Cheng Heng

Who was Cheng Heng?

Cheng Heng was a Cambodian politician, who acted as the country's Head of State from 1970–1971, and was a relatively prominent political figure during the Khmer Republic period.

Heng, who was of Chinese ancestry, was born in Takeo Province into a middle-peasant family: he went on to become a prosperous businessman and landowner. He served in the civil service of colonial Cambodia, eventually reaching the grade of Oudom-Montrey by the mid-1950s.

His early political career, during the period when Prince Norodom Sihanouk's Sangkum party controlled the country, is relatively obscure: he entered politics in 1958, and served as Secretary of State for Agriculture in 1961-2. He was elected as the Sangkum deputy for Takhmau in 1962, but lost in the 1966 elections to a rival candidate, a young Sihanoukist doctor called Keo Sann. Heng subsequently returned via a 1967 by-election in Phnom Penh, and by 1970 was serving as President of Cambodia's National Assembly. Heng's levels of political support appear to have been limited up until 1970; aside from being President of the Assembly, he had previously been director of the main Phnom Penh prison.