Abhisit's man for China

Wooing back Chinese tourists is one of the first assignments given to Virachai, who is fluent in Mandarin and English, and can even speak some Spanish.

The minister, a former bank executive who worked for nearly a decade in China (1993 to 2000), is also preparing for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's first official trip to the mainland.

"The premier will visit Japan from February 5 to 7, and will visit China later in the month," said the non-partisan politician, who previously worked in the Surayud Chulanont and Thaksin Shinawatra cabinets.

Apart from tourism, Virachai, a former deputy secretary-general to the prime minister from 2006 to 2008, will work with his Chinese counterparts to help stabilise agricultural prices in Thailand during the current slump in prices.

"Rubber, rice, tapioca and fruit are among the top-priority items that we hope to work on with the Chinese as far as price stabilising is concerned," he explained.

"In 2008, China purchased about 900,000 tonnes of natural rubber from Thailand. This year, the price of natural rubber has dropped to a low of Bt40 per kilogram (from over Bt100 last year) due to the global commodity price slump.

"Therefore, I've been working with the agriculture ministry to help shore up the domestic prices. In fact, Thailand is one of the world's three largest rubber producers.

"Together with Malaysia and Indonesia, we account for 80 per cent of the global rubber output so we should be able to do something together.

"One way to help stabilise the domestic price is to create a local stockpile of rubber [to prevent price from dropping too much]. The government is in the process of setting up an Bt8-billion loan facility for cooperatives to stockpile 200,000 tonnes of rubber."

"We could also discuss government-to-government deals with China but we ought to ensure that it'll be a win-win deal.

"Regarding rice, Asean, of which Thailand is a member, is proposing to set up a regional stockpile for food security in partnership with China, Japan and South Korea. This issue could be discussed at the upcoming Asean summit in Bangkok.

"On Thai fruits and vegetables, I think one of the issues is to widen and strengthen the distribution channels of longan and durian, which are both popular in the Chinese market, so we could gain more from the Thai-Chinese free-trade agreement.

"As for onions and garlic, which have been hit hard by cheaper Chinese imports, we need to come up with better measures to help Thai growers," he said.

Bilateral tourism and farm issues aside, Virachai is preparing to spend time on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

"For the past three decades, China has been attracting huge amounts of direct foreign investment in the form of large-scale investment projects. Overseas Chinese investors were the pioneers, followed by large multinational firms from the West and other Asian countries.

"Then we saw state-owned Chinese enterprises and, later, big corporations go abroad to invest and set up businesses. Now it's the time for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese SMEs to go overseas and expand by investing in foreign countries.

"As for Thailand, it's also time for our SMEs to consider tapping investment and business opportunities in China seriously as large firms have probably already done so.

"In my opinion, both Thailand and China should embark on a mutually beneficial SME investment promotion programme - a two-way exchange aimed at expanding the SME sector in both countries," he said.