Chanthol Sun, the Cambodian Minister for Commerce, was recently interviewed by Knowledge@Wharton and had an interesting take on Chinese vs. American investment in his country:

Let me put it this way. Let’s say, you have been starving, you’ve had nothing to eat for 30 days, or 30 years in the case of Cambodia, then comes this Chinese guy with a bowl of fried rice for you and says, “You are hungry; here is fried rice for you.” And then, you hear another guy who says, “Don’t eat. Why do you eat fried rice from the Chinese?” I would say to this guy, “You give me a Big Mac. If you give me an alternative – Big Mac versus fried rice – then I have a choice. But if you don’t provide me with the Big Mac when I’m starving and you tell me not to eat the rice, then I’m sorry, [I can’t do that].”

And that is why we go to China for funding. We want funding. That’s why we borrow from China, from Korea, from Japan, from ADB, from the World Bank. Money doesn’t have any color for us, as long as we can borrow and build our infrastructure and improve our country.