[35] The Thai Chinese in and around Bangkok were also the main participants of the months-long political campaign against the government of Ms. Yingluck (Mr. Thaksin's sister), between November 2013 and May 2014, the event which culminated in the military takeover in May 2014.

[37] According to the Chronicles of Ayutthaya, Ekathotsarot (r. 1605–1610) had been "concerned solely with ways of enriching his treasury," and was "greatly inclined toward strangers and foreign nations".

While most Thais were engaged in rice production, the Chinese brought new farming ideas and new methods to supply labor on its rubber plantations, both domestically and internationally.

The Chinese in Thailand also suffered discrimination between the 1930s and 1950s under the military dictatorship of Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram (in spite of having part-Chinese ancestry himself),[45] which allied itself with the Empire of Japan.

[44] State corporations took over commodities such as rice, tobacco, and petroleum and Chinese businesses found themselves subject to a range of new taxes and controls.

Traditional Thai cuisine loosely falls into four categories: tom (boiled dishes), yam (spicy salads), tam (pounded foods), and kaeng (curries).

[60] The contemporary Thai business sector is highly dependent on Han Chinese entrepreneurs and investors who control virtually all the country's banks and large corporate conglomerates all the way to the smaller retail hawking outlets at the humbler end of the business spectrum with their support and patronage being augmented by the presence of lawmakers and political operatives, where the vast majority of whom are of pure or partial Chinese ancestry themselves.

[58][59] With 80% of Thailand's market capital under Chinese hands, many Thai entrepreneurs and investors of Chinese ancestry have been at the forefront of the establishing the country's most prominent wholesale trading cooperatives owned by traders, merchants, and brokers flush with private equity and venture capital bearing connections to some of Thailand's wealthiest business families.

Most of the leading businessmen in Thailand at this point in time were of Chinese ancestry and accounted for a significant portion of the Thai upper class.

In Bangkok, Thais of Chinese ancestry dominate the entertainment and media industries, being the pioneers of Thailand's early publishing houses, newspapers, and film studios.

[99] Large waves of Han Chinese immigration occurred in the nineteenth and early in the twentieth century, peaking in the 1920s from southern China who was eager to make money and return to their families.

[66]: 261  Over the next several decades, internationalization and capitalist market-oriented policies led to the dramatic emergence of a massive export-oriented, large-scale manufacturing sector, which in turn catapulted Thailand into joining the Tiger Cub Economies.

[123][124] Among the major lucrative industries, the Chinese involved in shipping, rice milling, rubber and tin manufacturing, teak logging, and petroleum drilling.

[149] Thai businessmen and investors of Chinese ancestry are influential in the country's real estate, agriculture, banking, and finance, and the wholesale trading industries.

[60] In Central Siam, Thai businessmen and investors of Chinese ancestry control the entirety of the area's residential and commercial real estate and raw land.

[83] In the 1990s, among the top ten Thai businesses in terms of sales, nine of them were Chinese-owned with only Siam Cement being the sole firm that was under the ownership of a non-Chinese.

[114][151] Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, structural reforms imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Indonesia and Thailand led to the loss of many monopolistic positions long held by the Thai Chinese business elite.

During the era of French colonization, Chiang Saen evolved into a crucial focal point through which the French exerted control over commercial transactions along the Mekong River and assumed authoritative control over the land trade pathways connecting Xishuangbanna, Luang Prabang, and the commercial centers of northern Siam.

This shift has resulted in a notable increase in mainland Chinese migrants relocating to developing nations in Southeast Asia, particularly to Thailand during the 1990s and 2000s.

[159] For a select few Chinese entrepreneurs, a number of them have ventured into Thailand to explore potential investment prospects in a market that remains largely untapped amidst the intensifying commercial competition back in China.

Certain Chinese real estate investors opt to acquire properties, particularly modern townhouses and structures located along the riverside and in market areas.

Many of these entrepreneurs share a common ethnic background, having commenced their business endeavors as small-scale operators whose initial calculated speculations yielded significant dividends within a burgeoning marketplace.

[160] This trend was especially pronounced among Chinese merchants who ventured into small-scale agricultural enterprises, such as the trading of longans, durians, mangosteens, oranges, and apples.

In addition to those in the shipping industry, some of the original traders have progressed to become wholesalers, operating warehouses along the river to facilitate the distribution of goods to Bangkok and other parts of Thailand.

[163] Central Group, Thailand's largest operator of shopping centers (and owner of Italy's leading high-end department store, La Rinascente) with US$3.5 billion in annual sales was established by the Chirathivats, a Thai business family of Chinese ancestry, have created three new large scale department store branches in China.

The increased economic clout wielded by Thai Chinese has triggered distrust, resentment, and Anti-Chinese sentiment among the poorer working and underclass indigenous Thai majority, many of whom engage in rural agrarian rice peasantry in stark socioeconomic contrast to their modern, wealthier, and cosmopolitan middle and upper class Chinese counterparts.

Traditionally, the Teochews comprise a majority population of coastal provinces like Bangkok, Chonburi and Chachoengsao until the 1950s, in which later it was overwhelmed by Central Thai internal immigrants.

Prominent Teochew politicians include former prime ministers Phot Phahonyothin, Pridi Banomyong, Chatichai Choonhavan and Banharn Silpa-archa.

For example, former Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-Archa's unusual Archa element is a translation into Thai of his family's former name Ma (trad.

[177] Note that the latter-day Royal Thai General System of Transcription would transcribe it as Wetchachiwa and that the Sanskrit-derived name refers to 'medical profession'.