On 20th November, 2015, Bangkok Bank organised a forum, 40th Anniversary of China-Thailand Diplomatic Relations: The Way Forward the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road at Shangri-la Hotel. Attending to this seminar, participants received a great chance to listen to experts and business tycoons’ view on most recent China’s mega Silk Road project. Diplomats and investing experts namely H.E. Ning Fukui, Chinese Ambassador to Thailand, Vikrom Kromdit, chief executive officer of Amata Corporation PCL and Dr Sarasin Viraphol, Executive Vice President of Charoen Pokphand Group were invited to share valuable visions and experiences.
The China’s initiative, 21st Century Silk Road or One Belt One Road, has been planned to connect the world together by multilateral cooperation in infrastructure construction. Apart from facilitating international trading development, the project is intended to expand China’s diplomatic relationship with the countries where the Silk Road stretches along. The 21st Century Silk Road will be divided into routes which are territorial and maritime routes. The former route starts from Xi’an which is in the centre of China before stretching west to Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkey then heading to Western Europe to terminate its journey at Venice, Italy, while the later one begins at Quanzhou in Fujian province and run to the South across Guangzhou in Guangdong province and the Malacca Strait in Malaysia extending over India, Middle East Asian countries as well as several countries in Africa before uniting with the land-based route in Venice.
Geographically, ASEAN community will become a part of the maritime route. Besides, seeing the world connected together by the prospective economic corridors, it is expected that it would open up new opportunities to Thai investors. Considering only the high-speed in Mekong Subregion itself, this initiative is greatly attracting people’s interest.
“China is counted as the biggest investor who have invested in foreign countries for three years in a row,” said, H.E. Ning Fukui, the Ambassador of People’s Republic of China to Thailand. “The value of the investment between China and AEC will increase up to USD trillion. We have considerably imported products and opened country for foreign investment. Even through, the country is facing the global economic recline, China is reconstructing the national economy and we are ready to invest in Thailand especially in the agricultural sector. Thailand has obtained high potential to produce food. During the past two years, China has supported Thai agricultural production. I would say that not such a kind of raw materials but the processed food suitable for the emerging urbanized market in China.”
His Excellency also explained that the current policy in China have planned to suspend domestic agricultural production since the country would reserve the lands to recover from industrial pollution. As the result, agricultural sector in China will have less ability to serve its population and require extra supply from cooperation overseas. According to this new development, China has shown its sincerity towards all trading partners.
“The cooperation that is going to happen will emphasise on the integrity rather than seeking for one’s own benefit. This is the music which cannot be produced by any single soloist because it’s a piece of symphony that requires every countries to play a part together.”
