How Thailand became world’s biggest rice exporter with Hong Kong’s help
- When Asia’s rice basket, Burma, committed economic suicide Thailand took over as No 1 exporter of the grain, and blood ties with Hong Kong traders were key
- Its reign was ended by another economic lurch under Yingluck Shinawatra’s government
Like many successful Sino-Thai businessmen, Vichai Sriprasert was instilled with the Chinese work ethic from a young age.
“My grandmother would say, ‘Be honest, work hard and don’t spend anything,’” Vichai says. The 75-year-old grew up with his grandmother in Bangkok while his parents worked in Ayutthaya province in central Thailand, running the family rice mill.
Despite his grandmother’s maxim, the family was willing to spend money when it came to education, and sent Vichai to the US, where he studied economics at the University of Michigan.
He returned to Thailand to help his father’s rice business in the 1970s. He persuaded his father to switch to exporting parboiled rice, instead of plain white rice or jasmine rice.
“What I learned from school was about product differentiation,” Vichai says. “You have to do something so that your product is not the same as your competitors.”
Parboiled rice has been soaked in hot water, then steamed to make the starches gelatinise in the rice grain, giving it a translucent look and a hard texture that makes it durable.
