In Thailand, Viet Nam and China, early commitments to providing basic health care, education, and other public services played an important role in rapidly rising incomes and living standards. Thailand made its first attempts at reducing rural poverty in 1980 using rural employment generation programmes and basic needs policy. In addition, it launched an agricultural production restructuring policy, which reduced the production of crops for which prices were declining, namely rice and cassava. More recently, Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration in 2001 marked a return to rural-oriented programmes such as debt deferment, the provision of cheap credit and rice price guarantees to raise farmers’ welfare.