On a blustery recent Saturday morning on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, as planes roared overhead on approach to the nearby international airport, three dozen people sat in a tiny classroom at the Royal Academy of Cambodia. Crammed shoulder to shoulder, they watched raptly as a flat-panel TV showed a pair of Chinese pop stars crooning a love song in Mandarin.

Chea Munyrith, head of the academy’s Confucius Institute, one of more than 350 such Chinese government-funded outposts of language and culture around the world, pointed out prominent students in the class. “There, we have a high-ranking member of the military,” he said, gesturing toward a man wearing a black tunic and gold-rimmed glasses, standard garb for Cambodia‘s ruling elite. “We also have a secretary of state of the Council of Ministers,” he added, the equivalent of Cambodia’s cabinet.

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