Thailand

With the exception of Thailand, the five countries of mainland Southeast Asia are some of the poorest in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the World Bank, Cambodia has a per capita GDP of around $1,500, while Myanmar’s is roughly $1,300. Laos and Vietnam fare only marginally better, each at just over $2,500. Their political systems run the gamut from semi-democracies to authoritarian one-party states. Yet they effectively suppressed COVID-19, proving far more effective in addressing the pandemic than most developed countries, including the United States. For more on why mainland Southeast Asia has had such success, see my new World Politics Review article.

Last weekend in Thailand, protestors demanding changes in the Thai constitution, new elections, an end to harassment of activists and other government critics, the reduction of the role of the army in politics, and other major changes rallied in Bangkok. Around 2,500 people gathered in the Thai capital, and smaller groups gathered in other cities in Thailand, in the first major public protest since COVID-19 hit the country. Some of the demonstrators followed up, earlier this week, with smaller protests at army headquarters and other sites, to criticize the government’s harsh approach to dissent and opposition political voices. The protests may signal the return of some degree of the angry and contested street politics that had erupted in Thailand late last year, after Thailand’s pro-military party, relying on a constitution midwifed by the armed forces, put together a coalition to control parliament after last year’s elections. Despite the elections, opponents of the government continued to insist—with a fair amount of credibility—that the election had not been fair, and they turned out sizable numbers for demonstrations in Bangkok late last year. The opposition’s anger only grew when, in February and before Thailand really had to grapple with COVID-19, the country’s top court dissolved a leading opposition party, Future Forward. The decision banned Future Forward’s top leaders from politics for ten years. COVID-19, however, slammed a door on street actions, and the Thai government—like many governments in Southeast Asia—also utilized the pandemic to restrict Thais’ freedoms and amass more power. To be sure, after initial missteps in addressing the virus, the Thai government’s public health response has been exemplary. The government has overseen near-universal adoption of face masks, has bolstered the country’s already-strong public health system, and has instituted relatively tough lockdown measures months back, and in a more organized way than neighboring states like Indonesia. Thailand, a country of roughly 70 million, has had only around 3,200 total confirmed COVID-19 cases and 58 deaths, and it has not had locally-transmitted cases of COVID-19 in weeks. (Florida, with a population of around 21.5 million people, had 9,440 new cases in one day earlier this week.) At the same time, though, the Thai government has utilized the pandemic to declare a state of emergency. The emergency may have been medically necessary, but Bangkok also has banned public assembly, cracked down on the news media, arrested activists who criticize the government, and prosecuted social media users who criticize the government as well. With Thailand returning to a kind of normality, the demonstrators are testing whether they can push the country to its pre-pandemic political status—and challenge whether the government can claim to be so successful in fighting COVID-19 while also needing the state of emergency and to maintain total control over demonstrations and other types of dissent. Last year, before Future Forward was banned, popular anger had been building against the Thai government, which seemed relatively shaky. What’s more, the Thai protestors may be setting an example for other opposition movements in Southeast Asia, where in countries like Cambodia and Malaysia governments also have used the pandemic to amass more powers—yet at the same time have largely contained COVID-19. But if the Thai government, which recently extended the state of emergency, cracks down hard on the demonstrators, filing charges against leaders and possibly taking even tougher measures, it may show that Thailand has moved into an even more repressive phase of politics than it inhabited last year.

Last week, Thailand’s constitutional court dissolved the Future Forward Party, a powerful opposition group in a country that has just emerged from five years of military rule. The court also banned the party’s executives, including its leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, from participating in politics for the next decade. For more on the implications of the dissolution, see my new CFR In Brief.

Thailand could be headed toward unrest after the disbandment of Future Forward Party, an opposition group popular among young people.

