anger toward the Cambodian government, Vietnam, and foreign companies. Anger and pain seemed to hover everywhere.

I was poking around to see opportunities for the country to attract more Chinese tourism and light-manufacturing investment dollars. I was taken aback by the rage of the old man and others who told me they were willing to die and kill for their cause. The old man was the only one who freely admitted to me he killed scores of people during Cambodia's dark genocidal days under Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979, when 1.7 to 2.5 million people died from execution, disease, and starvation out of a population of 8 million, but not the only one who seemed willing to kill in the present. How would that affect the country's development, ...