This is a welcome addition to the literature on Chinese-Cambodian entanglements during the Cold War. Drawing primarily on interviews with Cambodian cadres and Chinese technicians who worked together during the Khmer Rouge period, Andrew Mertha provides an in-depth analysis of the implementation of China's aid program to Democratic Kampuchea. He uses three cases (the Krang Leav airfield, the Kampong Som oil refinery project, and commerce between China and Cambodia) to demonstrate how bureaucratic fragmentation in China and differences between the Chinese and Cambodian institutions contributed to the ineffectiveness of Beijing's financial aid and technical assistance. He argues that in a markedly asymmetrical partnership, China failed to translate its large-scale aid into leverage over the Khmer Rouge.
Although Mertha's treatment of the Cambodian side of the story, especially his chapter on the Khmer Rouge bureaucracy and Pol Pot's work style, is highly revealing and instructive, his discussion of Chinese policymaking leaves...