Over the weekend, Thailand suffered a horrific mass shooting, in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, known as Korat. A gunman apparently angered about a land dispute attacked his commanding officer, the officer’s mother-in-law, and another person. He then seized ammunition and powerful weapons from his army camp, grabbed an army vehicle, and shot soldiers who tried to stop him. He drove to the Terminal 21 shopping mall in Korat, fired randomly at people on the streets and then entered the mall and embarked upon a prolonged rampage against civilians inside. After around seventeen hours, commandos killed the gunman. The bloodshed was Thailand’s worst-ever mass shooting by an individual. Thirty people were dead, including the killer, and at least fifty-seven injured. I have lived in and traveled back and forth to Thailand for two decades, and while the kingdom has had many tragically violent incidents—army massacres of civilians in 1992 and 2010, among other military killings—and the country has the second highest gun homicide rate in Southeast Asia, I cannot remember a mass shooting like this in Thailand. It was one that seemed so sadly familiar to shootings that have taken place in recent years in countries from New Zealand to the United States to France. Indeed, the Thai shooter’s motivations might have been different from those of the Christchurch gunman, the killer at the El Paso Walmart, or other lone gunmen, but the style of action was horrendously similar. The Thai gunman killed innocents at will, and he seemingly wanted to glorify his activities by streaming his murders live on Facebook, before the platform pulled down his profile. Yet Facebook waited around five hours to take down the gunman’s profile, a long time lag. The rampage also raised several other questions. Some Thais criticized the prime minister and other cabinet members for their seeming inability to console the country, instead seeming more focused on inserting themselves the news coverage. It also was a reminder than even though the Royal Thai Army is the dominant institution in the kingdom, has ruled politics directly or indirectly for many years, and has boosted its budget in recent years, it often seems unable to securely store its weapons. (It also, as the Associated Press reported, had to rely on “a journalist, a drone operator for a local TV news channel” to help find the gunman after the security forces could not locate his position in the mall). In Thailand’s south, insurgents have broken into Royal Thai Army weapons depots and stolen caches of arms, some of which they then use against army soldiers. James Buchanan, a PhD candidate at the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong, notes that in 2004 about four hundred rifles were stolen from an army depot in Narathiwat, in the south, and in 2010 about six thousand rifles, as well as explosives, were stolen from an army base in Phatthalung. These were just a few of the cases of weapons being pilfered. And here again, in the Thai northeast, the shooter was able to get weapons at an army outpost before heading into Korat to kill. Facing a shocked populace and scorn on social media and in the press for the army’s poor security protocols, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has now ordered a review of the security of Thai armories, admitting poor security of military weapons made the massacre worse. A few weeks before the massacre, the Thai army commander had given a media interview in which he said he had ordered all units to protect their weapons—although he seemingly meant protect them from political opponents of the military, not the army itself. General Apirat Kongsompong, in that interview, told the Bangkok Post that “All weapons must be kept under good care and ready for use … The army will never let ill-minded people steal them.” After the massacre, army spokesman Winthai Suvaree told reporters that the incident was “unprecedented.” Indeed, this style of mass shooting was unprecedented in the kingdom, but the army’s lax control of its own weapons was not.

The coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, China, continues to spread around the globe. New cases are being discovered every day. This past week, the first domestically transmitted cases were reported in Japan, in the United States and in Germany. New cases also recently emerged in Singapore, the Philippines, India and other countries. In light of those developments, the World Health Organization declared the virus a global emergency and the U.S. State Department warned Americans not to travel to China. The downside of intense China links The nations of Southeast Asia have extensive trade, transport and border links to China. It was thus no surprise that the region was one of the first outside of China and Hong Kong to face coronavirus cases. It is highly probable that no level of regional preparation would have stopped some spread of the virus. Southeast Asia is one of the biggest tourism destinations for Chinese travelers and, because of the Chinese New Year’s holiday, many people had already left Wuhan before the city began to shut down. It certainly did not help that the Chinese authorities were initially slow to release information to other countries. Only Singapore gets the job done But even if the Chinese side had been far more circumspect, the fact remains that several Southeast Asian governments have responded poorly to the spreading pandemic. This, in turn, has raised the risk of larger outbreaks in their countries. In fact, many Southeast Asian governments, with the exception of Singapore, have not responded effectively. Singapore, of course, is not only just a city state, but also very rich by comparison to all its neighbors and has an extensive track record in organized public health campaigns. ASEAN’s poorer cousins Not all of Singapore’s poorer cousins are fully at fault. Some regional states, like Cambodia and Vietnam, have limited public health resources. The areas of mainland Southeast Asia which are near the Chinese border are by their nature very porous when it comes to human flows. Moreover, in some cases like the Myanmar-China border, those places are not even under central government control. As it happens, Myanmar has been lucky to date as it has not yet had a confirmed case, although cases have been confirmed in Cambodia and Vietnam. Authoritarianism vs. public health But caution as to the actual factual situation is warranted. Mainland Southeast Asian states that are authoritarian are not used to sharing information. In fact, the authoritarian governments in mainland Southeast Asia worry that any transparency will spark public anger. Indeed, they are often more afraid of their own publics than of an outbreak of the coronavirus. Understandably enough, their inability to share information, as well as the lack of urgency in putting in place effective control measures, is scaring their citizens. The attempt to engage in information control is also making it more likely that the virus will spread. Under pressure, in order to combat the coronavirus more effectively, Vietnam this week finally took some tougher measures. It shut part of its land border with China and cracked down significantly on tourism from China. The wealthier cousins Even in wealthier Southeast Asian states, the response often has been ineffectual and slow. Indonesian authorities have dragged their feet. The country’s health minister Terawan Agus Putranto affected a strange air of nonchalance about the virus. He told the public, “Don’t be anxious. Just enjoy it” (although he seemed to mean enjoy life, not enjoy the virus). He also reminded Indonesians to pray and to think good thoughts. (At least he also told his fellow Indonesians to wash their hands). Thailand flunks the test But Thailand has been the prime example of a Southeast Asian government flunking the Coronavirus test. The kingdom, whose tourism economy relies heavily on Chinese visitors and whose biggest companies have extensive trade and investment links with China, now has the most cases of the virus of any country other than China. All of these cases are Chinese visitors, but a local outbreak is possible. Thailand moved slowly to shut down links to China, probably for fear of hurting diplomatic ties with Beijing and undermining a lucrative tourism connection. The government also dragged its feet on establishing information centers to teach the Thai people about the virus. It also failed to pass out pertinent information about protection at all. The probable cause for this stance is that, although Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s government is technically democratically elected, it was effectively installed in power by the 2014 coup regime. It thus only has a narrow mandate. Prayuth remains less popular with the public than the leading opposition leader, and his coalition only took control of parliament following extensive irregularities during and after last year’s election. Even with the power of the military behind him, Prayuth’s own coalition remains unwieldy. Self-defeating information policies When it has informed the public, the Thai government often has put out misinformation that confused people or underestimated the virus. Government officials seemed angered that they even had to be transparent about how they were handling the outbreak. The results have been scary. Thai authorities are warning that there could be virus outbreaks in big tourist centers, like Bangkok and Phuket, which would quickly lead to a spike in cases. When Prime Minister Prayuth came down sick earlier this week, his health minister even rushed to assuage concerns that the he had come down with the coronavirus. As the virus spreads, the kingdom’s initial fumble could cost it dearly.

The coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, China, continues to spread around the globe. New cases are being discovered every day. Last week, the first domestically transmitted cases were reported in Japan, in the United States and in Germany. On Sunday, the Philippines reported the first confirmed death from the virus outside of China. The nations of Southeast Asia have extensive trade, transport and border links to China, and the region is a major travel destination for Chinese tourists, particular during Lunar New Year.  It was thus no surprise that the region was one of the first outside of China and Hong Kong to face coronavirus cases. Nonetheless, multiple several Southeast Asian governments have responded poorly to the spreading pandemic. Thailand in particular has bungled the response, but it is hardly unique. These failures, in turn, have raised the risk of larger outbreaks in their countries. For more on my analysis of how Southeast Asian states are responding to the outbreak, see my new piece in the Globalist.

