From the Phnom Penh Post:
Big trouble in little China? Exploring Chinese investment in Sihanoukville

It's been a couple years since I last visited Sihanoukville, but it used to be a popular vacation spot when I lived in Phnom Penh. 

On one trip we stayed at a small Bungalow right on the beach, owned by a family from Northern England.
In the course of chatting one day, the father told us how Sihanoukville was in the process of changing.  10 years ago, it used to be all little bungalow's and huts and hammocks that catered to Western packbackers.  Now Sihanoukville was developing into big hotels on the beach to cater to the Chinese and Koreans and Japanese.

He said that the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese preferred the big nice hotels as opposed to the small huts by the beach that Westerners like.  (Although thinking about  it now, it may be less a cultural thing, and more a generational thing.  Backpackers are all in their 20s.  The tourists now being attracted from other Asian countries are usually older).

Anyways, point being, he told us the beach was in the process of being transformed.  Small little bungalows like his were being forced out, new big hotels were being brought in to occupy all the beach land.

The last time I was in Sihanoukville, I could see from all the construction that this change was indeed taking place.