BANGKOK — China’s chief Xi Jinping and visiting Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra vowed to crack down on the rip-off networks that plague Southeast Asia as the 2 leaders met on Thursday in Beijing.
Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, that are south of China and share borders with Thailand, have turned main facilities of on-line rip-off operations the place individuals lured by false promoting of well-paid jobs are trafficked to secretive compounds the place they’re pressured to work by prison teams that run on-line scams focusing on individuals all around the world.
That has impacted Thailand’s status, as a number of high-profile tales of Chinese language individuals being lured to work in Bangkok solely to be trafficked right into a rip-off compound in Myanmar have surfaced, with Chinese language actor Wang Xing being the most recent such sufferer.
Thai and Chinese language officers have taken public steps to handle the rip-off challenge, together with a reported go to to the border area by Liu Zhongyi, China’s vice minister of public safety.
“China appreciates Thailand’s robust measures to fight on-line playing fraud. Each side ought to proceed to strengthen legislation enforcement, safety, and judicial cooperation,” Xi mentioned, in keeping with state broadcaster CCTV.
Paetongtarn echoed that, saying “Thailand is keen to strengthen legislation enforcement cooperation with China and different neighboring international locations and take resolute and efficient measures to fight cross-border crimes akin to on-line playing and fraud.”
Forward of her go to, Thailand lower off electrical energy to some areas in Myanmar by its border to attempt to disrupt the operations of the rip-off compounds. The impact of that’s unclear because the compounds typically have their very own turbines.
The go to to China was Paetongtarn’s first as prime minister and comes as the 2 international locations have a good time 50 years of creating diplomatic relations.
On different bilateral points, Xi mentioned China was keen to work on a brand new railway challenge between the international locations. On Tuesday, Thailand permitted a $10 billion railway challenge that may finally join Bangkok to the Laos-China excessive velocity railway. He additionally mentioned they hoped to deepen cooperation in electrical autos, with Thailand being an rising marketplace for Chinese language automakers.
China was as soon as a major a part of Thailand’s tourism section however was down to six.7 million guests in 2024, lower than the 11 million guests in 2019 earlier than the coronavirus pandemic when Chinese language guests had been practically a 3rd of all arrivals.
Paetongtarn has proven Thailand is keen to accommodate Chinese language pursuits on key points.
In January, a gaggle of Chinese language Uyghur detainees in Thailand pleaded for assist earlier than they had been deported to China. Thailand’s choice to deport the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group that faces persecution, got here forward of the 2 international locations fiftieth anniversary of relations.
After the assembly in beijing, Paetongtarn mentioned that Thailand “firmly” abides by the one-China precept, Beijing’s place that the island of Taiwan is a part of China.
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Related Press author Jintamas Saksornchai contributed to this report.