Thailand's Public Growing Wary of China's Expanding Influence Amid Economic Ties

China’s global influence campaign has been particularly evident in Southeast Asia, including Thailand. Historically, the Thai public and many elites have had relatively warm views of China. However, Beijing has launched a multitude of efforts to expand its influence within Thailand’s society and politics. China’s effort to shape perceptions, build dependencies, and extend its reach across foreign societies is one of the defining strategic undertakings of the 21st century. In Southeast Asia, that campaign is executed with particular persistence. And in Thailand — a country whose government has welcomed Chinese investment, whose infrastructure is increasingly built on Chinese technology, and whose history is largely free of colonial-era grievance toward Beijing — the effects are both deep and, in some dimensions, quietly contested. Understanding those effects is not merely an academic exercise. For businesses, investors, and policymakers operating in Thailand, the layers of Chinese influence — economic, digital, informational, and cultural — constitute a material operating environment that shapes market dynamics, regulatory decisions, and geopolitical risk in ways that are not always visible in headline trade figures. The most visible layer of Chinese influence in Thailand is economic, and its scale is significant. Chinese buyers account for 10.8% of condominium ownership in Thailand, and Chinese investment continues to flow across manufacturing, logistics, real estate, and digital infrastructure. Nearly 4.5 million Chinese tourists visited Thailand in 2025, making China one of the top three source markets for inbound tourism. Huawei built much of the 5G network backbone across Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor. Alibaba Cloud operates extensive data centre infrastructure across the Bangkok metropolitan area. ByteDance received BOI approval for a USD 25 billion data infrastructure investment in 2026 — one of the largest single digital investments in Thai history — spanning server installation and data processing across Bangkok, Samut Prakan, and Chachoengsao. That followed a 127-billion-baht data-hosting project approved in 2025. Combined, these investments represent a Chinese-built digital operating environment that underlies Thailand’s fastest-growing economic sectors: e-commerce, cloud technology, digital payments, and AI-driven logistics. This is not accidental. China’s Digital Silk Road, an essential component of the Belt and Road Initiative, seeks to position China as the digital architect of the Asia-Pacific region. Concerns about national security, sovereignty, and geopolitical influence are growing alongside the expansion of 5G networks, undersea cables, and data centres throughout Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian countries face a structural tension: they are increasingly adopting Chinese software while remaining more reluctant to adopt Chinese-made hardware. Ultimately, these countries must choose between cost and risk — and China’s digital push also creates an opportunity for Beijing to spread its own model of cyber governance, which runs counter to principles of free and accountable governance. Beyond infrastructure, China has invested heavily in shaping the information environment in Thailand. Beijing has signed content-sharing deals enabling Xinhua to be syndicated across many elite Thai outlets, cultivated the local business community, deployed Confucius Institutes, and expanded Chinese state media operations in the country. Many of these efforts have aligned with the interests of Thailand’s military establishment and, by extension, have reinforced the country’s restrictive lese-majeste laws. Chinese disinformation is now growing in Thailand, with Chinese narratives — whether fabricated content or state-sponsored propaganda — gradually seeping into Thai media, academia, and political and business circles. Researchers note that, unlike Russia’s state-directed model, China’s disinformation work is diffuse and often delegated to various departments or outsourced to private contractors, making attribution difficult. Beijing’s influence toolkit falls broadly into five categories: straightforward propaganda, outright disinformation using fake accounts and manipulative social media tactics, censorship pressure on foreign media via Chinese diplomats, infrastructure controlled by companies with ties to the Communist Party, and Confucius Institutes that reinforce cultural appeal and access to study-abroad opportunities. Student-led initiatives promoting democratic values in Thailand have faced pressure from Chinese business interests to cease activities. Partnerships between Thai media outlets and Chinese state-run media raise impartiality questions, particularly around sensitive topics such as the Hong Kong protests and human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The number of Chinese students enrolled in Thai universities grew by 455% between 2013 and 2023 — a demographic shift that reshapes campus dynamics, institutional funding priorities, and the kinds of academic discussions that feel professionally safe. As of 2022, there were over 400 Confucius Institutes and classrooms overseas that promote Chinese language and culture, with Europe and Asia holding the largest concentrations. China has used these in tandem with study-abroad opportunities and scholarship programs to build long-term networks of influence among future professionals, researchers, and decision-makers. Perhaps the most analytically important finding in China’s influence story in Thailand is the gap between the depth of economic entanglement and the breadth of public unease. Thailand takes the crown as the wariest country in Southeast Asia of China’s growing economic clout, with a 90.6% rate of apprehension in the ISEAS State of Southeast Asia 2026 Survey. While every other regional state records a double-digit approval figure for China’s increasing economic influence, only 9.4% of Thais welcome it. On China’s growing political and strategic influence, Thailand ranks as the second most worried in the region, behind only Vietnam. Thai concern over China’s militarisation and assertive actions in the South China Sea jumped from 28.1% in 2025 to 40.4% in 2026 — a striking shift in a single year. The 90.6% concern figure is not an outlier. It reflects consistent polling trends showing public unease about Chinese economic dominance, Chinese land ownership, Chinese labour practices at Chinese-owned facilities, and the displacement of Thai manufacturers by Chinese competitors. This sentiment has already produced concrete policy responses: proposed VAT on low-priced Chinese goods, stricter enforcement of foreign business ownership rules, and parliamentary scrutiny of Chinese-funded infrastructure projects. The gap between Thailand’s government posture toward China and Thai public opinion about Chinese influence is one of the most significant political risks in the country’s business environment. Source: Thailand Business News