Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

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> How do you know they are “desperate”

Based on the fact that Cambodian day laborers come to work as migrant workers in a region that Vietnamese (Kinh or Jarai) try to leave if they can.

HDI metrics themselves also represents that fact. Gia Lai - one of the poorest provinces in VN - has a higher Human Development Index (HDI) than all of Cambodia.

> Given the recent developments in Bangladesh

Yet the average Bangladeshi earns more money, is significantly more educated, and has a longer life expectancy than the average Cambodian.

Cambodia's HDI remains well below it's LDC peers across Asia, and that divergence only really began in the 2010s.

> Based on your biased opinion given your relative partiality toward Vietnamese...

I have been fairly open on HN about my criticisms about Vietnam, such as the authoritarian regression under To Lam along with VN's increased hallmarks of falling into a real estate and export economy induced middle income trap

> Cambodia has cooperated with the foreign government consistently

South Korea has literally banned Korean nationals from travelling to vast portions of Cambodia today and is considering cancelling aid projects because of non-cooperation from the Cambodian government.

> I see no such thing

In English, "you" is often used in the 3rd person as well, especially when communicating on a forum where conversations and readers are not only the OP

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There is no reason why Cambodia can't pull off a similar developmental story like Vietnam or Bangladesh, yet Cambodian leadership in the 2010s and today has dropped the ball because any attempt at making Cambodia a more open economy would undermine rent seeking activities.

Citations needed for almost everything you just wrote.

On the other hand, South Korea has the right to do whatever it wants within its rights. I strongly support South Korea in its geo-strategic calculus to isolate Cambodia government. They must have very good reason to believe this is the right course of actions.

Cambodian government should learn from this experience and improve its law enforcement and its own geo-strategic planning.

> There is no reason why Cambodia can't pull off a similar developmental story like Vietnam or Bangladesh

Again with the Bangladesh comparison. Can you google Bangladesh and read news about it in the last year before commenting?

> Citations needed

HDI comparison of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [0]. Notice how Cambodia and Bangladesh used to be developmental peers until 2010.

Life expectancy comparison of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [1].

Mean years of schooling in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [2]

Gross GNI per Capita PPP (log normalized) in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [3] - the only metric Cambodia is roughly comparable to either country.

There is no way around it - the average Bangladeshi let alone the average Vietnamese is healthier, better educated, and richer than the average Cambodian. And this divergence only began in the 2010s when Hun Sen and Cambodia's political leadership began backsliding into kleptocratic authoritarianism.

[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/BGD+KHM+VNM/?level...

[1] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/lifexp/BGD+KHM+VNM/?lev...

[2] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/msch/BGD+KHM+VNM/?level...

[3] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/lgnic/BGD+KHM+VNM/?leve...

How and where in the Merriam-Webster are these supposed to be measures of “desperation”? Where is the citation for Cambodians going to work in Vietnam and not the other way around?

Also, cherry picking PPP GDP instead of commonly used nominal GDP to avoid conceding a point is quite desperate. Cambodia has a higher GDP per capita than Bangladesh but you won’t admit that. Can you buy a barrel of crude oil with PPP dollar? Also, you haven’t admitted that you are clueless about the current Bangladesh political and economic mess. https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/stock/foreign-investors-f...

If you want to play the comparison game, the average Vietnamese can also be said to be much poorer and much more desperate than the average Malaysian based on your flawed reasoning.

Here are some really desperate Vietnamese trying to run away from Vietnam into the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8y3l7e2vjo.amp

> cherry picking

Then why are you ignoring Cambodia's abysmal education rate and life expectancy against Bangladesh?

Cambodia has Sub-Saharan levels of developmental indicators, and in fact plenty of similarly sized or larger Sub-Saharan countries like Kenya, Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, and Angola have outpaced Cambodia despite Cambodia being within ASEAN and with all the opportunities to take advantage of FDI-driven growth from neighbors like Malaysia and Thailand, let alone South Korea and Japan.

Cambodia has had a geographic advantage that most LDCs did not have, and has absolutely blundered it because of horrid leadership.

Heck, the median age in Cambodia is now significantly higher than much more developed Phillipines, so a demogrpanic crisis is clearly looming.

> the average Vietnamese can also be said to be much poorer and much more desperate than the average Malaysian

They absolutely are.

You don't find Malaysians working under the table in California or the UK, or cleaning toilets in South Korea or Japan. You do with Vietnamese.

Poverty in VN is much more severe than that in Malaysia (and Thailand), and the social safety net is almost nonexistent.

And that's the thing - even with such desperation, you still see Cambodians doing the same work Viet would do in South Korea in Vietnam or Thailand.

[flagged]

I think they are just a hypernationalistic Cambodian, Khmer American, or a former expat in Cambodia. I saw content from similar types of accounts during the Thailand-Cambodia conflict and the Techo Canal crisis.

But yea, it's stupid tbh and shows how badly Hun Sen is wreaking Cambodia.

The only reason Vietnam is where it's at today is because of being friendly to foreign investors and working on rooting out criminalization in the 2010s. Otherwise, VN would have languished. Cambodia has the right pieces to become the next VN, but is completely squandering the opportunity.

This kind of ploy to leveraging hypernationalism to mask weak economic growth (an LDC like Cambodia should not be growing at 5-6%) and increased isolation.

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

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