1 00:00:01,140 --> 00:00:05,130 The following is part of Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture 2 00:00:05,130 --> 00:00:09,480 Series under the Cornell East Asia program. The arguments and viewpoints of 3 00:00:09,480 --> 00:00:13,960 this talk belong solely to the speaker. We hope you enjoy. 4 00:00:13,960 --> 00:00:17,480 Thank you very much, Professor McNeal. 5 00:00:17,540 --> 00:00:27,240 It's a great honor for me to be here, be a part of this lecture series and thank 6 00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:35,910 you so much everyone for showing up on this nice Monday afternoon. I'm here to 7 00:00:35,910 --> 00:00:40,380 talk about the nationalizing of the diaspora identity 8 00:00:40,380 --> 00:00:44,850 in the China rising century and over lunch today 9 00:00:44,850 --> 00:00:51,480 Robyn did mention to me that there was some difficulties in translating this 10 00:00:51,480 --> 00:00:56,730 into Chinese and come to think of it I was like oh actually there are quite a 11 00:00:56,730 --> 00:01:01,440 few terms that are used in this context right you have the Hua Qiao, you have the Hua Yi, you have the Hai Wai Hua Ren and 12 00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:07,140 and diaspora itself 13 00:01:07,140 --> 00:01:13,049 actually actually comes from a very different ethnic kind of background 14 00:01:13,049 --> 00:01:20,729 right. It started being used with the case of the Jews so in fact 15 00:01:20,729 --> 00:01:30,680 it is quite a confusing title indeed so I will try to make this as 16 00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:38,340 least confusing as possible. I love this picture. It's going to be the background 17 00:01:38,340 --> 00:01:46,909 of all my slides. It's a picture of the well I mean it's quite amazing this is 18 00:01:46,909 --> 00:01:52,740 in the background there, this is a gigantic dragon building. There's a 19 00:01:52,740 --> 00:01:57,060 museum inside of it. It is called the Museum of the Descendants of the Dragon. 20 00:01:57,060 --> 00:02:01,170 It is an Ethnic Chinese Museum in the province of Suphanburi. 21 00:02:01,170 --> 00:02:06,420 There's a big sign in front of it it's the Shrine of the City Pillars of Suphanburi Province. 22 00:02:14,420 --> 00:02:19,790 So, in fact, the building, the establishment of the Dragon Museum has sort of like dwarfed the city 23 00:02:19,790 --> 00:02:24,650 pillar shrine and I think it says a lot about nationalizing the diaspora identity. 24 00:02:24,650 --> 00:02:31,569 Okay so what exactly do I mean when they say nationalizing the diaspora 25 00:02:31,569 --> 00:02:35,900 identity. Of course here we're talking about the case of the ethnic Chinese 26 00:02:35,900 --> 00:02:40,700 community in Thailand but then even knowing that I'm talking about the 27 00:02:40,700 --> 00:02:47,450 ethnic Chinese community in Thailand could still make it confusing right so 28 00:02:47,450 --> 00:02:55,730 I'm talking about three specific cases that I have seen happening in the past 29 00:02:55,730 --> 00:03:02,080 20 years and I find quite intriguing and I think it says quite a bit about 30 00:03:02,080 --> 00:03:08,660 Chineseness and Chinese identity among the ethnic Chinese in Thailand and I 31 00:03:08,660 --> 00:03:13,459 think it says quite a bit about both the Thai nation and the Chinese nation and 32 00:03:13,459 --> 00:03:19,070 in this case meaning the People's Republic of China. So the first 33 00:03:19,070 --> 00:03:26,209 case is that you have the ethnic Chinese in Thailand especially the ones in 34 00:03:26,209 --> 00:03:38,299 Bangkok becoming increasingly royalist, patriotic, pro-dynastic. If any of you 35 00:03:38,299 --> 00:03:45,350 might have been following the intriguing happenings in Thai politics you would 36 00:03:45,350 --> 00:03:51,890 see that there has been an ongoing struggle between I would say the 37 00:03:51,890 --> 00:03:58,310 Royalist Camp and the Anti-Royalist camp and and we see a large portion of the 38 00:03:58,310 --> 00:04:03,440 ethnic Chinese community becoming more and more ultra-Royalists so in that 39 00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:08,359 sense you might say that there's a move towards nationalizing the 40 00:04:08,359 --> 00:04:14,569 the Chinese diaspora towards the Thai nation so nationalizing 41 00:04:14,569 --> 00:04:19,639 towards the Thai nation. At the same time I see another trend 42 00:04:19,639 --> 00:04:24,740 happening in the past 20 years - the ethnic Chinese overtly identifying with 43 00:04:24,740 --> 00:04:29,470 the People's Republic of China. This is also quite interesting 44 00:04:29,470 --> 00:04:39,469 in that when I was doing my, well I mean when I started to get into 45 00:04:39,469 --> 00:04:45,110 this academic endeavor of researching the overseas Chinese in 46 00:04:45,110 --> 00:04:51,469 Southeast Asia in the end of the 90s you still talked about the ethnic Chinese in 47 00:04:51,469 --> 00:04:58,189 Thailand as dialect groups or hometown associations so they were very localized 48 00:04:58,189 --> 00:05:03,379 identities. You have the Hokkien. You have the Hainan. You have the Teochew 49 00:05:03,379 --> 00:05:08,960 people but increasingly I think since the turn of the century the ethnic 50 00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:13,389 Chinese museums that have popped up many of them throughout the country have been 51 00:05:13,389 --> 00:05:18,830 identifying themselves more closely to the People's Republic of China, more 52 00:05:18,830 --> 00:05:23,990 closely as an extension of the Chinese nation so they don't so everything is in 53 00:05:23,990 --> 00:05:30,860 Mandarin basically and Putonghua even and they present themselves as the link 54 00:05:30,860 --> 00:05:36,319 between Thailand and the People's Republic of China and and this goes 55 00:05:36,319 --> 00:05:42,860 across the board both in the yellow camp or the Royalist Chinese camp and the 56 00:05:42,860 --> 00:05:47,300 Non-Royalist Chinese camp as well. Everyone is trying to align with the 57 00:05:47,300 --> 00:05:53,409 People's Republic of China so this in a way I think is a trend towards 58 00:05:53,409 --> 00:05:59,930 nationalizing towards the Chinese nation right and the last thing is very 59 00:05:59,930 --> 00:06:05,810 interesting especially with the influx of the Chinese tourists into 60 00:06:05,810 --> 00:06:11,529 Thailand in the past decade especially after the blockbuster 61 00:06:11,529 --> 00:06:22,159 film "Lost in Thailand", you have a large influx of mainland 62 00:06:22,159 --> 00:06:26,569 Chinese tourists coming into Thailand and that has become a huge part of the 63 00:06:26,569 --> 00:06:35,740 Thai economy in the recent years and so you see a lot of kind of tourism, the 64 00:06:35,740 --> 00:06:40,900 marketing of Thai culture, Thai identity, Thainess whatever, is skewing more 65 00:06:40,900 --> 00:06:47,690 towards selling to the mainland Chinese tourists and you start 66 00:06:47,690 --> 00:06:52,400 