When a plane carrying Thailand's first batch of COVID-19 vaccines from China's Sinovac landed at an airport here on Wednesday, people waiting on the tarmac cheered and applauded."Thank you to the People's Republic of China for delivering the first batch of vaccines this month and the following batches in the subsequent months," said Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, when he welcomed the vaccines' arrival at the airport.Thailand, known as the Land of Smiles, is heavily reliant on tourism but it recently has seen a drop in tourism due to COVID-19. The country welcomed about 40 million foreign tourists in 2019, but only 6.7 million last year.The arrival of the Sinovac vaccines marks a significant move to jumpstart the vaccination process in Thailand and thus catch up with other member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said Tang Zhimin,  director of China ASEAN Studies at the Bangkok-based Panyapiwat Institute of Management. Elsewhere in the ASEAN region, where COVID-19 has claimed more than 50,000 lives from over 2.4 million cases,countries are placing their trust in China as they have ordered, received or approved the emergency use of Chinese vaccines. Among the biggest takers of the Chinese vaccines is Indonesia, which has ordered a large number of doses of the Sinovac vaccine.On Saturday, Malaysia also received its first delivery of the Sinovac vaccine, days after the country kicked off its inoculation program, which aims to inoculate at least 80 percent of the country's total population. As COVID-19 is still raging and countries around the world are scrambling to obtain vaccines, which are in short supply, China has promised to make Chinese COVID-19 vaccines a global public good.