How did borrowing from Chinese affect the vocabulary of Tai languages?

The influence of Chinese on the vocabulary of Tai languages is complex and has been subject to evolving linguistic interpretation. While it is well-established that Chinese loanwords are abundant in the Central and Northern Tai dialects, the historical direction of these borrowings is a subject of significant scholarly debate.1

Historically, many cultural terms shared between Chinese and Tai were once categorized as Chinese loanwords in Tai. However, modern research suggests that a great many of these shared cultural words may actually be borrowings in the opposite direction—specifically, that Chinese adopted these terms from the Austro-Tai peoples as they expanded and interacted with them. Consequently, rather than a simple one-way influence, the relationship reflects a long history of cultural exchange where both language groups contributed to each other's lexicons.23