This week, Thailand’s constitutional court found Thailand’s Future Forward Party, one of the two most prominent opposition parties, not guilty of conspiring to overthrow the monarchy. This verdict kept Future Forward from being disbanded—for now. The evidence against Future Forward was, shall we say, slight. The case that it was trying to overthrow the monarchy was based in part on bizarre, interpretive readings of Future Forward’s party platform and even its logo, mixed in with a stew of allegations about some Future Forward members’ comments on Facebook and other platforms. But the court’s decision does not put Future Forward in the clear. Far from it. Its leader, Thanathorn Juangroonruangkit, poses the clearest challenge to the ruling Palang Pracharat party and to the military. There are more than twenty cases still pending against Future Forward, including a major case that came before the Election Commission and now heads to the constitutional court. If recent history holds, the party will eventually be banned somehow. So, Thailand’s treadmill will continue running in place. If Future Forward is eventually banned, public frustration will continue to mount, especially among the young. The military and its allies appear to be using a strategy against Future Forward that they have utilized since the early 2000s, against any parties that threatened the army. For more than a decade, the military’s strategy against Puea Thai (and its predecessors in name), the other large opposition party, was to use the courts and bureaucratic agencies to harass and ban Puea Thai politicians or disband parties, while also courting some Puea Thai defectors, trying to entice them to break away and form a government with other, more pro-military parties. After overseeing a post-coup rewrite of the Thai constitution in a way that, by shifting the electoral system, seemed to make it harder for any one major opposition force to emerge, the army probably thought it was in the clear. It only had to continue to deal with Puea Thai, an opponent whose power had been whittled over the years. Yet Future Forward emerged from the election last year as a powerful force, and has more momentum as a locus of opposition than Puea Thai. Its strong electoral showing shocked the army and its proxy party. Future Forward’s leader, Thanathorn, presents a more appealing face to many young voters than Puea Thai’s leaders, tied to over a decade of political battling and inexorably linked to the Shinawatra family. In December, a leading Thai research organization, the Nida poll, found that a plurality of respondents thought Thanathorn was best suited to be prime minister, more so than the current prime minister, former coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha. Future Forward has been able to put together large street rallies, on short notice. And in some ways Future Forward is more willing to take on the army than Puea Thai (and its similar, predecessor parties) were. Future Forward has openly called for reforming the Royal Thai Army to make it a more professional body that operates under civilian rule and does not meddle in politics—which is what the Royal Thai Army really does best. Puea Thai and its predecessors focused more on placing party allies and Shinawatra allies in the top ranks of the military than trying to reform the Royal Thai Army. (However, in the run-up to the 2019 election, Puea Thai focused more on military reform, probably in part because Future Forward had made reform a theme, and the concept seemed popular with the public.) The army and its party, Palang Pracharat, do not know any other strategies for dealing with opposition. So, it is highly likely that, via one of the court cases, Future Forward will be disbanded, and Thanathorn hit with more punishment than already has been levied against him. (He has been prevented from taking his seat in parliament in a different court case.) The military will hope that, with Future Forward blocked and perhaps even disbanded, public opinion will eventually sour on the party. Future Forward did lose a by-election in October, perhaps in part because the party could get nothing done in the current political climate. But the fact that, even as Puea Thai’s star wanes, opposition to the military and its proxies has remained solid suggests that if Future Forward is destroyed, the vacuum left will be filled by another opposition force.

