INTRODUCTION

The Chinese Open Door Policy implemented in the late 1970s resulted in new patterns of Chinese migrations. Following the Going Out Policy (1999) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (2013), around 688,000 new Chinese migrants had emigrated to Southeast Asia by 2020.2 The characteristics of new Chinese sojourners differ from those of traditional Overseas Chinese in that they come as more well-educated middle-income earners and adapt well to the relocation.

The US-China trade war in 2018 and the Coronavirus outbreak in late 2019 aggravated anti-Chinese sentiments in many nations. Xenophobiaagainst Asians rose in Europe and the United States, and along the BRI routes, resistance to the Chinese became more obvious in the domestic politics of host countries. In Central Asia, the advent of Chinese entities has been regarded to be potentially exploitative. In Singapore, newly arrived mainland Chinese are often regarded as “Others” by Singaporean Chinese.

In Thailand, Sinophobic sentiments have been increasingly expressed on social media. Over the past few years, hashtags that criticize the Chinese government, such as #MilkTeaAlliance (a coalition between Thai and Taiwan youth movements), #StandingWithBright (protecting a famous Thai actor regarding the Taiwan issue), #StopMekongDam (opposing the building of power dams on the Mekong River) and #Onechina, have been introduced to connect transnational youth, democratic and human rights movements. These hashtags trended online for some time during 2019 and 2022. In addition to the unfavourable perception of China as a nation, there have been personal and news reports of unfavourable behaviour exhibited by Chinese individuals, such as inappropriate behaviour in public spaces, and aggressive job and business competition.

To an extent, social media trends have affected China-Thailand ties. For instance, the Chinese embassy in Bangkok stated on the embassy's Facebook page that “the One China Principle is irrefutable […] the recent online noises only reflect [the] bias and ignorance of [the noise] makers, and does not in any way represent the Thai government's stance or Thai people's mainstream public opinion.”

Thailand's importance to China should be recognized by virtue of the presence of traditional overseas Chinese and the growing commercial ties between the two countries over the last decade. At present, the country has over 7.5 million citizens of Chinese descent.