This was a very interesting event held by Mr. Benny Widyono. He spoke about the growth of China in the last century, and about its relations with countries like Cambodia.

His discourse on Cambodia was specifically eye-opening. He spoke about how Cambodia started to arrest, torture and execute its own people. 1.7 million were killed, and there were pictures of people tortured into confessions – things that made no sense except to the ear of the regime. Horrific things happened in Cambodia during the regime in 1975. China’s role in this was not much of an influence. China had well military bureaucracy but so did Cambodia.

China, however, had dozens of different bureaucracies (factories, design institutes, ministries), but Cambodia did not have coordination on bureaucracies. This says a lot about the different government structures that existed at the time in China and Cambodia, how they contrasted, and how this paved the way for future development in both of these countries.

Additionally, Mr. Benny Widyono mentioned that policy in China is relatively uncoordinated. When I asked him for further clarification, he stated that China’s foreign policy is only as good as the institutions that manage its bureaucracy. The bureaucracy varies over time. Currently, China’s foreign policy is worse than it was back then, because of the lack of coordination that we have today. Where before there was more coordination under a planned economy, now because of local leaders, each area or locality has its autonomy, but this has resulted in unwanted coordination.

This was a talk I thoroughly enjoyed, because I learned a different aspect of China and its government organization; I looked at China from lenses which I had not looked from before. I took 3.5 years of Mandarin lessons, and through history classes, I believed that I had a decent grasp on China’s overall culture and structure. However, through this event I learned about the intricacies of China’s bureaucracy and how it affects its foreign policy. By far, it was so convenient to ask Mr. Benny Widyono exactly what the driving factors were.