In a country ruled for much of the 2010s by a repressive military junta, and where information about powerful actors can be dangerous to dig up, Khao Sod has built a reputation as one of the most respected news outlets in Thailand. Although Khao Sod is a mass market daily with a broad readership, it is known for aggressive reporting. It has hired reporters like Pravit Rojanaphruk, one of the most fearless writers in the country. Pravit resigned in 2015 from his former employer, The Nation newspaper, after being detained by the Thai army for an “attitude adjustment session” for the “offense” of writing critically about the junta. (He also claimed in a tweet that he had been essentially fired by The Nation, and that management had asked him to resign to spare The Nation from more military pressure.) Khao Sod still hired him. Khao Sod is part of the bigger Matichon Group, also known for its quality, independent journalism. Matichon’s weekly magazine, heavy on politics, is as much a must-read for Thai politicians and other Bangkok political influencers as Politico’s top stories are in Washington. Khao Sod also produces an English language website that publishes tough investigative reporting, even on sensitive topics like the military and the monarchy. Yet this reputation for quality, independent journalism did not stop Khao Sod and Matichon Group from partnering with state media from a country with one of the most repressive media environments in the world. In 2019, as Foreign Policy has reported, Khao Sod and Matichon announced a partnership with Xinhua, and Khao Sod began running Xinhua articles. Among the first Xinhua pieces Khao Sod ran, Foreign Policy noted, were articles on the Hong Kong protests that portrayed the protestors as tools of Western agitators and an article saying that China’s Xinjiang province as a place where “equality, solidarity and harmony among ethnic groups and religions have prevailed, and people are enjoying peace and stability.” After the respected Khao Sod and Matichon Group inked a content sharing deal with Xinhua, other Thai news outlets followed suit. By November 2019, as Khao Sod itself reported, outlets including Thai state broadcaster NBT, the publication Manager Online, a mass market outlet with a smaller following than Khao Sod, and Voice Online, the website of one the most progressive, toughest television stations in Thailand, had signed deals with Xinhua. (Voice TV has proven so critical of the Thai military that the armed forces had repeatedly banned Voice TV from the airwaves for brief periods of time.) In total, by the end of the year twelve Thai language outlets had signed content sharing deals with Xinhua. Meanwhile, The Nation had its own content sharing deal with Chinese state media. The Nation participates in the Asia News Network, a media colloquium in which more than twenty news outlets, from across the region, reprint stories from each other. Most, though not all, of the Asia News Network members are not owned or controlled by governments, and are not in any way state media. And yet all of these media outlets, many of which are prestigious organizations, share content with China Daily, a member of the Asia News Network. They regularly pick up content from China Daily, even though China Daily is a state media outlet with none of the editorial independence enjoyed by most of the other Asia News Network outlets. Some Thai outlets touted the deals with Xinhua, although Khao Sod and Matichon executives seemed more reluctant to publicize these agreements. “Thai media [will] receive news directly from a Chinese news agency, instead of a second hand information from Western media only,” Chaiwat Wanichwattana, a journalist who has worked at the business outlet Than Sethakit and heads the Thai-Chinese Journalists Association, said proudly at a discussion timed to some of the signings. “This kind of cooperation is most welcome.” The Thai media executives who attended the discussion with Chaiwat seemed happy about how Chinese state media stories performed on their sites, too, according to a report in Khao Sod. Some executives reportedly said that, since they started picking up Xinhua copy, Thai readers had displayed a growing interest in stories about China’s domestic affairs. Bhuvadej Chirabandhu, from the Thai site Sanook, another of the media outlets that had started picking up Xinhua copy, said that 1.4 million of Sanook’s readers had read Xinhua content posted on its site, according to a Khao Sod report. Given how many Thai news outlets are signing up for Xinhua partnerships, the Chinese government surely is happy as well.

Earlier this week, Thailand’s King Vajiralongkorn stripped his consort of all her titles, claiming that she had been disloyal and was essentially trying to take the place of the king. He had only appointed the consort, Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi, about three months ago. As consort, she was essentially another companion for the king, in addition to his wife. The practice of having an official consort, in addition to one’s wife, had not been in practice in Thailand in a century, since the era of Thailand’s absolute monarchy. In the absolute monarchy period, polygyny was common and monarchs often had many consorts, but that practice of having an official consort had not occurred since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The punishment of Sineenat is about more than her, however. For one, it further suggests that the king potentially desires the powers and privileges of the absolute monarchy period, and does not care if he flaunts them openly. Besides naming (and the removing) an official consort, he also reportedly has taken more personal control of the powerful Crown Property Bureau, defanged his Privy Council of advisors, taken personal control of several units of the Thai military, and intervened more openly in politics. For more on the ways in which Vajiralongkorn has consolidated power, and the dangerous implications, see my new World Politics Review article

Over the past two years, and even as Thailand has made a transition from junta rule to, now, some kind of hybrid rule, following hotly contested but unfair elections, Thai activists living abroad have become increasingly imperiled. After the military took over after a coup in 2014, activism within the kingdom became increasingly perilous, and activists who questioned the monarchy, and lived in Thailand, have been endangered for decades. But in the past two years, the danger seems to have spread. In December 2018, two Thai antimonarchy and antimilitary activists living in exile in Laos were found dead in that country, in extremely mysterious circumstances. Their bodies were fished from the Mekong River. They had been handcuffed and disemboweled and their stomachs packed with concrete. Overall, in 2018 and 2019, multiple antimonarchy dissidents living in Laos have vanished—three supposedly vanished during a trip to Vietnam. Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have expressed extreme concerns that the dissidents who vanished in Vietnam have become victims of enforced disappearances. In 2016 and 2017 other Thai antimonarchy activists had been disappeared in Laos. Another Thai activist known for antimonarchy views sought refuge in Malaysia, but was forcibly repatriated to Thailand earlier this year, where she is likely to face serious charges. The situation for exiled critics of Thailand’s military and monarchy seems to be getting even more dangerous. In July, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a prominent academic, writer, and critic of the military and the monarchy, reported that he was in his bedroom, at night, with his partner, when, according to him, someone broke into their house in Kyoto, Japan, and sprayed Pavin and his partner with some kind of chemical substance. (Full disclosure: Pavin is a friend and a sometime coauthor; he also had his Thai passport revoked five years ago for his criticism of the monarchy and military.) Pavin and his partner, he reports, chased the man away, but they felt a burning on their skin, went to a local hospital, and also contacted the police. The hospital, Pavin reported, told them the chemical was not lethal—but instead some kind of pepper or capsicum spray. Pavin says that he believed he had been followed near his residence before the attack. Kyoto police are reportedly investigating the attack. The Thai government denies that they had any role in the reported attack on Pavin and his partner, but the pattern of increasing pressure on dissidents and activists living in exile is increasingly ominous.