seeing in some cases and we'll talk about one prominent case today as well, 67 00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:58,970 the ethnic Chinese identity actually overtaking the traditional Thai, what we 68 00:06:58,970 --> 00:07:03,910 perceive as traditional Thai identity, that is this Hindu, Buddhist, animist 69 00:07:03,910 --> 00:07:13,660 cultural aspects are being taken over by ethnic Chinese cultural identity for the 70 00:07:13,660 --> 00:07:20,210 for the purpose of tourism and also for the purpose of attracting Chinese 71 00:07:20,210 --> 00:07:26,720 investors in Thailand so in that sense it's kind of like the Thai nation 72 00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:37,150 is somehow signifying itself or self- signification so that it can jump on the 73 00:07:37,150 --> 00:07:43,220 China rising bandwagon so this third case we're not exactly sure 74 00:07:43,220 --> 00:07:48,200 if it is a case of nationalizing towards the Chinese nation or towards 75 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:53,930 Thai nation, nationalizing for the purposes of the Thai nation in a Chinese 76 00:07:53,930 --> 00:08:02,300 way which is quite confusing but I think it will become clear as I go on so just 77 00:08:02,300 --> 00:08:08,090 to give you some examples, some pictures of what I'm talking about in these three 78 00:08:08,090 --> 00:08:19,840 major points. This Yaowarat Chinatown Heritage Center in Bangkok. 79 00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:28,880 It was founded in 2010. It is, I would say, the most royalist museum in Thailand 80 00:08:28,880 --> 00:08:33,560 and Thailand is a country where most museums are royalist so that's saying a 81 00:08:33,560 --> 00:08:38,090 lot and you could see here is that -that picture shouldn't come out very well 82 00:08:38,090 --> 00:08:43,130 because of the lighting- but basically that's the entrance into the museum. It's 83 00:08:43,130 --> 00:08:51,230 in a very prominent temple at the edge of Chinatown - Wat Traimit - and in front 84 00:08:51,230 --> 00:08:55,220 is a big portrait of King Rama IX - the late King Rama IX, 85 00:08:55,220 --> 00:09:00,260 who just passed away last year and inside basically it tells the 86 00:09:00,260 --> 00:09:06,440 story of the Chinese community in Thailand and its connections with the 87 00:09:06,440 --> 00:09:12,710 with the monarchy from the very first exhibit to the very end, it's basically 88 00:09:12,710 --> 00:09:18,700 the narrative; the narrative is basically that oh, at the end of the 19th century there was 89 00:09:18,700 --> 00:09:25,580 war and unrest and famine and whatever in China and so they came to Thailand 90 00:09:25,580 --> 00:09:32,690 back then known as the Siam and then they because of the unbounded benevolence of 91 00:09:32,690 --> 00:09:38,350 the ruling dynasty they were able to prosper and everything and so it was 92 00:09:38,350 --> 00:09:43,010 they became rich and everything and everything's good. 93 00:09:43,010 --> 00:09:48,710 Thailand is great and the Royal Family has always been kind to the Chinese and 94 00:09:48,710 --> 00:09:54,110 all that so that's the general narrative of this museum extremely extremely 95 00:09:54,110 --> 00:09:59,930 royalist and there's this room towards the end of the exhibition. There are 96 00:09:59,930 --> 00:10:05,150 six rooms altogether so this is room number five and this is very interesting 97 00:10:05,150 --> 00:10:12,230 because it says a lot about how the Chinese in Bangkok Chinatown try to 98 00:10:12,230 --> 00:10:19,190 present themself. This room is called Thai Rom Paparami which 99 00:10:19,190 --> 00:10:26,320 is kind of like underneath the benevolence of or the charismatic 100 00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:34,060 mercy of the King or something I don't know, it's very without translation anyway 101 00:10:34,060 --> 00:10:43,130 it's an oval shape room and at the end of the exit there's an image of King Rama the ninth 102 00:10:43,130 --> 00:10:51,110 - King Bhumibol, the late King and on the two sides there are two 103 00:10:51,110 --> 00:11:02,360 sets of pictures - framed pictures - so on your left here would be pictures of the 104 00:11:02,360 --> 00:11:05,810 Thai Royal Family, high-ranking members, of the Thai Royal Family - the King, the 105 00:11:05,810 --> 00:11:10,170 Queen, the Crown Prince, the Princess and their 106 00:11:10,170 --> 00:11:15,720 state visits to the People's Republic of China and leaders of the People's 107 00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:21,540 Republic of China visiting Thailand would be on the left side of the wall. On 108 00:11:21,540 --> 00:11:27,090 the right side of the wall is our images of high-ranking members of the Royal, the 109 00:11:27,090 --> 00:11:32,370 Thai Royal Family visiting Chinatown, doing different things, joining in the 110 00:11:32,370 --> 00:11:37,110 Chinese New Year festivities and things so basically this is, this is a statement 111 00:11:37,110 --> 00:11:44,910 and I take that the Chinese community in Bangkok are kind of the link between the 112 00:11:44,910 --> 00:11:50,970 royal family and the People's Republic of China so this is, this is how, you know, 113 00:11:50,970 --> 00:11:56,070 in one way it would seem to be very royallist, nationalist in the Thai sense 114 00:11:56,070 --> 00:12:00,870 but in another way it's also expressing itself as an extension of the People's 115 00:12:00,870 --> 00:12:08,640 Republic of China and we see this very clearly in the Yaowarat here in this center, 116 00:12:08,640 --> 00:12:16,620 in this Chinatown Heritage Center. This is my favorite picture, I don't know if it 117 00:12:16,620 --> 00:12:21,180 would be possible but I would like this to be the cover of my book if it ever 118 00:12:21,180 --> 00:12:28,490 sees the light of day so this is from one of the exhibits in the 119 00:12:28,490 --> 00:12:35,340 Yaowarat Chinatown Heritage Center and it's basically a big room and in the 120 00:12:35,340 --> 00:12:41,280 middle there's a model of Yaowarat Road which is basically the center of 121 00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:46,260 Chinatown and it was built in the late 19th century by King Chulalongkorn Rama 122 00:12:46,260 --> 00:12:51,330 the Fifth who is the namesake of my University and then around that model of 123 00:12:51,330 --> 00:12:58,290 Chinatown you have small models of the everyday life of the Chinese in 124 00:12:58,290 --> 00:13:06,450 Chinatown and this is one of them. You can see it's a shrine in the back and then 125 00:13:06,450 --> 00:13:13,290 you have a market, a marketplace, and people are shopping there. I really like 126 00:13:13,290 --> 00:13:16,260 this picture because you can see me in the back with a hat - I'm 127 00:13:16,260 --> 00:13:19,970 taking a picture - but even more interesting 128 00:13:19,970 --> 00:13:28,249 that you can see reflected in the glass back there sitting back there is the 129 00:13:28,249 --> 00:13:33,559 portrait of King Chulalongkorn because at the far side of the the end of the 130 00:13:33,559 --> 00:13:39,889 room there's a whole story about how he decided to build, order the construction 131 00:13:39,889 --> 00:13:46,489 of this modern road through that became the center of Chinatown so this is very 132 00:13:46,489 --> 00:13:51,829 much I think this picture says a lot about the relationship, the patronage of 133 00:13:51,829 --> 00:14:03,519 the Thai royal family towards the ethnic Chinese. Okay, there's another museum. This is 134 00:14:03,519 --> 00:14:08,299 the Udonthani Confucius museum. I think it changed its 135 00:14:08,299 --> 00:14:14,929 name recently into the Udonthani Thai Chinese Cultural Center but when it 136 00:14:14,929 --> 00:14:21,139 started out it was called the Confucius Museum. They say it's also known it's 137 00:14:21,139 --> 00:14:27,169 connected to the Pu-Ya shrine, which is, Pu-Ya is like grandfather grandmother so 138 00:14:27,169 --> 00:14:31,189 essentially it's like the ancestral shrine of the province of Udonthani. 139 00:14:31,189 --> 00:14:35,929 Udonthani is a province in the northeast of Thailand close to the 140 00:14:35,929 --> 00:14:42,470 border with Laos. It is known as the Red Shirt capital of Thailand. 141 00:14:42,470 --> 00:14:49,939 What does Red Shirt capital mean? It means that in the recent struggle, political 142 00:14:49,939 --> 00:14:54,619 struggle that has been going on for the past decade between the 143 00:14:54,619 --> 00:14:59,299 yellow which is essentially the Royalist group and the Red Shirt 144 00:14:59,299 --> 00:15:05,449 which were against military dictatorship the coup and all that. 145 00:15:05,449 --> 00:15:08,979 Some say the Red Shirt support the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. 146 00:15:08,979 --> 00:15:15,199 We can go on and on about this but the point being that Udonthani 147 00:15:15,199 --> 00:15:20,359 a lot of the red shirts are known to come from the north and the northeast and 148 00:15:20,359 --> 00:15:26,359 Udonthani is one of the biggest cities in the northeast and so it's kind of 149 00:15:26,359 --> 00:15:34,140 like the base for the non Royalists ethnic Chinese in Thailand so I visited 150 00:15:34,140 --> 00:15:39,690 this museum and I found that it was very different from the Museum in 151 00:15:39,690 --> 00:15:44,040 Bangkok in that there was very little reference and in fact the first time I 152 00:15:44,040 --> 00:15:49,230 went before the coup there was no reference to the royal family at all 153 00:15:49,230 --> 00:15:55,920 but after the coup they kind of mentioned that, you know, the daughter of 154 00:15:55,920 --> 00:16:01,170 the Crown Prince who is now the king once visited this place but aside from 155 00:16:01,170 --> 00:16:07,769 that there's very little mention of the royal family but they present themselves 156 00:16:07,769 --> 00:16:13,860 very much in connection with the People's Republic of China so they take 157 00:16:13,860 --> 00:16:23,070 pride of course they're all about Confucian filial piety virtues 158 00:16:23,070 --> 00:16:28,860 according to Confucius teachings because of course it's connected to the 159 00:16:28,860 --> 00:16:36,329 provinces' main ancestor shrine and they also pride themselves as 160 00:16:36,329 --> 00:16:43,529 being the sponsor of the first and only full Chinese Orchestra so here you have 161 00:16:43,529 --> 00:16:50,790 pictures on your right side here of the orchestra performing on the Great Wall 162 00:16:50,790 --> 00:16:57,089 of China so this is one of the top ten Chinese orchestras in the world. Before I 163 00:16:57,089 --> 00:17:02,850 visited this museum I have never known that there was a World Championship 164 00:17:02,850 --> 00:17:10,709 Competition of Chinese orchestras, one of the top ten bands were from in fact 165 00:17:10,709 --> 00:17:17,970 from Thailand and this picture in the middle here is when the Chinese 166 00:17:17,970 --> 00:17:25,169 Orchestra went to receive dignitaries from the People's Republic of China so 167 00:17:25,169 --> 00:17:30,110 every time the Prime Minister of the President I think this was 168 00:17:30,110 --> 00:17:36,840 Jiang Zemin visiting Thailand so every time that a prominent Chinese PRC Prime 169 00:17:36,840 --> 00:17:42,240 Minister or PRC president came to visit Thailand they would have to 170 00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:47,610 send this Orchestra from Udon to receive these people 171 00:17:47,610 --> 00:17:54,230 at the airport and perform for them right so once again you see a very clear 172 00:17:54,230 --> 00:18:01,950 alignment with the People's Republic of China okay. I just thought that this was 173 00:18:01,950 --> 00:18:08,100 kind of funny and now everyone thinks that Confucius looks like Chow Yun Fat in 174 00:18:08,100 --> 00:18:14,670 the movie that was recently made right so how this Udonthani 175 00:18:14,670 --> 00:18:20,550 Chinese Museum was set up is that the upper level is the history of the 176 00:18:20,550 --> 00:18:23,940 Chinese community in the Northeast especially in Udonthani and the 177 00:18:23,940 --> 00:18:29,760 important personalities in the community and all that and then the lower level of 178 00:18:29,760 --> 00:18:34,410 the museum is about Confucius so this is the story of the life of Confucius and 179 00:18:34,410 --> 00:18:40,290 the Confucius teachings and like the Confucius Institute and like 180 00:18:40,290 --> 00:18:47,850 the leaders of the Udon Chinese communities visiting important sites 181 00:18:47,850 --> 00:18:52,850 connected to Confucius in mainland China and of course there's a life-size 182 00:18:52,850 --> 00:18:58,280 wax figure here of Confucius who looks like Chow Yun Fat 183 00:18:58,280 --> 00:19:03,870 so this is Udon, very red too in the back. 184 00:19:03,870 --> 00:19:11,730 The last case here, my favorite case, is the Museum of the Descendants of the 185 00:19:11,730 --> 00:19:19,770 Dragon in Suphanburi province and it is connected to the city pillar shrine of 186 00:19:19,770 --> 00:19:29,100 Suphanburi. What is interesting is Suphanburi I think once upon a time was the 187 00:19:29,100 --> 00:19:39,480 heartland of what is supposed to be the Thai identity or Thainess because it 188 00:19:39,480 --> 00:19:48,000 had a very long history of the ancient empire and ancient devotees of the empire 189 00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:57,810 which is a Hindu-Buddhist Empire that ruled over this area of the world 190 00:19:57,810 --> 00:20:04,320 between the 6th and the 13th century and Udonthani is also supposedly 191 00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:15,480 the site of many important events in pre-modern Thai history. Udonthani was 192 00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:23,040 not Udonthani, Suphanburi was supposed to be an important place in the fight 193 00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:29,160 between