This report explores how specific aspects (investment, lending, infrastructure construction) of the Belt and Road Initiative and wider Chinese investment, may create risks for the Cambodian people and the country’s development process. It pays particular attention to Cambodian stakeholders’ perceptions of both macro political risks – impacting the whole society, such as credit risk – and those impacting subnational contexts, such as workers’ displacement in certain regions.

Through two case studies, it considers infrastructure development at the national level, and investment in the tourism and entertainment sector at the local level, in the coastal city of Sihanoukville.