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Thai PM Anutin Opens Thailand-China Cooperation Expo 2026, Drawing 270+ Firms and Dozens of Deals
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
On July 22-25 this year, the “Thailand-China Cooperation Expo 2026” was held at the IMPACT Exhibition and Convention Center in Bangkok. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul personally presided over the opening ceremony and delivered remarks. More than 270 companies from Thailand and China took part, setting up over 600 booths, with exhibits spanning technology and innovation, trade and investment, green energy, electric vehicles, logistics, and food and beverages. Held under the theme “Investing the Future, Growing Together,” this was the second edition of the expo since it began.
On the opening day, more than 30 pairs of Thai and Chinese companies signed cooperation agreements on site, covering strategic commodity procurement and investment partnerships. At the same time, Thailand's Eastern Economic Corridor Office (EECO) opened an investment consultation desk at the expo, offering one-stop investment and business advisory services to Chinese investors in a bid to attract more high-quality capital into the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). Over the course of the four-day event, additional cooperation agreements between government bodies and institutions were signed, with some tallies putting the total number of agreements at more than 15.
In his opening remarks, Anutin said Thailand-China relations were at a critical juncture, and that amid shifting global conditions, countries needed to reassess their development strategies and deepen cooperation — making this year's expo especially significant. He noted that the Thai government's “Thailand FastPass” initiative has continued to streamline the business environment, having already facilitated more than 700 billion baht in investment. Anutin added that future Thailand-China cooperation would not be limited to traditional trade, but would expand into high-speed rail construction, the green economy, digital technology, innovation industries and people-to-people exchange.
According to reports, Anutin made an unusually forceful public pledge to Chinese investors in his remarks: he said he would push for bureaucratic reform, offer a personal guarantee for investors' personal and property safety, and instruct police and local officials to ensure Chinese investors are not exploited or taken advantage of — while warning that any official who delays approval processes would be held accountable. The statement was seen as one of the Thai government's strongest public overtures to China in recent years.
Thailand-China economic ties have continued to deepen in recent years. China has been Thailand's largest trading partner for eleven consecutive years, with bilateral trade reaching $153 billion. China has also become Thailand's largest source of foreign direct investment, with registered investment projects over the past two years totaling nearly $7 billion. Chinese capital has flowed mainly into strategic emerging industries such as electric vehicles, the digital economy, new energy, electronics manufacturing, robotics and data infrastructure, and the number of Chinese-invested enterprises in Thailand now exceeds 1,000.
According to Thailand's Board of Investment (BOI), the value of investment-promotion applications from Chinese investors reached a record 380 billion baht last year, generating total economic stimulus worth more than 1 trillion baht — a 67% increase from the previous year. Earlier this year, Anutin also traveled to Chengdu, China, to attend the “Thailand-China Investment and Economic Forum 2026” and to preside over the opening of the BOI's fourth overseas office there, further expanding Thailand's investment network with China and the broader China-Thailand-ASEAN region.
Still, the rapid growth in Thailand-China economic ties has come with structural strains. Data show Thailand's trade deficit with China has continued to widen, reaching 2.26 trillion baht — up nearly 40% from 2024 — with some analysts projecting the full-year 2026 deficit could exceed 2.2 trillion baht, a new record. To avoid over-reliance on a single market, the Thai government has in recent years also stepped up efforts to attract capital from Japan, the United States and Europe, particularly in advanced manufacturing and clean energy.
Analysts note that the two sides have signed a five-year cooperation plan prioritizing semiconductors, batteries and digital infrastructure, signaling that Thailand-China economic ties are shifting from traditional goods trade toward higher-technology, higher-value industrial-chain collaboration. Against a backdrop of global supply-chain restructuring and rising geopolitical uncertainty, Thailand is using platforms such as the expo to attract Chinese capital while pushing domestic industrial upgrading and business-environment reforms — though a widening trade deficit will continue to test the government's ability to balance economic reliance on China with building independent industrial capacity.
Around the time of the expo, senior Thai and Chinese officials also engaged intensively, showing that the warming bilateral relationship was not an isolated event. On July 20, Prime Minister Anutin met with Zhao Leji, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, in Beijing. The two sides set four priority directions for deepening ties: strengthening political and security cooperation, deepening economic and investment links, promoting people-to-people exchange, and advancing regional cooperation, and agreed to expand practical cooperation in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, space technology, and sustainable environmental governance, while strengthening ties between the two countries' legislatures. Around the same time, the Thai and Chinese governments also issued a joint statement charting a shared direction toward building a “China-Thailand Community with a Shared Prosperous Future,” providing a higher-level political framework underpinning cooperation at every level, including the expo itself.
Ahead of the expo, Thai and Chinese economic and trade authorities also engaged closely. On July 9, Yan Dong, China's Vice Minister of Commerce and International Trade Negotiation Representative, and Piyanuch Wuttisorn, Thailand's Vice Minister of Commerce, co-chaired the fourth meeting of the Sub-Committee on Trade and Investment of the China-Thailand Joint Economic and Trade Commission in Bangkok, holding in-depth exchanges on deepening bilateral trade and investment as well as regional and multilateral cooperation. Thailand said at the meeting that it hoped to strengthen cooperation with China in agricultural trade, e-commerce, and cooperation with small and medium-sized enterprises, and to use platforms such as the China International Import Expo and the China-ASEAN Expo to further expand Thailand's exports to China and ease the bilateral trade imbalance.
Analysts say that from intergovernmental joint-commission consultations and high-level legislative meetings to commercial platforms such as the expo, Thailand and China have recently advanced cooperation simultaneously across political, legislative, and economic-trade dimensions — forming a relatively rare “all-round” warming trend. This reflects both the Anutin government's practical need to balance diplomacy among major powers while using foreign capital to boost the domestic economy, and China's continued emphasis on Thailand as a traditional partner in its economic and trade strategy for Southeast Asia.
On the industrial-cooperation front specifically, China and Thailand agreed to accelerate consensus on a Joint Action Plan for the China-Thailand Economic and Trade Cooperation Five-Year Development Plan (2025-2029), focused on practical cooperation in frontier fields such as digital technology and artificial intelligence, advanced electronic equipment, modern automobiles, future food, aerospace and quantum technology, and clean energy. The joint statement issued by the two governments in mid-July also noted that the two sides witnessed the signing of cooperation documents covering trade, agriculture, customs, science and technology, AI education, aerospace, intellectual property, anti-money laundering, and media. At the same time, Thailand has also been accelerating its own semiconductor ambitions: earlier this year, the Thai government released its first long-term semiconductor development roadmap, aiming to achieve “chips made in Thailand” by 2050 — providing a clear policy opening for Chinese firms looking to establish chip and electronics supply chains in the country.
According to organizers and EECO, the expo also saw nine government agencies — including Thailand's Customs Department, the Board of Investment (BOI), the Eastern Economic Corridor Office (EECO), and the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand (IEAT) — jointly set up a one-stop investment advisory service center, offering exhibiting firms professional consultation on investment, import-export procedures, and preferential policies. The EEC's target industries span five existing sectors — automotive, electronics, petrochemicals, agriculture and food, and tourism — and five next-generation sectors — automation and robotics, aerospace, digital industries, biotechnology, and medical and health care — giving Chinese investors relatively clear guidance for participating in Thailand's industrial upgrading.