King Naresuan against the Burmese some 400 years ago. 194 00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:36,570 Udonthani is also the site for the most beloved folktale, Khun Chang Khun Phaen, 195 00:20:36,570 --> 00:20:41,540 which has just been translated by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit into 196 00:20:41,540 --> 00:20:50,730 English so the ideas of and over the 19th and 20th century you have Suphanburi 197 00:20:50,730 --> 00:20:57,360 being figured in the making of the Thai nationalist propaganda from 198 00:20:57,360 --> 00:21:01,200 the reign of King Chulalongkorn in the late nineteenth century all the way up 199 00:21:01,200 --> 00:21:10,050 to the Cold War Era but something has changed and this is actually what the Suphanburi 200 00:21:10,050 --> 00:21:17,400 city pillars look like. There are two statuettes of I believe the Hindu 201 00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:26,940 god Vishnu and it's from the Dvaravati period so very very old and then what 202 00:21:26,940 --> 00:21:32,000 happened, I love this picture, 203 00:21:32,090 --> 00:21:45,450 yes, the city pillars are there. It used to be worshipped by the 204 00:21:45,450 --> 00:21:52,940 local people of Suphanburi and it has been known for quite a long time but 205 00:21:54,620 --> 00:22:00,030 after the establishment of the current dynasty the Chakri dynasty which 206 00:22:00,030 --> 00:22:04,730 established at the end of the 18th century 207 00:22:04,730 --> 00:22:12,000 Suphan Buri was known as one of the unruly provinces that would sometime cause 208 00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,720 unrest or would sometimes cause problems to the 209 00:22:14,720 --> 00:22:21,170 central government so for the longest time for the first four reigns there was 210 00:22:21,170 --> 00:22:28,490 a legend that members of the royal family cannot visit this, cannot visit 211 00:22:28,490 --> 00:22:33,230 Suphan Buri Province because they would somehow die or something so it was very 212 00:22:33,230 --> 00:22:39,350 dangerous. It is a bad luck to go and visit Suphan Buri province but 213 00:22:39,350 --> 00:22:44,559 during the reign of King Chulalongkorn who's known as supposedly the 214 00:22:44,559 --> 00:22:51,130 moderniser of the kingdom, his brother, who was Minister of Interior, 215 00:22:51,130 --> 00:22:57,400 Prince Damrong, said, you know, we are modernized now we don't believe in like 216 00:22:57,400 --> 00:23:04,520 the legend so he visited Suphan Buri and he then ordered the construction of 217 00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:12,679 a pavilion so you see the pavilion here is very much in the Thai style and you 218 00:23:12,679 --> 00:23:17,780 know there's a name here, the city pillar shrine of Suphan Buri, and here is a 219 00:23:17,780 --> 00:23:26,150 image connected with the royal family so in this way, in the late 19th 220 00:23:26,150 --> 00:23:33,370 century, the Suphan Buri city pillar shrine was co-opted into part of the 221 00:23:33,370 --> 00:23:44,419 dynastic nationalised narrative but then through the 20th century especially 222 00:23:44,419 --> 00:23:50,240 through the Cold War years, you have the bill out around here so by the time you 223 00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:56,299 get to the 1980s basically the whole thing is covered up in a Chinese, very 224 00:23:56,299 --> 00:24:03,590 Chinese style, so they built the Chinese shrine over the Thai pavilion 225 00:24:03,590 --> 00:24:13,520 here right and even more interesting is that then this museum was built and the 226 00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:18,710 museum basically just dwarfed the city pillar shrine. It is huge. 227 00:24:18,710 --> 00:24:24,730 What is missing here, you see the size of the tweeds here it's like there's like 228 00:24:24,730 --> 00:24:29,950 nineteen rooms or something in here so this is basically the only thing you 229 00:24:29,950 --> 00:24:38,050 see from far away and this has become the most visited tourist attraction 230 00:24:38,050 --> 00:24:41,290 in Suphan Buri so now when you think of Suphan Buri you don't think about 231 00:24:41,290 --> 00:24:47,740 King Naresuan and you don't think about King Chulalongkorn and you don't think about the 232 00:24:47,740 --> 00:24:54,100 Dvaravati Empire anything anymore, you think about the Dragon Museum right so 233 00:24:54,100 --> 00:25:06,250 it has completely become a Chinese province. Okay so we need to talk a bit 234 00:25:06,250 --> 00:25:16,480 about the evolution of the Thai Chinese identity that brought us to this 235 00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:22,600 place with these three bizarre cases that I have just told you about so in a 236 00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:34,390 nutshell Thai Chinese identity 101 yeah and if you want the full complete story 237 00:25:34,390 --> 00:25:39,570 of it you have to pray that my book actually gets published and going by it. 238 00:25:39,570 --> 00:25:47,620 So I'm a historian of the modern era so I don't really know anything much beyond 239 00:25:47,620 --> 00:25:55,780 the 18th century so if we go back to the late 18th to the early 19th century in 240 00:25:55,780 --> 00:26:00,930 fact with the establishment of the current dynasty we see the relationship 241 00:26:00,930 --> 00:26:08,170 that the identity of the Thai Chinese in such a way. So one thing that 242 00:26:08,170 --> 00:26:15,280 you need to know is the corvee labor system and this was very prominent I'm 243 00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:22,210 going to move here because the light is in my eyes. Well anyway the corvee labor 244 00:26:22,210 --> 00:26:28,990 system is kind of the backbone of the Thai feudal system so the idea is that 245 00:26:28,990 --> 00:26:35,840 all adult males from the age of 15 to 70 must 246 00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:44,360 perform civil service, go and perform labor for the State and this had been going on 247 00:26:44,360 --> 00:26:50,840 in fact long before the 18th century and it continued through the new dynasty as 248 00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:56,510 well and it was only abolished in the late 19th century as part of the 249 00:26:56,510 --> 00:27:03,110 modernization efforts and so the thing about the corvee labor system is that 250 00:27:03,110 --> 00:27:10,549 all adult males between the age of 15 to 70 have to go and perform labor for 251 00:27:10,549 --> 00:27:17,720 the state right and how much labor do you have to give to the State? It varies 252 00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:23,299 but at the height of this corvee labor system you have to go every other month 253 00:27:23,299 --> 00:27:28,789 of the year so six months of the year not six months in a row but six every 254 00:27:28,789 --> 00:27:35,600 other month right so what happens here is very interesting in that first 255 