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Thai PM Anutin: Thailand and China Are "One Family," Pledges to Clear Investment Hurdles
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欧亚时报编辑部·4m ago·~ 5 min readThai PM Anutin Charnvirakul told a 60th-anniversary gathering of Thailand's Club of Nine Chinese Associations that Thailand and China share a bond "like one family," pledging to clear away barriers facing Chinese investment.
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul attended the 60th-anniversary celebration of the Club of Nine Chinese Associations in Thailand, held on September 6 at the Chue Pung Tung Auditorium of the Teochew Association of Thailand in Bangkok's Sathon district, delivering the keynote address. Anutin said the relationship between Thailand and China is "like one family" — a framing he returned to throughout the speech to describe a bond built up over decades between the two peoples. He noted that China's president had likewise described the relationship in familial terms during a recent meeting with Thai officials, calling China a trustworthy strategic partner and inviting Thailand to regard China as a friend closer than a relative.
Anutin recapped outcomes from his July trip to China, including 15 memorandums of understanding signed between the two sides and the opening of a new Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) office in Chengdu. He said the Chengdu office would bring Thailand closer to industrial clusters in southwest China, laying groundwork to attract more high-value investment. The prime minister stressed that the Thai government would fully welcome Chinese enterprises and work to clear the specific hurdles they face when investing in Thailand, through streamlined approval processes and better coordination across government agencies.
On specific areas of cooperation, Anutin highlighted two priorities: technology transfer and localizing supply chains. He said the Thai government wants Chinese firms not merely to use Thailand as a production base but to help upgrade local industry through technology transfer, while sourcing more from Thai supply chains — so investment benefits reach more of the Thai economy rather than staying confined to export processing. The remark was widely read as a direct response to recent domestic debate in Thailand over Chinese investment's limited use of local content.
Anutin also praised the Thai-Chinese community's decades-long contribution to Thailand's economic and social development, saying the nine associations have long served as bridges in charity, education and trade, and remain an essential part of people-to-people ties between the two countries. Also attending were Wu Zhiwu, chargé d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, board members of the Thai-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and the presidents of the nine associations along with many members of Thailand's Chinese community.
The ceremony and speech come as Thailand-China relations continue to warm. After Anutin took office as prime minister this year, China's foreign ministry offered congratulations through official channels and said it looked forward to working with the new Thai government to advance bilateral ties further. Observers note that the Anutin government has continued Thailand's recent trajectory of courting Chinese investment and deepening industrial cooperation, and that this speech signals Thailand's appetite for more Chinese investment in emerging sectors such as data centers, AI computing, and electric-vehicle components.
Anutin's emphasis on the weight of Thailand's Chinese community reflects its distinctive place in Thai economic history. Academic research shows that as early as 1974, Thais of Chinese descent made up about 8.5% of the population yet controlled roughly 90% of the country's commercial and manufacturing investment and about 50% of its financial and banking assets; by the early 1980s, 23 of Thailand's 25 most influential business figures were of Chinese origin. The nine associations have worked for decades in charity, education (Chinese-language schools in Thailand numbered as many as 217 in the early 1930s) and healthcare (including Thian Fa Foundation Hospital, founded in 1905), forming one of the most durable social foundations of Thailand-China people-to-people ties — the backdrop against which Anutin repeatedly invoked the phrase "one family" in his speech.
