Agricultural infrastructure received glancing attention. Production of “natural fertilizer” (human and animal waste) was to rise from 5.6 million tons in 1977 to 8.9 million tons in 1980, although how the increase would be accomplished was unstated. Factories were expected to come into being to produce several thousand irrigation pumps. Where the material to make the pumps would come from or how the funding and labor were to be acquired was not specified. Another table notes that in 1979 Cambodia would “buy a factory that produces DDT,” although how this would be accomplished or paid for is not mentioned. Similarly, there were references to the urgency of expanding numbers of draught animals and other livestock and to increasing fisheries, with little attention paid to financing, manpower requirements, veterinary medicine, or the minimization of risk. Pol Pot’s idée fixe was rice: “If we have rice, we have everything,” Radio Phnom Penh had said as early as May 1975. The impression one gets from reading the plan is its faith in revolutionary zeal. Weighed against the plan’s disastrous results, this “zeal” might be seen as synonymous with amateurism, ignorance, and wishful thinking.13

The plan then dealt with proposed industrial and technological developments. Light industry, to be financed by agricultural exports, was to come first. The plan said little about what products would be favored or where the raw materials or labor force would come from. Instead, it suggested that industries be established “producing goods for everyday use, such as ... clothing, mosquito nets, blankets, mats, shoes, hats, tables, cupboards, chairs, plates, pots, pans, spoons, water bowls, pitchers, ... cups, toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs, scissors, soap, towels, medical equipment, muslin, cotton wool, alcohol, knives, axes, sickles, ploughs, tailoring, leather, etc.” (emphasis added). These jumbled “industries” were scheduled to produce “60 to 100 percent” by 1980. No priorities or allocations of resources were mentioned.

More space was devoted to “The Plan to Build Heavy Industry” than to any other section, even though heavy industrialization would not be set in motion until the Four Year Plan was complete. In speaking about it, the leaders of the party seem to have been mesmerized by a vision of the future that included a thriving industrial sector serviced by an expanded proletariat. Factories with smoking chimneys, after all, appeared alongside rice fields on the country’s coat of arms, and a third of the candidates to the National Assembly had run as “workers.” This expansion would be accomplished regardless of resources, finances, or feasibility. Here again, the leaders’ ignorance of industry and their refusal to use experts or take advice meant that their proposals were doomed to failure, except insofar as they could be accomplished by technical assistance from other countries. In large measure, this is just what happened—Chinese and North Korean aid concentrated on refurbishing prerevolutionary industries and building new ones. In addition, the plan talks about unverified petroleum deposits, coal mining (“If there’s any coal, we’ll find it”), and building an “iron-smelting factory of overseas standard,” even though no exploitable deposits of iron ore exist in the country. Cambodia has never had the resources to sustain industrialization.14