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Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra will visit China from February 5 to 8, during which she will meet with President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Paetongtarn said that online fraud, tourism, and air pollution will be among the main issues of discussion in her meeting with Xi.
In particular, Paetongtarn said that she will seek China’s help in curbing negative rumors about Thailand’s safety for Chinese tourists. She will also express concerns to Xi about the online scamming centers, many of them run by Chinese criminal syndicates, that have been established along Thailand’s borders with Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.
The announcement of the visit comes not long after the kidnapping and rescue by Thai police of the Chinese actor Wang Xing, 22, who was lured by a criminal gang to a scam center in Myawaddy, just inside Myanmar’s border with Thailand. The case was widely discussed on Chinese social media networks, prompting fears that Chinese tour groups would cancel their trips to Thailand for this year’s Lunar New Year holiday – traditionally a time of concentrated Chinese tourism to Thailand.
Even accounting for a post-pandemic slump, China remains Thailand’s biggest source of foreign tourists, making up 6.7 million of the 35.5 million travelers who visited the country last year.
While Paetongtarn said last week that the number of cancelations was small, the number of Chinese travelers fell short of the government’s target of 8 million. The prospect that recent trafficking scandals could deter Chinese nationals from visiting Thailand, threatening the recovery of an industry that accounts for about 12 percent of the country’s GDP and nearly a fifth of its jobs, has jolted the Thai authorities into action.
Earlier this month, Paetongtarn ordered law enforcement agencies to go after scam operators to ensure the safety of tourists. “Tourism is the country’s main source of income. I don’t want it to be affected,” Paetongtarn said, as per Reuters. “I have instructed security agencies to raise the level of security for tourists.”
Shortly afterward, the Thai government released a video of Paetongtarn reassuring Chinese visitors, in AI-generated Mandarin, that Thailand “puts the safety of all tourists as its utmost priority.” This was followed this week by a second AI-generated video from the Thai Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau offering Chinese tourists three recommendations for avoiding scams while visiting the country.
Thailand’s efforts have coincided with greater impetus from China’s government, which has also been forced to address the rising concerns about scamming gangs in the wake of Wang’s abduction and rescue. At a meeting in Kunming last week, the six Mekong nations agreed to bolster their efforts to combat online scamming in the region. On the sidelines of the meeting, officials from China, Thailand, and Myanmar came to a specific agreement to work together to root out the cyberscam centers in Myawaddy. Also last week, China and Thailand agreed to establish a coordination center in Bangkok to “investigate and combat call center gangs based in Myawaddy, Myanmar, and along the Cambodian border,” the Thai police announced.
The cooperation appears to have borne some fruit, with China’s Public Security Ministry announcing this week that a “major criminal suspect” had been captured with the assistance of Thai law enforcement agencies. The suspect, who was only surnamed Yan, was wanted in connection with Wang’s abduction and trafficking to Myawaddy.