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Wuxi residents will soon be able to get from Wuxi to Cambodia's beautiful coastline in just around four hours with direct flights to open linking the East China's Jiangsu province city and Sihanoukville, Cambodia on June 23.

Cambodia, an important country along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is on friendly terms with China.  Sihanoukville is located in the south of Cambodia, about 210 kilometers from the capital Phnom Penh.

Investment environment

Since Prime Minister Hun Sen came to power, the political situation has been generally stable, enabling vigorous development of the economy. 

Many products from Cambodia are offered special trade privileges and additional tariff concessions by the developed countries of Europe and the US.

For example, except for some textiles, clothing, shoes and watches, the US currently provides special import treatment under the Generalized System of Preferences to about 5,000 products from Cambodia and other Least Developed Beneficiary Developing Countries, expanding to include travel goods from July 2016. 

The Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) is ideally positioned with road access to major transport routes such as National Highway No 4, as well as Sihanoukville Airport and Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, the country’s only deep-sea port, which handled more than 70 percent of Cambodia’s total container throughput in 2016.

The SSEZ, with Hodo Group as the primary investor, is looking to develop industrial clusters of companies in the fields of textiles and garments, hardware machinery and light-industry appliances.

After the completion of all the facilities in 2020, the zone is expected to house 300 enterprises generating 100,000 jobs. At the end of 2016, about 100 enterprises from mainland China, Europe, the US and Japan had been established in the SSEZ, mainly in the sectors of textiles, light-industrial products, accessories and other production operations, with some having come on stream.

A growing number of Chinese enterprises engaged in light industries, including textile products and clothing, are interested in setting up factories in the SSEZ and elsewhere in Cambodia to take advantage of the low labour costs and GSP tariffs concessions granted by developed countries to Cambodian products.

Mostly medium to large enterprises, these investors not only actively map out production activities in mainland China, Southeast Asia and other regions, but many are also adopting transformation and upgrading strategies to develop original design products for sale by mainland and international customers, with some even hoping to carry out their own brand business in mainland China and Southeast Asian markets.

Natural environment

Sihanoukville has a different look and feel than most Cambodian towns. Constructed as a port city in the late 1950s, the town is much newer, more urban and cosmopolitan than most Cambodian provincial cities.

“Beach town”, “port community”, “fledgling resort destination”…all describe the Cambodia's premier beach town. Sihanoukville's white sand beaches and warm Gulf of Thailand waters combine with a laid back, beachy atmosphere to provide a great little tropical getaway.

Nowadays, Sihanoukville is as much a beach town as it is a port town, catering to beach-going weekenders from Phnom Penh as well as a steadily increasing number of foreign visitors. Still, the pace of life in Sihanoukville is very relaxed.

Fresh seafood, especially crab, prawns and ocean fish, has always been one of the town's biggest draws, but there is also a wide variety of places offering foreign cuisines - Australian, French, Indian, German, Sri Lankan, British, Italian, pizza places, a couple of western bakeries and even a espresso coffee shop.

And these days Sihanoukville offers a pretty good night life as well with a wide variety of bars staying open well into the wee hours, especially on Weather Station Hill, in the downtown area, and the beach bars on Ochheuteal, “Serendipity” and Victory Beaches.