We've all seen the huge Chinese tour coaches pull up at certain venues and unload a huge group into a restaurant, show or to follow a flag carrier down Walking Street.
Nothing new here. It has also been common knowledge for a while that a lot of the venues that they stop at are Chinese owned. Prompting discussions about money flowing into the country and being spent only in Chinese owned places and then flowing back out again. Some employees in these venues will be Thai but that's a marginal benefit to the economy.
It seems to be a cultural anomaly that they all want to travel together. Westerners generally travel solo or with a couple of friends. Westerners will also generally spend money all over the place with little care as to who owns what.
What seems to be frustrating the Thai business owners now is the Chinese pushing it a bit too far. It's becoming a bit too blatant. Chinese companies now want to gobble up the entire value chain and take over the coach companies and expand to create more Chinese only venues.
The Thai restaurant owners are getting particularly annoyed. As they see coaches full of customers arrive that they never see a single baht from.

You can read more about the frustration on this AseanNow forum post.
Thailand does a good job compared to many countries of trying to stop rich foreigners buying up all the land. Only Thai nationals can own title deeds to land which keeps the prices reasonable. Similarly, to operate a company in Thailand it needs to be 51% owned by Thai nationals. As with all these laws there are loopholes that are exploited to get around the protections.
Maybe we'll see a clampdown on the Chinese trying to monopolize their own tourists spending in Thailand. Surely the tour attendees would benefit from experiencing some real Thai culture rather than a national outpost on a foreign piece of land.
As for us expats we'll go on as normal. We might drink in what look to be foreign owned establishments but we all know behind the scenes the Thai wife is really in charge.
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