China’s experience in poverty alleviation has provided valuable lessons to Thailand, and the two countries are expected to enhance their cooperation in the field after the pandemic, according to Thai experts.
“Thailand has followed the Chinese model in the poverty-eradication program through a systematic national strategy that encompasses policies and measures that would uplift the poor,” said Kavi Chongkittavorn, senior fellow at the Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
“China and Thailand have very (close) ties, they have been learning from each other ever since the establishment of diplomatic ties 45 years ago,” said Chongkittavorn, noting that China has been successful in eradicating extreme poverty in the past three decades.
China declared “complete victory” in the fight against absolute poverty in February, meeting the poverty-eradication target set in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.
In Thailand, among the approaches taken by the government are targeted poverty-alleviation programs on vulnerable groups including women, children, the disabled, and the minorities. “It is an integrated and long-term policy,” Chongkittavorn said.
According to the Bangkok Post newspaper, the Thai government is going to launch a number of projects in fiscal 2021 to narrow income disparity based on the Thai People Map and Analytics Platform, a big data analytics tool.
“This is the first time the government has used TPMAP as a tool to tackle income disparity more efficiently and precisely,” Danucha Pichayanan, secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Council was quoted as saying.
“This method is applied by the Chinese government to formulate and implement policy to solve poverty.”
In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam also said that inspired by China’s science and technology-assisted poverty-alleviation practices, Thailand plans to boost the development of agriculture and rural areas, as well as work together with colleges to map out poverty-alleviation plans and dispatch college students to support poor regions.
Rajendra Shrestha, professor of Natural Resources Management at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, said China’s experience in poverty alleviation, which includes targeted strategy, enhancing digital literacy and relocation, is a successful example for Thailand to follow.
Nearly half of the poor population in Thailand is in the agriculture sector, he noted.
In the northeastern Thai province of Khon Kaen, after learning from China’s targeted poverty-alleviation projects, the local government implemented a “pair-up” model in October 2019. Under the program, one public servant and one company employee will be paired up with two poor households to provide customized solutions.
As of January, the “pair-up” program has lifted nearly 80 percent of 1,174 households out of poverty and will have the chance to be promoted across Thailand, according to information on the website of the Chinese Consulate General in Khon Kaen.
With support from the Chinese consulate, Khon Kaen city launched a demonstration household project this year.
“Poverty alleviation is a priority agenda in Thailand,” said Shrestha. He said Thailand has a long history of poverty-alleviation work dating back to the 1950s, with the policy focus shifting from developing poor rural areas and increasing community involvement in the ‘90s to education in the 2000s, and recently on issues like reducing income disparity.
Thailand has made remarkable progress in social and economic development over the past 40 years by transitioning from a low-income to an upper-income country in less than a generation. The poverty rate declined substantially from 65.2 percent in 1988 to less than ten percent in recent years, according to the World Bank.
But the changing context brought by COVID-19, climate-change-induced environmental disasters, and economic slowdown has caused a poverty surge in many countries, including Thailand, despite government efforts to lower the effect, said Shrestha.
He said there is much that Thailand can learn from Chinese NGOs and companies as they play a very active role in poverty alleviation. This includes forming cooperation with the government, skills training, embracing locally suitable nature-based technology and knowledge transfer, and creating local business and alternative employment opportunities via such means as microfinancing.
Shrestha said Thailand and China have been also collaborating in poverty alleviation through education. For example, in 2020, the Alliance of Poverty Reduction and Development was formed by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and 14 other university members including the AIT, he said.
Chongkittavorn from the Institute of Security and International Studies said the bilateral cooperation between Thailand and China has been enhanced during the pandemic.
The two countries are working closely to fight COVID-19 and learning from each other’s effective measures against the contagion. Thailand is also among the first countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to import vaccines from China’s pharmaceutical company Sinovac, he noted.