00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:42,529 of all the men are not at home a lot and this is partly why traditionally the 256 00:27:42,529 --> 00:27:48,559 Thai family is matrilineal or the male actually marries into to the 257 00:27:48,559 --> 00:27:56,690 bride's family or Thai women have a much more powerful position 258 00:27:56,690 --> 00:28:04,399 within the socio-cultural context compared to, maybe, the Chinese context or 259 00:28:04,399 --> 00:28:08,870 the Korean or the Japanese context, the East Asian context in general. Another 260 00:28:08,870 --> 00:28:14,899 thing is that if you have to perform labor, provide labor for the State every 261 00:28:14,899 --> 00:28:19,159 other month the State needs to know exactly where you are so you're not 262 00:28:19,159 --> 00:28:26,659 encouraged to move around and so they are very much tied to the land and so 263 00:28:26,659 --> 00:28:30,890 what happens is that what kind of profession would you do if you're tied 264 00:28:30,890 --> 00:28:37,789 to the land six months of the year that is, so the 265 00:28:37,789 --> 00:28:44,450 majority of people were peasants, farmers working the land, and in fact most of the 266 00:28:44,450 --> 00:28:49,049 farming, tending to the livestock, taking care of the children 267 00:28:49,049 --> 00:28:53,999 and all that are performed largely by women too because the men would be going out 268 00:28:53,999 --> 00:28:59,340 to war or going out to build, dig a canal or whatever so the men are not 269 00:28:59,340 --> 00:29:08,489 around too much so the only way that you get out, of course, is either if you 270 00:29:08,489 --> 00:29:15,629 become a monk or if you join the nobility, become a civil servant of some 271 00:29:15,629 --> 00:29:22,859 sort so this makes for a very interesting social structure in that you 272 00:29:22,859 --> 00:29:27,149 have the peasants you have the the working class and then you have the 273 00:29:27,149 --> 00:29:33,419 nobility and the question is who perform services, who are the middle class, who 274 00:29:33,419 --> 00:29:38,940 are the trading, the merchant class people and this is where the Chinese 275 00:29:38,940 --> 00:29:43,739 came in. This is why the Chinese are so important in the Thai economy for a very 276 00:29:43,739 --> 00:29:48,179 long time before the Chinese come in as someone in 277 00:29:48,179 --> 00:29:56,369 between in the sense that they are not considered foreigners like the Europeans 278 00:29:56,369 --> 00:30:02,850 or the Americans or the Japanese even. When they come to trade with 279 00:30:02,850 --> 00:30:07,499 Thailand they're limited to the port cities they could not go inland. The 280 00:30:07,499 --> 00:30:11,159 Chinese are not considered foreign in that sense. They can travel around in 281 00:30:11,159 --> 00:30:16,230 land. They can marry Thai women and whatever just like Thai people but they 282 00:30:16,230 --> 00:30:23,730 are not included in the corvee labor system so they are not considered native 283 00:30:23,730 --> 00:30:27,809 so they don't have to perform corvee labor at the same time they are not 284 00:30:27,809 --> 00:30:33,779 considered foreign so they can travel around so they became the main merchant 285 00:30:33,779 --> 00:30:44,609 class in the kingdom for a long time and with this. Also another important thing 286 00:30:44,609 --> 00:30:52,919 was that Thailand back then known as a Siam was engaged in the tribute trade to 287 00:30:52,919 --> 00:30:59,190 China and that was the most by far the most important trade that the 288 00:30:59,190 --> 00:31:06,349 kingdom was involved in and in order to conduct this trade effectively 289 00:31:06,349 --> 00:31:17,589 it was for a long time that the court would use ethnic Chinese agents to 290 00:31:17,589 --> 00:31:24,259 facilitate this trade of China so they had very close connections with the 291 00:31:24,259 --> 00:31:31,659 ruling dynasty as trade agents in the tribute trade to China. They were also 292 00:31:31,659 --> 00:31:40,329 employed as tax farmers. This is a system that is very widely practiced throughout 293 00:31:40,329 --> 00:31:50,869 Southeast Asia especially once the colonial period began so the 294 00:31:50,869 --> 00:31:59,029 Chinese from very early on had a very close relationship with the ruling 295 00:31:59,029 --> 00:32:04,909 class and then when you get to the colonial period so 19th century to the 296 00:32:04,909 --> 00:32:12,259 early 20th century something very interesting happened in Thailand and 297 00:32:12,259 --> 00:32:15,559 this is something that people keep talking about when they talk about 298 00:32:15,559 --> 00:32:19,429 Thailand or when they talk about colonial Southeast Asia whatever you 299 00:32:19,429 --> 00:32:24,200 might have heard a lot of Thai historians are very hung up with the 300 00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:30,579 fact that like, "oh Thailand was never colonized by the West" blah blah right and 301 00:32:30,579 --> 00:32:35,629 everyone else in Southeast Asia was colonized by the West so we're so cool. 302 00:32:35,629 --> 00:32:43,149 We did not have the colonial period and all that so what actually happened? 303 00:32:43,149 --> 00:32:52,729 What actually happened was that from my point of view Thailand was not 304 00:32:52,729 --> 00:33:03,039 completely colonized by the West because the Thai ruling class, the monarchy, 305 00:33:03,249 --> 00:33:11,450 established a system that marked the structure of the colonial state. In 306 00:33:11,450 --> 00:33:15,339 another sense, to sum it up, 307 00:33:15,500 --> 00:33:26,090 it's basically that the King disguised the kingdom into a colony and the king 308 00:33:26,090 --> 00:33:33,860 acted as a colonial officer so the basically the colonizers did not need to 309 00:33:33,860 --> 00:33:38,950 colonize Siam because the ruling class of Siam was already acting as 310 00:33:38,950 --> 00:33:47,930 colonial officers already and you would see what I mean by this, right? You 311 00:33:47,930 --> 00:33:53,630 see here extraterritoriality. So what what happened during the colonial period 312 00:33:53,630 --> 00:34:00,860 was that one of the conditions that was posed to all these different Asian 313 00:34:00,860 --> 00:34:06,500 kingdoms - the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans, everyone in Southeast Asia, 314 00:34:06,500 --> 00:34:10,399 the beginning before being colonized is that you have these unfair treaties that 315 00:34:10,399 --> 00:34:16,550 demand extraterritorial rights for the colonial subjects and 316 00:34:16,550 --> 00:34:22,280 that means that if colonial subjects have run-ins with law they do not have 317 00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:31,190 to be subject to the legal system of those local, of the local legal system so 318 00:34:31,190 --> 00:34:36,970 they would be tried in the Consulate 319 00:34:37,300 --> 00:34:44,800 Court instead. They would be tried by the law of the colonizers, of the colonial 320 