After the official opening of Cambodian-Chinese joint facilities at Ream Naval Base in early April, the base quickly hosted visits from both Japan and Vietnam. But closer examination of those visits, as well as the physical layout of infrastructure at Ream, suggests that China maintains exclusive access to some facilities, including the base’s largest pier. And recent photos of progress at a nearby air defense site only raise more questions about the true extent of Beijing’s military presence in the area.
The Opening Ceremony and Infrastructure in the North
On April 5, Prime Minister Hun Manet presided over a ceremony celebrating the expansion of Ream and the opening of the China-Cambodia Ream Naval Base Joint Support and Training Center. The ceremony was also attended by the deputy chief of staff of China’s Central Military Commission, Cao Qingfeng, as well as China’s ambassador to Cambodia, Wang Wenbin. The event capped off years of Chinese-funded expansions to the base and followed an announcement in September of Beijing’s plans to gift Phnom Penh two Type-056A corvettes after docking two at Ream’s new pier since December 2023.
Photos of the event posted to the base’s Facebook page as well as that of five-star general and former defense minister Tea Banh offer a look at facilities at Ream from ground level. The festivities took place on a large paved square near the base’s eastern gate, where a stage and audience tents were set up. The nearby radome, newly completed in February, is visible in the background, as is an obstacle course paved in asphalt along the square’s northeastern edge. Another photo taken farther west along the main road shows Cambodian troops marching in front of a three-story complex of what is likely living quarters, complete with basketball courts and adorned with Cambodian and Chinese flags.
Tea Banh and other Cambodian military officials also visited the PLAN corvettes docked at the base’s new pier, the Panzhihua (621) and Guangyuan (649). While two Type-056A corvettes have been stationed at Ream continuously since December 2023, the ships have rotated at least two times since then. The original pair of Wenshan (623) and Bazhong (625) were replaced in July 2024 by the Aba (630) and Tianmen (631), which were likely replaced by the Panzhihua and Guangyuan in February, when Radio Free Asia reported the presence of two additional corvettes at Ream in satellite imagery.
Other improvements have been made on the northern half of the base in the past year that did not appear in the Facebook collages. At the northern tip of the base, ammunition storage in the form of earth-covered magazines have been completed.
Three rectangular containers were built last spring, each attached to an arched section of connected wall with openings for accessing each container. They were then buried in sloping earthen mounds shaped to meet the wall in front. A blast wall sits in front of the complex, and thick perimeter walls have been installed around the containers and nearby support buildings.
And in the base’s northwest, a large paved helipad area has been completed along the coast.
How the Other Half Lives
Despite the opening of the China-Cambodia joint center at Ream, Cambodian officials have continued to maintain that there are no exclusive facilities for China’s military and the base remains open to all navies. In an effort to demonstrate this, Ream followed up the opening ceremony by welcoming visits from two Japanese minesweepers from April 19 to 22 and a Vietnamese navy patrol ship on April 27. But the arriving ships made use of the newly completed wharf at the south of the base, not the pier that has so far been reserved for China’s corvettes.
The wharf sits in a waterfront area that includes a newly completed dry dock and ship ramp, as well as Ream’s smaller original pier, which continues to be the primary berth used by Cambodian ships. Visiting delegations from Japan and Vietnam docked at the wharf and had meetings with Cambodian counterparts in a headquarters building in the southeast corner of the base.
This headquarters building and its surrounding development are among the newest in the base, with construction having only begun in November of 2024 and work still underway as late as March 2025. The area does not appear in coverage of the April 5 opening ceremony of the China-Cambodia center but has featured in photos of Cambodian military activities at the base as well as the Japanese and Vietnamese visits.
Press releases and photos give no indication that Japanese or Vietnamese visiting sailors went to any areas of the base beyond the wharf and this southeast complex. During Japan’s four-day stay at Ream, Maritime Self-Defense Force sailors made it out to play soccer at a local school and visited the Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship hospital that sits just outside the base’s main entrance, but otherwise appear to have stayed close to shore, with both a lunch and a dinner party having been held onboard the Japanese ships.
The separate waterfront and apparently differing access to facilities at Ream recalls earlier reports that claimed that the northern portion of the base would be reserved for use by China’s military. Available photos show no clear physical barrier or demarcation along the central road dividing the northern and southern halves of the base. But the robust photographic catalogue of Cambodian troop activities on Ream’s official Facebook page does little to dispel suspicions. Out of thousands of photos in the last year documenting flagpole ceremonies, car and ship maintenance, landscaping, group exercise, and meetings with visiting officials, virtually none were taken on the northern half of the base except for those from the April 5 opening ceremony.
Air Defense Plans
There have also been hints that China’s miliary involvement at Ream may extend beyond the perimeter of the naval base. In April 2023, Nikkei Asia reported on government plans to develop over 450 acres of Ream National Park for an “air defense command and general headquarters” as well as a “naval radar system”.
The area mapped in the decree issued by then-prime minister Hun Sen lies just a half-mile north of Ream Naval Base. Clearing and preparation work on the site began in 2021 and made steady progress through 2024, after which no large-scale changes have been visible in satellite imagery. But Tea Banh and other officials visited the site during inspections of work at Ream in October 2024 and in February 2025, each time posting progress photos of brick and concrete structures on the hill-top site alongside photos of construction work within the naval base proper. And, perhaps in a sign of things to come, Tea Banh was joined during the February 9 inspection of the site by Chinese ambassador Wang Wenbin, raising the question of whether China is also involved in the development of the air defense facility.
