CHIANG MAI: It was the seventh time that Qin Zi, a 64-year-old semi-retiree from Suzhou city in eastern China, had travelled to Chiang Mai for leisure – hopping on a five-hour flight to meet friends and spend time at a health and wellness resort, swimming and relaxing.
“Personally, I feel safe here,” she told CNA in the northern Thai province.
“I can decide and fly over (anytime) because I have friends I’ve known for over a decade that I can trust.”
Other Chinese residents living in Thailand whom CNA spoke with, shared similar sentiments.
“My friends and relatives are concerned,” said Xu Weihong, a 57-year-old retiree from Shanghai now living in Chiang Mai. “Some things are true and some aren’t. I share my daily life (here) privately so they know I’m safe.”
“But since they have never visited Thailand, their views are not objective,” she adds.
Being in Thailand is “quite different” from what online rumours were saying, said Yulin, a 59-year-old retiree from Beijing, who has lived in Chiang Mai for over a year.
“I’ve never felt afraid here,” she said. “People are warm, friendly and always willing to help.”
But their sense of security contrasts sharply with others.
The recent case of Chinese actor Wang Xing, who went missing near the northern Thai province of Tak bordering Myanmar on Jan 4, continues to stir fear among many in China.
Thailand and Myanmar share a porous border that stretches over 2,400km.
Wang said he had been tricked into going to Thailand after believing he landed a role on a Thai filming project.
He was picked up at the airport in Bangkok and taken to a scam centre in Myanmar’s Myawaddy town, a notorious cyber fraud hub which also houses criminal syndicates.
Wang has since been rescued and has reassured fellow Chinese travellers that Thailand remains a safe destination.
But the incident has put great pressure on the country’s recovering tourism industry.
Thousands of flights and hotel bookings were cancelled following news of Wang’s ordeal, according to Thai travel experts and officials.
Atsawin Yangkiratiwon, chief executive of low-cost carrier Thai Lion Air, revealed that 40 chartered flights, from various Chinese cities like Ningbo, Hefei and Jinan, had been cancelled ahead of Chinese New Year – one of the most lucrative travel periods – resulting in a 20 per cent drop.
Hong Kong singer Eason Chan, also pulled out of a one-night-only concert that had been scheduled for Feb 22 in Bangkok. “The safety of audience members is of utmost importance,” concert organisers said, citing safety concerns among Chinese travellers.
Online, social media users shared accounts and warnings about the situation in Thailand, reminding others to be constantly vigilant at all times.
“I (don’t) recommend going there right now because the abduction rate has increased,” said a user on Xiaohongshu in a comment which garnered over 4,600 likes and 2,000 comments.
A user on the video-sharing app Douyin shared a video titled “Guidelines to staying alive in 2025”.
Accompanied by ominous-sounding music, the video warned potential tourists against visiting several Southeast Asian countries which included Thailand and also Cambodia and Malaysia. “Please don’t go, whether for company retreats, group trips or personal travel. Remember that,” the Douyin user said.
In a video widely shared on Xiaohongshu and WeChat, Chu Cancan, also known by his handle Teacher Can Can, urged Chinese nationals living and working in Thailand to “speak out”.
Chu, 47, who runs a public relations and event imaging firm in Beijing, has lived in Phuket with his family for almost a year.
“A group of ill-intentioned Chinese abducted a naive person and took him to a scam centre in Myanmar, built by Chinese themselves,” he said in the three-and-a-half-minute viral video, which has been shared over 3,700 times on WeChat.
“As the incident escalates, my biggest feeling is heartache,” he said.
He added: “If we enjoy Thailand’s peace and safety, consider this country a second home and truly love it – then we should all speak out.”
Speaking to CNA, Chu said it was not just Thailand’s image that had been negatively impacted by recent scam centre reports.
Chinese nationals may also be poorly perceived for their reactions online.
“If Chinese netizens make one-sided or false statements about security issues (in Thailand), it could lead to resentment towards Chinese people from Thai society – this is something we particularly want to avoid.”
“If there’s only one dominant narrative on Chinese social media, people will assume Chinese netizens are irrational and unappreciative,” he added.
BADLY HIT
Wang’s ordeal couldn’t have come at a worst time for Thai travel operators ahead of the lucrative Chinese New Year travel period.
China was once Thailand’s largest source of tourists, with 11 million visitor arrivals recorded in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic battered the global travel industry.
The Southeast Asian country still remains a favourite among many Chinese travellers – with tourist spending rising by more than 44 per cent last new year and Thai officials have been seeking to quell public safety concerns.
According to local media reports, Tourism Authority of Thailand governor Thapanee Kiatphaibool said around 10,000 Chinese tourists had cancelled their trips following Wang’s saga and blamed negative social media coverage for spreading misinformation about the country’s reputation.
Although experts are unsure of recovery figures, Thapanee remains optimistic about hitting this year’s target of welcoming 8 million Chinese arrivals, up from 6.73 million arrivals in 2024.
