Kingdom's rock-solid ties with Beijing paying off

That helps explain why Thai-Chinese relations continue to go from strength to strength. Significantly, throughout the past decade, the two countries have been able to craft a unique friendship running the gamut of cooperation, including on sensitive security issues that used to be strictly in the domain of the US, such as counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and maritime security.
That is why Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is interrupting her traditional prime ministerial introductory tour of Asean with a special visit to China next week. She hopes to succeed where former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva failed by putting a personal touch on the country’s most important bilateral relationship. Her charm offensive – which draws on her status as the first female Thai prime minister, her photogenic look, and being a sister of the famous “Thai-hua-qiao” prime minister Thaksin, a.k.a Qiu Dah Xin – will go into high gear during the trip. Her central message will be crystal clear: the Thai-China friendship is the pillar of the Middle Kingdom’s comprehensive engagement with Southeast Asia – unmistakably at the heart of China’s economic health and power. Our combined potential is unlimited, she will emphasise.
In 2007, China replaced the US as Thailand’s largest single-country export market. The Ministry of Commerce’s figures last year put total two-way trade between Thailand and China at US$45.7 billion (Bt1.4 trillion). Gone are the days when the US was the largest importer of Thai goods, accounting for nearly a quarter of all exports. Now the US takes just around 10 per cent, while Asean absorbs 24 per cent, as the largest overall market.
Although China’s investment in the Kingdom has increased over the years, it is still small compared to that of Japan, the US and Europe. However, in the next few years, Thai officials believe, China could potentially replace Japan as the biggest direct investor in this country, judging from current trends. From 2005 to June last year, China invested $3.1 billion in Thailand. In the first nine months of this year alone, China invested nearly $1 billion, up 25 per cent from the same period last year.
Apart from the impressive economic statistics, China’s cultural influence is also enjoying a meteoric rise in Thailand. Each year, more than 10,000 Thai students go north to study in China, which has also replaced the US as the top destination country in that regard. The influx has been attributed to the economic stresses incurred after the 1997 economic crisis, which forced Thais to shy away from the West, coupled with the expansion of the Chinese economy and easier access.
One would have thought that with a stronger baht, more Thai students would opt for US universities. That has not been the case. During the early 1990s, almost 20,000 students a year studied in the US, then the most popular academic destination. Since then, the number has seen a continual decline, now averaging only around 7, 000 annually. Also, the US now has rivals in the West, with Australia and New Zealand becoming popular destinations for Thai students.
Of late, the most striking educational development in Thailand has been the growing number of young Thais taking up Chinese Studies and language courses. The establishment at numerous Thai universities of Confucius Institutes (Kong-zi Xue Yuan), starting in 2003 – there are now a dozen and more are in the pipe-line – has increased the language’s popularity, followed by Korean and Japanese. As a result, more than 1,200 Chinese teachers and volunteers are teaching pu-tong-hua (Mandarin, or Standard Modern Chinese) at nearly 60 higher education institutions and 120 private high schools throughout the country.
At the same time, more Chinese students are moving south. According to the Thai Ministry of Education, around 10,000 Chinese students are presently enrolled at dozens of Thai universities. Assumption University alone has almost 1,000 Chinese students. Conversely, Thai is now taught at many leading foreign-language institutes in Kunming, Guangxi, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere in China. For decades, Thailand Radio has broadcast daily news in pu-tong-hua.
With vibrant exchanges in the people-to-people sector, the traditionally passive local Chinese-language media have become more active and enthusiastic about publishing China-generated news and views. The majority of their news content presently comes from the Chinese Communist Party-owned China News Service (Zhongguo Xinwen She), the second-largest news agency after Xinhua. They no longer rely on non-Chinese foreign wire services for reports on China and the world, as before. Of the six Chinese-language dailies published in Bangkok, only the Universal Daily (Shi jie rit bao), partly owned by the Taiwan-based United Daily News Group, still uses news and information from the Central News Agency, the island’s official news agency.
In a similar vein, publishers and editors have redesigned their front pages to resemble major Chinese dailies like People’s Daily or Guangming Daily. They have also discussed the possibility of introducing simplified Chinese characters (jianhuazi) in the near future, but are concerned about losing regular and older readers familiar with the traditional characters. Younger Thais, educated in China and well-versed in jianhuazi, have yet to enter the mainstream local Chinese-language media.
Last month, senior Thai-Chinese editors and publishers received prestigious China Senior Media Person awards at the 6th Forum on the Global Chinese Language Media in Chongqing. They were chosen from hundreds of Chinese-language media workers for their efforts in promoting Chinese language, information and culture. Out of 41 Chinese-language dailies in Asean, 12 are published in Indonesia, followed by Malaysia with nine. At least 52 countries around the world publish almost 200 Chinese-language newspapers and magazines.
Currently, however, no Asean country can match the close-knit, dynamic relations with China that Thailand enjoys. In the early 1980s, long before the inclusion of former Indochinese countries in Asean, and China’s economic rise, the other core Asean countries were already expressing concern over Thailand’s role as a conduit for the southward spread of China’s influence. That high-value asset has not diminished, even though China has expanded ties with Asean, all of whose members have joined the 100-year framework known as the Plan of Action for the 21st Century. This is a far cry from the hostility that marked China’s relations with Southeast Asian countries prior to its normalisation of ties with the US in 1972 and the end of the Third Indochina War, a time when China was considered the region’s arch enemy.
In the region, China’s influence was felt in the security sphere long before its rise as an economic power, most notably through its unwavering support of the Cambodian resistance from 1979-1992, which enabled uninterrupted reinforcement of its strategic interests. Now, China is enjoying the fruits of her long-term dominance. While Vietnam and the Philippines are upping the ante in their disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea, other Asean members are opting for discreet diplomacy and riding the coattails of China’s economic rise. The rest of Asean, to varying degrees, is embracing China. Cambodia and Laos, for example, have transformed their ties from a passive stance a decade ago into “high-impact” relations.
Under Yingluck, there is little to tempt Thailand to return to the old game of balancing its interests between China and the US, as practised by her predecessor, when Washington is not doing anything substantive to correct Bangkok’s strong tilt toward Beijing.