00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:53,710 empires. So the same thing happened to Siam, or Thailand as well. In 1855 321 00:34:53,710 --> 00:35:01,210 the king ratified the Bowring treaty and started the system of 322 00:35:01,210 --> 00:35:09,680 extraterritoriality in Thailand. The interesting thing is that you have a 323 00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:19,060 large number of colonial subjects in Siam and a lot of them were not 324 00:35:19,060 --> 00:35:26,510 Europeans. A lot of them were ethnic Chinese so what happens is that a lot of 325 00:35:26,510 --> 00:35:29,720 ethnic Chinese especially the richest one 326 00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:37,280 the tycoons, the most influential one in the economy, would find ways of being 327 00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:45,349 registered as colonial subjects. How do they do this? They may say, oh I come from 328 00:35:45,349 --> 00:35:53,300 some treaty ports in South China or my father was actually 329 00:35:53,300 --> 00:36:00,650 born in British Malaya or I actually came through French Indochina 330 00:36:00,650 --> 00:36:07,660 or whatever before I came to Thailand or I'm connected someway to people 331 00:36:07,660 --> 00:36:12,770 who are colonial subjects and also if they're working for foreign companies 332 00:36:12,770 --> 00:36:18,560 it's also beneficial for the foreign companies to try and get their employees 333 00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:24,170 registered as colonial subjects because then they are basically above the 334 00:36:24,170 --> 00:36:30,890 Thai law right and what happens is that a large number of the richest ethnic 335 00:36:30,890 --> 00:36:38,060 Chinese in Siam at the time got themselves registered as colonial 336 00:36:38,060 --> 00:36:44,420 subjects especially colonial subjects of Britain and France at a time with the 337 00:36:44,420 --> 00:36:52,819 largest groups and this is where it becomes interesting. When a lot of 338 00:36:52,819 --> 00:36:58,670 mainstream Thai historians talk about extraterritoriality they talk 339 00:36:58,670 --> 00:37:07,160 about it as a disadvantage as a negative thing as, you know, the Kingdom losing 340 00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:11,450 parts of its sovereignty right but in fact if you look at the 341 00:37:11,450 --> 00:37:17,750 situation here closely you would see that extraterritoriality 342 00:37:17,750 --> 00:37:26,839 was actually very useful for sustaining the power of the Thai ruling 343 00:37:26,839 --> 00:37:34,670 class. Why? Because as everyone likes to say, Thailand or Siam was never 344 00:37:34,670 --> 00:37:42,230 colonized by the West so everyone else, all the neighbors of Siam, were a part of 345 00:37:42,230 --> 00:37:49,490 an empire so this is the only non-empire state in the 346 00:37:49,490 --> 00:37:57,500 whole Southeast Asia so Siam was competing in a way in an economy with 347 00:37:57,500 --> 00:38:03,110 other players who are part of larger empires right the Dutch East Indies, the 348 00:38:03,110 --> 00:38:10,400 French Indochina, British Malaya, British India and so in fact the only way to 349 00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:18,290 remain competitive is to try and mimic that system and one of the ways that 350 00:38:18,290 --> 00:38:28,880 the ruling class did was to work through ethnic Chinese trade agents and to 351 00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:35,720 use the ethnic Chinese merchants and businessmen and entrepreneurs to drive 352 00:38:35,720 --> 00:38:42,590 the Siamese economy so that it's competitive within a region taken over 353 00:38:42,590 --> 00:38:47,960 by European empires. Now you would ask what is in it for the Chinese. Why do 354 00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:51,580 they need to prop up the Thai economy? 355 00:38:52,390 --> 00:38:58,400 Being a colonial subject in Siam or Thailand in the late 19th century to the 356 00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:04,430 early 20th century is the best place to be in Southeast Asia. Why is it the 357 00:39:04,430 --> 00:39:12,350 best place to be? Because if you're a colonial subject in Siam and you get 358 00:39:12,350 --> 00:39:18,320 into trouble with the government you were above the law right and then you 359 00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:23,720 may say, well, isn't it the same in every other country? The point is that because 360 00:39:23,720 --> 00:39:29,480 Siam was not fully colonized so the colonial powers don't have full control 361 00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:36,140 over Siam either so I'll give you an example of one of the cases that 362 00:39:36,140 --> 00:39:41,950 happened in the late 19th century. So there was this Chinese the Chinese merchant 363 00:39:41,950 --> 00:39:49,280 coming in trading from Yunnan to the north of Siam at the time and 364 00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:56,210 he ran into trouble with the Thai police somewhere in northern Thailand and he 365 00:39:56,210 --> 00:40:01,670 said I'm a British colonial subject so the Thai 366 00:40:01,670 --> 00:40:06,380 police contacted the British Consulate in Bangkok and said so there's this guy 367 00:40:06,380 --> 00:40:12,799 we've tried to arrest him but he said he was a British colonial subject, is he a 368 00:40:12,799 --> 00:40:19,309 colonial subject and the British Consulate in Bangkok would say hmmm 369 00:40:19,309 --> 00:40:23,599 he's not signed up with us as a British colonial subject but he might have 370 00:40:23,599 --> 00:40:31,579 signed up in Yangon or in British Malaya or in somewhere else so we need to check 371 00:40:31,579 --> 00:40:37,640 with them and this is an age before email right so you can imagine right by 372 00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:43,010 the time the British Consulate in Bangkok has contacted the Consulate in, I 373 00:40:43,010 --> 00:40:47,480 mean, the British authorities in Yangon, the British authorities in Penang, the 374 00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:53,599 British authorities in wherever, that guy would have been long gone right? So in a 375 00:40:53,599 --> 00:41:04,069 sense being a colonial subject in Siam allows you to be even freer than 376 00:41:04,069 --> 00:41:11,089 being colonial subjects in actual colonies like Malaya or Indochina right? 