Pravit Rojanaphruk is of the opinion that the PRC’s ambassador to Thailand should “stop telling Thais what to think and do” (NikkeiAsia, August 11, 2026).
Ambassador Zhang Jianwei (shown above)
has asked Thai people to stop using the term “gray Chinese” (jin thao) because it is allegedly discriminatory and paints all Chinese people with the same brush. So what happens next? Should the entire country comply with the ambassador’s request?
At the very least, future governments will probably avoid using the term out of deference to China’s power. But what will they use instead? Chinese fraudsters? Chinese criminal gangs? Groups or networks of Chinese nationals engaged in illegal or law-evading activities?
And if journalists ask about “gray Chinese” in the future, will officials simply pretend not to understand the term?
What the Chinese ambassador should understand is that “gray Chinese” is neither a slur nor a blanket label for all Chinese people. It refers specifically to Chinese nationals involved in criminal activities—whether transnational or not—including scammers, those who kidnap fellow Chinese in Thailand for ransom, people running illegal businesses in Thailand and so on.
There are quite a number of such cases, and they make headlines almost every week.
Rojanaphruk errs if he supposes that Ambassador Zhang Jianwei does not already understand that the term which he is trying to render politically incorrect, “gray Chinese,” implies no blanket indictment of all Chinese. The ambassador is not confused or underinformed. He is lying. For CCP spokesmen and, to use a word loosely, diplomats, playing dumb on a wide range of subjects is standard operating procedure. One reason for doing so is to try to put people on the defensive for stating the obvious. (See the screeching about “Taiwan independence separatists” and “independence diehards.”)
It is also erroneous to suppose that if “gray” means “criminal,” “No one would think that the Chinese ambassador himself and his Chinese embassy officials, Chinese executives at BYD, Chinese celebrities such as Fan Bingbing or Jackie Chan, or President Xi Jinping are ‘gray Chinese.’ ”
Rojanaphruk should have considered his counterexamples a little more carefully. Not all persons on his list are off the hook.
Let’s assume that the BYD execs and the celebrities do not engage in any criminal activities. They are supporters of a criminal enterprise, though, to the extent that they support the Chinese Communist Party.
Fan, Chan, Wang, Zhang, Xi
Fan Bingbing has said that “Without the good policies of the party and the state, without the love and protection of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing,” perhaps more to appease the authorities than to express her real viewpoint.
Jackie Chan is on record saying that “the Chinese Communist Party is really so magnificent. What the Party says, what it promises, it doesn’t need a hundred years to accomplish—it will definitely accomplish it in just a few decades. I want to be a Party member!”
The founder and CEO of the conglomerate BYD, Wang Chuanfu, is in fact a member of the Chinese Communist Party; though he doesn’t seem to be on record, at least not the English-language record, expressing such enthusiasm for the Party as expressed by Fan Bingbing or Jackie Chan.
The gray gets much darker when we’re talking about the Chinese ambassador to Thailand, who works directly for the criminal enterprise and does its political bidding, and Xi Jinping, the leader of the criminal enterprise.
Also see:
Thai PBS World: “Chinese envoy asks Thais not to use ‘grey Chinese’ term”
