In Thaksin Shinawatra’s hometown outside Chiang Mai, neighbours say they hope the royal pardon gifted to the tycoon offers Thailand’s most loved – and quite possibly, most loathed – politician a chance to exit the kingdom’s bear-pit politics ahead of his 77th birthday. But after eight months in jail, a coup against his government, a battery of legal cases, threats to his family, assets – and even his life – those hitched to the Shinawatra bandwagon since Thaksin won his first election in 2001...

It was a gesture that was equal parts diplomacy and theatre: Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul coaxing a melody out of a traditional Vietnamese t’rung xylophone at a Hanoi state banquet on Monday. The real music, however, had been made in the meeting rooms. Two days of talks between Anutin and his Vietnamese hosts produced a pledge to nearly double bilateral trade to US$25 billion within four years – and eventually to double it again. Supply chains would be stitched together across...