377 00:41:11,089 --> 00:41:19,789 So it's easier to do business in many ways if you're Chinese 378 00:41:19,789 --> 00:41:25,039 and you're based in Siam. Another thing is that the ruling class, 379 00:41:25,039 --> 00:41:35,410 the royal family, especially, has had a tradition of giving special, what, 380 00:41:35,410 --> 00:41:43,279 providing the Chinese entrepreneurs with contracts, with royal titles, having 381 00:41:43,279 --> 00:41:49,730 a very cordial relationship between the the Chinese business community and the 382 00:41:49,730 --> 00:41:56,180 ruling class. You see, another very clear example is that there was a 383 00:41:56,180 --> 00:42:04,160 case where the British were building a railroad from the north 384 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:11,140 of Burma down to the port city and were 385 00:42:11,260 --> 00:42:25,560 trying to attract all the traders in the north to trade in British Burma 386 00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,650 for the reason that if you trade in British Burma and your goods can be 387 00:42:29,650 --> 00:42:34,210 transported by train down to the port city and it could go beyond British 388 00:42:34,210 --> 00:42:40,060 Burma. Around the same time King Chulalongkorn Rama V decided to invest 389 00:42:40,060 --> 00:42:46,780 in railroads from Chiang Mai - the northern province of Chiang Mai - to 390 00:42:46,780 --> 00:42:53,530 Bangkok and so with the same proposal is that if you trade in Chiang Mai 391 00:42:53,530 --> 00:43:00,310 your goods can also be transported down to the coast and be sent 392 00:43:00,310 --> 00:43:08,880 elsewhere as well. A very interesting thing happened in that most of the other 393 00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:16,240 ethnic traders in Chiang Mai especially the Indians, the various 394 00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:24,190 Muslim groups, a lot of them switch over to trade in British Burma instead. The 395 00:43:24,190 --> 00:43:31,600 only one group that remain very firmly in Chiang Mai were the Chinese merchants 396 00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:38,950 and this was, I think, because of this special position with extraterritorial 397 00:43:38,950 --> 00:43:43,060 rights and also this special relationship with a Thai ruling class as 398 00:43:43,060 --> 00:43:55,450 well. And another important thing is that so the Chinese did perform 399 00:43:55,450 --> 00:44:03,250 for the Thai Court as agents in the colonial trade during this period as 400 00:44:03,250 --> 00:44:09,390 well. Another important thing that people talk about a lot in terms of the 401 00:44:09,390 --> 00:44:15,100 relationship between the Chinese and the Thai Royal Family or the Thai Dynasty, 402 00:44:15,100 --> 00:44:19,570 the current dynasty, and this is probably why my book manuscript 403 00:44:19,570 --> 00:44:24,880 has been rejected three times is that the first thing, 404 00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:30,220 you know people who know anything about the Chinese in Thailand, the first thing 405 00:44:30,220 --> 00:44:36,430 they think of when you say that the Thai royal family and the ethnic Chinese, they 406 00:44:36,430 --> 00:44:42,160 think of King Rama the Sixth Vajiravudh who published an article called the 407 00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:48,310 Jews of the Orient in the daily newspaper in 1914 and comparing the 408 00:44:48,310 --> 00:44:57,160 Chinese problem in Siam to the Jewish problem in Europe and so 409 00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:02,710 with that publication, everyone's like, the Thai Royal Family hates the Chinese. 410 00:45:02,710 --> 00:45:05,770 They don't get along there you know, anti-Chinese and everything so that's, 411 00:45:05,770 --> 00:45:10,690 that's kind of like the bottom line so once when I try to say that 412 00:45:10,690 --> 00:45:14,140 there's a relationship otherwise people are like, did you know Vajiravudh hated 413 00:45:14,140 --> 00:45:22,510 the Chinese, he published "Jews of the Orient" in 1914. True, but something 414 00:45:22,510 --> 00:45:27,880 about Vajiravudh who was supposed to be kind of the founder of this 415 00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:33,760 Royalist nationalism in Thailand is that if you look closely to the 416 00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:38,860 structure of Royalist nationalism that Vajiravudh established in the early 417 00:45:38,860 --> 00:45:47,050 19th, in the early 20th century in the 1910s is that it's actually a 418 00:45:47,050 --> 00:45:52,770 kind of nation-building project that is designed to include the ethnic Chinese. 419 00:45:52,770 --> 00:46:02,910 Why do I say this? You have to imagine if you were a Siamese King in 420 00:46:02,910 --> 00:46:15,280 1910 where you're the total population was less than ten million according to 421 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:23,200 both research material from the Republic of China and the Japanese in the 1930s 422 00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:30,130 there were supposed to be ethnic Chinese in Siam in the 1930s between 3 and 3.5 423 00:46:30,130 --> 00:46:35,290 million so you can imagine during Vajiravudh's reign up to one-third of 424 00:46:35,290 --> 00:46:40,059 the total population are ethnic Chinese and the richest and most influential 425 00:46:40,059 --> 00:46:49,180 among them are signed up as colonial subjects so if you want to have 426 00:46:49,180 --> 00:46:54,130 a nation you cannot have a territorial nation you have to have some form of the 427 00:46:54,130 --> 00:46:58,630 nation that would allow these Chinese to keep their money in Siam and keep 428 00:46:58,630 --> 00:47:04,420 investing in Siam so what is the easiest way to be part of the nation-building 429 00:47:04,420 --> 00:47:13,569 project in this case? To donate to the King's projects, to express loyalty 430 00:47:13,569 --> 00:47:18,670 towards the monarch and that was how Vajiravudh did so. Yes he published "Jews 431 00:47:18,670 --> 00:47:26,619 of the Orient" but I think he is the monarch of the Chakri dynasty 432 00:47:26,619 --> 00:47:31,770 there has been up to today, 10, he's number six, he's the one, 433 00:47:31,770 --> 00:47:38,079 he's one of the ones that received the most donations from the Chinese 434 00:47:38,079 --> 00:47:43,420 community. A lot of his major projects were done solely on Chinese donations so 435 00:47:43,420 --> 00:47:51,670 what I'm saying is that "Jews of the Orient" in a way was a challenge. He was 436 00:47:51,670 --> 00:47:57,970 saying that you are not loyal to the Thai crown, you are not patriotic because 437 00:47:57,970 --> 00:48:02,500 you send all your money back to China you don't support the local economy you 438 00:48:02,500 --> 00:48:06,220 don't support the government's project and whatever and then what happens after 439 00:48:06,220 --> 00:48:14,619 that? These big Chinese business people buy aircrafts for the King's new Air 440 00:48:14,619 --> 00:48:23,109 Force. They donate money to buy a warship. They donate new guns for the King's Royal 441 00:48:23,109 --> 00:48:29,680 Wild Tiger Corps and all that so this is the way in which the easiest way to show 442 00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:35,559 that you are a nationalist, a Royalist nationalist is to pay money so and that 443 00:48:35,559 --> 00:48:40,029 actually worked out