These mutual benefits have boosted Thailand’s confidence as it played the game of Great Power politics. At a deeper level, as the regional order has moved away from the use of hard power as seen in the cold war, the rise of china symbolises another softer aspect of diplomacy under the modernised term of “soft power”. China’s growing economic clout simply means business opportunities for Thailand. The thrust for closer economic relation with china has met with an encouraging response from Thailand’s commerce-driven policies and capitalist agenda. The economic rise of china, in particular, has set the tone of Asia’s international affairs in which business interests have priority at the expense of political issues, such as the promotion of democracy and respect for human rights. As a result, the Sino-Thai free trade agreement (FTA), the first between china and a Southeast Asian country, was signed and took effect on 1 October 2003. The FTA, part of “Early Harvest Programme” under the 2010 ASEAN-China FTA, was initiated to slash tariffs for the fruit and vegetable flows in each other’s markets. The thaksin government, the driving force behind the Sino-Thai FTA, claimed that bilateral trade reached us$31 billion, a 23 percent increase in 2007 when compared with that of the previous year.