Pan Weiqiang runs a travel agency with branches in Chiang Mai and neighbouring Chiang Rai province, offering self-driving tours from China’s Yunnan province. He told CNA that news of Wang’s ordeal had dealt a significant blow to his business.
Each tour accommodates 10 to 40 people and costs between 7,000 yuan (US$962) and 20,000 yuan per person, depending on routes and destinations.
Nine tours had been initially booked for Chinese New Year and seven have since pulled out, which has led to major losses, Pan said.
“After (Wang’s) story came out, seven tours were cancelled within a week,” he added. The remaining two tours had stayed on only because paperwork and deposits had already been submitted.
Hoteliers like Tommy Qu, who manages a resort in Chiang Mai popular with Chinese tourists, have also been feeling the pinch.
“We have had a couple of group refunds because Chinese customers believe it’s risky to come to Thailand,” Qu said.
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media played a powerful role in Wang’s rescue but has also allowed speculations and misinformation to spread, experts say.
After losing contact with Wang, his girlfriend took to the popular Sina Weibo microblogging site to share pleas for help, which attracted attention from other Chinese celebrities and went viral.
Writing on Weibo, Taiwanese actress Shu Qi said: “I wish him (Wang) safety and hope he will be found soon.”
Hashtags related to his disappearance have generated more than 12 billion views on the site.
On the Douyin data tracker site Douchacha, 240 million interactions about Wang’s abduction were recorded over a 30-day period, with the majority of users coming from Guangdong province in southern China.
Terms like “Cancel Thailand plane tickets and hotel service charge” continue to rack up hundreds of thousands of mentions on Chinese social media sites.
Real-life events, amplified by false misinformation shared on social media, can heavily affect a country’s tourism image, said Xu Deya, an associate professor from School of Communication at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
“In (today’s) social media era, information goes viral easily. This makes it easy for fake news or half-true stories to spread, unlike in traditional media, where editors are responsible for fact-checking.”
Seasoned travellers who know and love Thailand would not be easily swayed by fear mongering on social media but “first-time travellers who may be thinking of cancelling (trips to Thailand) are especially vulnerable to misleading online information”, Xu added.
Recent Chinese blockbusters set in Southeast Asian countries, featuring citizens being abducted, have also not helped the situation, Xu said.
In the 2023 cybercrime thriller “No More Bets”, which claims to be based on real life events, a computer programmer travels to Southeast Asia and gets trapped in a scam compound after accepting a fake job offer.
Though the film was said to have been based in a fictional city, Cambodian text was featured prominently throughout – resulting in a ban.
“Cambodia is not as negative as the movie portrays it to be. The Chinese produced it to promote an anti-scam message to their own people,” read a government statement which strongly condemned its release. “However, it has affected the reputations of Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar and Thailand, as well as their tourism industries.”
Another crime movie, “Lost in the Stars”, released in 2022, tells the story of a Chinese woman who ends up getting killed while on holiday in Southeast Asia.
Xu explained some reasons behind this.
Because regulations in China heavily “restrict movies about crime, murder or criminal investigations set in the country”, plots are set overseas in places “like Phuket or Bali”. “This creates a distorted impression that these places are more dangerous,” Xu said.
Movies like these have caused “some worry” in the past but not on the scale of Wang Xing’s abduction, Pan said. “It’s everywhere (online) now – on Douyin, Xiaohongshu, you name it.”
WHAT CAN BE DONE NEXT?
Thailand is scrambling to soothe safety fears among potential Chinese visitors.
An artificial intelligence-generated video released by the Thai government on Wednesday and shared to Facebook and Chinese social media platforms, featured Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra addressing audiences in fluent Chinese, which she does not speak in real life.
“I understand that recent reports of Chinese nationals being lured to scam compounds around Thailand’s borders have triggered concern among many … I promise that the Thai government puts the safety of tourists as its utmost priority,” the AI-generated Paetongtarn said.
Myanmar’s ruling junta government said it had caught and deported more than 53,000 Chinese scam centre workers back to China since October 2023.
Thai authorities have also been working with task force officials from Hong Kong to follow up on cases of residents being lured to Southeast Asian countries and forced into illegal work.
During a joint meeting held in the Chinese city of Kunming this week, officials from China, Thailand and Myanmar reached a consensus, pledging to eradicate scam centres in Myanmar.
But changing negative perceptions will take time, Xu said, suggesting enlisting influencers and celebrities to spread the message.
“They might be more effective, as people view them through an entertainment lens,” she said.
Thai travel and tour operators are also taking action.
Pan and his partners across China, Laos and Thailand want to reassure Chinese travellers that Thailand remains safe.
To get their message across, they are turning to television and online adverts to promote “safety information” about inbound tours in Thailand.
Ultimately he hopes Chinese travellers will look beyond what’s being said on social media.
“If they understand Thailand’s culture and traditions, they will realise many claims online are unfounded,” he said.