This paper illustrates conflicting priorities in Japan's aid policy to Cambodia and how those policies appear in the implementation of the aid. Japan's aid is driven by a strategic policy to integrate Cambodia into the regional economy while the same aid focuses on assisting small‐scale farmers in that country. On the Cambodian side, the government has employed a market‐oriented approach of development in the context of local patron/client mode of governance, in which, the agricultural policy has also become oriented towards large‐scale investment and export. By looking at the case of Japan's technical cooperation in Cambodia's rice sector, this paper examines how the conflicts within Japan's aid policy are internalised in the Cambodian context and appear as conflicts between Japanese and Cambodian approaches to agricultural development.