ROS SITA slept with dozens of other builders on the unfinished second floor of a hotel they were building in the heart of this booming coastal city. Chinese owners have allowed workers to live on the site – a common practice in a city where almost every block is under renovation.

Shortly before dawn, the 40-year-old was shocked awake by a loud crack from the floors above then another.

Seconds later, the structure gave way, toppling to one side and trapping more than 50 workers under chunks of concrete and twisted metal.

More than two days later, Ros Sitha was the last of 26 survivors to be pulled to safety. At least 28 Cambodians were killed, making the collapse the country’s deadliest construction disaster in decades.

For many Cambodians, the June 22 disaster and its aftermath proved that their government cared more about courting Chinese investment than it did about them.

As Beijing expands its economic influence abroad, it has found few partners more willing than Cambodia’s authoritarian Prime Minister Hun sen, who has injected Chinese state-owned companies to build roads, bridges, hydroelectric power plants, industrial parks and a port.

Cambodia’s strategic location, on the cusp of the South China sea, makes it a geopolitical prize, and Beijing’s support – backed by billions of dollars in loans – has helped Hun sen weather U.S. criticism of a crackdown on opposition parties, civil society groups and independent media that has made Cambodia a de facto one-party state.

Hun Sen’s government also looked the other way as private Chinese investors bought up real estate and built hotels, casinos and other businesses to cater to the growing number of Chinese tourists. Experts believe many Chinese businessmen are using countries such as Cambodia to leave their wealth, hiding profits from the Communist party in power and hedging against the economic downturn at home.

Cambodian authorities have had little oversight of the construction boom, which environmental and labor groups say has used underage and untrained workers, avoided safety checks and damaged the environment.

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Nowhere in Cambodia is the Chinese presence more visible than here in Sihanoukville, a city of 300,000 people that locals say has become a de facto colony of Beijing.

Ten years ago, the only foreigners in town were Western tourists looking for bamboo huts, $ 1 meals and cheap marijuana on empty stretches of sand. Now Sihanoukville is a construction site where jackhammers are smashed from almost all sides.

Provincial officials say Chinese citizens own 90% of the businesses, including more than 150 hotels, hundreds of restaurants, dozens of massage parlors and karaoke clubs and four dozen casinos.

Near the metal detectors at one entrance of the gambling hall, a sign stated: no Cambodia is allowed.

“It feels like a Chinese city, not a Cambodian city,” said Teng Soda, 35, who rented his home in downtown Sihanoukville last year to a Chinese investor and moved with her husband and two children to the outskirts of the city. Cambodian officials spoke enthusiastically of the “city of wonders,” but, she said, the runaway development made life miserable for its original residents. Cranes tower over muddy, potholed streets. Rolls-Royce sedans Park next to piles of burning debris. Electricity goes out regularly.

“Everything is in short supply – electricity, water, Sewerage,” she said. “Waste management is zero. Food prices have doubled. It used to be very quiet here, but in the last two years the growth has been uncontrolled.”

ROS SITA learned about Sihanoukville last year from some young people near his home in Kruh, a village of coconut palms and rice paddies seven hours away on the banks of the Mekong river.

He was looking to repay the $ 2,000 he borrowed to replace his family’s bamboo hut with a concrete house, and building work that paid $ 13 or $ 14 a day sounded like a good way to do it.

So he took a bus to the shore, hoping he would save enough to return home in six months.

When he arrived in Sihanoukville in March, he said he “felt like a foreign country.”

He immediately got to work, with no training or safety equipment, towing bags of cement.

Every few days, trucks brought in new unskilled workers from the countryside, some of whom appeared to be teenagers, for storage. The children sometimes came together, wandering among the rubble and loose bricks while their parents worked eight to 10-hour shifts.

Human rights groups say the boom in Chinese fuel has created a market for underage workers, some as young as 13. Accidents happen almost daily but are rarely reported, said Seok Ying, President of the Union representing builders.

The construction process in Sihanoukville is “build first, license later,” according to a recent world Bank report, and local authorities seemed powerless to stop even serious violations.

This spring, two Chinese hotels defied several city orders to close after it was found that they were disgorging untreated sewage onto beaches in Sihanoukville. Police and court officials eventually closed one hotel, but environmental groups say the other continues to operate.

Activists said the developer of the hotel where ROS SITA worked had twice been ordered to stop work due to a lack of permits, most recently in March. Both times, workers said, work resumed a few days later with no visible changes.

At the end of each day, when their shifts were over, the workers were responsible for eating vegetables and rice cooked on gas stoves on the second floor, where many slept on the bare concrete. On Sundays, their lonely day off, some ventured into Chinese electronics stores to gawk at the latest gadgets.

In one of these stores, ROS SITA bought his first smartphone and then a friend helped him open a Facebook account so his family could send him photos from Krouch.

It helped him survive the hours after the collapse.

Sandwiched between two masses and barely in time, he waited 60 hours to escape. His phone couldn’t get a signal, but he kept his spirits up by scrolling through photos of his children, watching over and over again a clip of his 8-year-old daughter reading a poem back to her village.::

As rescue teams dug up bodies and survivors recovering at a nearby provincial hospital, it seemed Cambodia could finally slow Chinese development.

Authorities arrested seven people, including the building’s owner and four other Chinese nationals, and charged them with manslaughter and other charges that carry a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The Chinese Embassy issued a statement saying it was saddened by the incident and supported a ” thorough investigation of the incident.”

Lawyers for the accused could not be reached.

Government inspectors swelled Sihanoukville and closed the construction of five Chinese-owned Buildings. The provincial Governor resigned and the head of the national disaster management Committee was dismissed.

But it soon became clear that any reforms would be temporary.

A few days later, the government announced that both officials who had lost their jobs had been transferred to senior positions.

During a visit to the crash site, Hun sen vowed to stop illegal construction, but defended China, saying: “If there were no Chinese investors, let me ask you, would we have such tall buildings?»

Sofal Uh, an associate Professor at the Occidental College and authority in Cambodia, said Hun sen was determined to maintain his relationship with Beijing.

“There’s too much money involved,” said Uh. “It seems MO is:” see Nothing here, move forward.”

At one Chinese restaurant where construction was halted, a few workers were still crowding in on the last day, as if for a lunch break. A sign plastered outside the five-story building cited “poor quality” steel frame and lacking licenses, building permits, environmental assessments and fire prevention information.

Pav Mom, a 28-year-old migrant worker living on the site, said the developer asked her to stay because he was confident construction would resume.

“I really don’t feel safe,” she said, “but where am I going?”

The government and private donors paid the families of those who died in the collapse, 70 thousand dollars. One of the youngest victims was Chon Tean, an 18-year-old boy from a village near Kruh who had been working on a construction site in Sihanoukville and other cities since he was 14. He dropped out of school to support his family, including his father, who was partially blind.

“It wasn’t legal, but we had no choice,” said his father, Khem Then, 43. “We had no idea what was going on in Sihanoukville – all we know is there are jobs.”

ROS SITA spent three days in hospital recovering from dehydration and scratches on his arm, then returned to Kruch. His wife and daughter begged him not to remove other work from the village. He and the other survivors each received $ 30,000 in compensation, and he considered using the money to open a store.

Despite his ordeal, he harbored little resentment.

“The Chinese helped me make some money for my family,” he said. “So if someone told me they were thinking about working in Sihanoukville, I wouldn’t say anything. It’s their choice.”

Special correspondent Sokummono Han contributed reporting for this article, and Gaochao Zhang in the Beijing Bureau of the times contributed research.

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