The summit this weekend of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), held in Bangkok, will probably be less contentious than some of the ASEAN summits earlier this decade, when the organization’s divides over China were plainly on view. Still, there are several key issues to follow when the ten leaders meet in the Thai capital. 1. Prayuth Chan-ocha as the chair. Prayuth, newly confirmed as Thailand’s civilian prime minister, will head the meeting, since Thailand holds the rotating chair of ASEAN this year. Thailand has been aggressively advertising the meeting, probably to use it as a sign that Prayuth is in firm command, and that the event will signify his transition from coup leader to civilian leader. Prayuth will get the warm welcome he seeks. Although some other ASEAN leaders may be uncomfortable with a chair who launched a coup against an elected government, ASEAN’s norm of noninterference in other states’ affairs, and the fact that all the leaders probably will have to work with Prayuth for a long time, will muffle any comments about how Prayuth became Thailand’s civilian prime minister. 2. The ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook. The ten ASEAN states will probably approve and reveal a vision for the region called the “ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook,” which will emphasize ASEAN’s centrality to the region—although, the outlook will likely be so vague that it will be hard to glean much more from it. But there are already tensions among key states about aspects of the vision; Singapore reportedly is wary of the concept, which has long been pushed by Indonesia as a counterpart to the regional visions that have been developed by the United States, Australia, France, and Japan, among others. It is possible that these tensions will keep the vision from being revealed at the summit. 3. The ongoing crisis for the Rohingya. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh after ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State; smaller numbers have fled to ASEAN member-states including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Although the issue of whether, and how, Rohingya refugees could be repatriated will definitely be a major area of discussion at the summit, ASEAN states likely will play down any criticism of the Myanmar government, given ASEAN’s usual practice of not harshly criticizing member-states. Thailand’s foreign minister already has said that the group will not be “pointing out who is right or wrong” regarding the Rohingya issue—despite the fact that the UN, and numerous rights agencies, have accused the Myanmar military and government of abetting genocide and crimes against humanity. Indonesian President Joko Widodo likely will push the Myanmar government to make real progress on promoting peace in Rakhine State and ensuring safety for Rohingya returning there; right now, it would be unsafe for Rohingya to return. But he could easily get the cold shoulder from the Myanmar government, which has bristled at even the mildest critiques and suggestions from neighbors. 4. Trade tensions. Although the ASEAN states have few options, they surely will spend considerable time discussing what, if anything, Southeast Asia can do as the region is increasingly caught up by regional trade current, including the escalating trade war between the United States and China. The trade battle has actually had some positive, short-term impacts on ASEAN states like Vietnam, a location that is absorbing outflows of investment leaving China. But overall, an extended trade battle will seriously concern many Southeast Asian states, especially those, like Singapore, whose economies are almost totally trade dependent. The countries likely will discuss the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, but there is little indication the deal will be completed anytime soon; the massive agreement has so many potential stumbling blocks. 5. China. With Thailand as the ASEAN chair, instead of Singapore (last year’s chair) or Vietnam (next year’s chair), China may have more leverage within the group; Thailand and China have much warmer relations than China does with Vietnam or Singapore. When Cambodia was chair, in 2012, Beijing appeared to wield significant leverage over ASEAN meetings. Thailand is far more powerful and independent than Cambodia, but China still likely will have more sway than it did last year or will next year. However, it is unlikely that ASEAN will agree on a proposed South China Sea code of conduct with China during this summit; there remain deep tensions within the organization about the proposed code, and a Chinese vessel just last week rammed a Philippine fishing boat in disputed waters, angering Filipinos.