quite well so you have this kind of, this relationship 444 00:48:40,029 --> 00:48:44,380 between the ruling class and the capitalist class that dates back 445 00:48:44,380 --> 00:48:55,330 quite for quite a long time. Yes, so then you have a brief period of a very 446 00:48:55,330 --> 00:49:00,840 interesting change. There was a revolution in 1932 which ended the 447 00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:05,950 absolute monarchy and established a constitutional monarchy and the 448 00:49:05,950 --> 00:49:10,300 Revolutionary Party was known as the People's Party. The first thing, 449 00:49:10,300 --> 00:49:14,550 one of the first achievements of the People's Party is government was to 450 00:49:14,550 --> 00:49:20,620 negotiate the abolition of extraterritoriality in 1938. So this was 451 00:49:20,620 --> 00:49:25,690 the first time that it was possible to actually have a territorial nation so 452 00:49:25,690 --> 00:49:34,560 during this time, the government was basically forcing the Chinese to 453 00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:39,900 either be Chinese or be Thai because you can no longer be a colonial subject 454 00:49:39,900 --> 00:49:47,590 and they were against the imperialists so unlike the absolute monarchy 455 00:49:47,590 --> 00:49:52,960 before they were not working with the the European imperialist power and 456 00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:59,190 this is why, I would say, this is why when the Second World War arrived in Thailand 457 00:49:59,190 --> 00:50:05,020 the government sided with the Japanese because the Japanese came with this 458 00:50:05,020 --> 00:50:12,070 anti-European imperialist propaganda right this Pan-Asia is like liberating 459 00:50:12,070 --> 00:50:16,570 the Asians from the imperialists right so they sided with the Japanese 460 00:50:16,570 --> 00:50:21,520 and so the relationship between the state and the ethnic Chinese during this 461 00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:29,680 point in time was very problematic and as we know, unfortunately, well I don't 462 00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:33,510 know, fortunately for a lot of people but also unfortunately for a lot of people 463 00:50:33,510 --> 00:50:39,850 that the Japanese were defeated and what happened was that during the Second 464 00:50:39,850 --> 00:50:45,070 World War, as soon as the Revolutionary Government declared that they would be 465 00:50:45,070 --> 00:50:50,920 on the side of the Japanese, the Royalist faction set up the Free Thai Movement 466 00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:56,050 and said we are on the side of the Allied powers so what happened was after 467 00:50:56,050 --> 00:51:01,420 the Second World War you have the return of the Royalist nation-state and the 468 00:51:01,420 --> 00:51:08,880 Royalist faction into the Thai political scene and throughout the Cold War you 469 00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:17,010 have a series of military dictatorships that was supported by the Anti-Communist 470 00:51:17,010 --> 00:51:28,230 US in Thailand and so the Chinese elite switched from 471 00:51:28,230 --> 00:51:34,380 being the court agent to being the agents of the imperialist powers to in 472 00:51:34,380 --> 00:51:39,890 the Cold War period being the business agents of the monarchist and militarist 473 00:51:39,890 --> 00:51:50,010 ruling class right? Okay, I will finish in five minutes so this is a very 474 00:51:50,010 --> 00:51:53,820 interesting example. This is Mr. Banharn Silpa-acha 475 00:51:53,820 --> 00:51:58,110 who was the 21st Prime Minister of Thailand. He primarily served for 476 00:51:58,110 --> 00:52:02,940 only one year. He is interesting because for several 477 00:52:02,940 --> 00:52:13,050 reasons. First of all he is very clearly Chinese and he came up as a very, he became 478 00:52:13,050 --> 00:52:18,570 a very rich businessman through his connections with the military and he got 479 00:52:18,570 --> 00:52:24,300 contracts from the military government and eventually in one of the [] 480 00:52:24,300 --> 00:52:31,190 governments he was appointed senator and from the 1980s onwards he started 481 00:52:31,190 --> 00:52:39,780 entering elections and becoming a mainstay of Suphan Buri MP right and 482 00:52:39,780 --> 00:52:47,430 and eventually in 1995 he was elected prime minister so one of the 483 00:52:47,430 --> 00:52:53,520 rare elected prime ministers in Thailand these days and the interesting thing was 484 00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:59,400 that after only one year he was voted out. There was this like non-confidence 485 00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:05,370 vote against Banharn Silpa-acha for many reasons but one of the very sensational 486 00:53:05,370 --> 00:53:12,600 stories was that he was accused of not having the basic qualities that he could 487 00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:15,870 be Prime Minister because there was a question whether or 488 00:53:15,870 --> 00:53:22,050 not his father was a Thai citizen. His father might have been Chinese and in 489 00:53:22,050 --> 00:53:26,760 the end it proved to be a false accusation but that was a one of the 490 00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:33,090 biggest part of the vote of non-confidence at the time and what 491 00:53:33,090 --> 00:53:39,600 is interesting about this guy is that he probably was elected so many times. 492 00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:43,950 One thing that contributed to his political success was his Chinese 493 00:53:43,950 --> 00:53:50,430 identity and he, even after facing this political disaster of being accused of 494 00:53:50,430 --> 00:53:57,860 not being really Thai, when he got out of, when his term ended 495 00:53:57,860 --> 00:54:05,940 prematurely in 1996, he started on the project of building this Museum of the 496 00:54:05,940 --> 00:54:11,550 Descendants of the Dragon so he even continued to, like, express overtly his 497 00:54:11,550 --> 00:54:15,630 chineseness right and he started from 1996 and the museum was only completed 498 00:54:15,630 --> 00:54:22,170 and opened in 2008 and he just passed away in April last year and it was, it 499 00:54:22,170 --> 00:54:27,060 was amazing when you look at his obituary in everything that is coming 500 00:54:27,060 --> 00:54:36,330 out in the newspaper about him in 2016, it was awesome to be Chinese in 2016. 501 00:54:36,330 --> 00:54:40,110 No one was saying that oh you horrible person your father might not have been 502 00:54:40,110 --> 00:54:45,930 Thai you should not be Prime Minister whatever. 2016 it was the popular thing 503 00:54:45,930 --> 00:54:55,140 to be Chinese right so a huge change right. So you see the post-war 504 00:54:55,140 --> 00:55:01,290 evolution, the opening up of the People's Republic of China, and down here you have 505 00:55:01,290 --> 00:55:07,310 a picture of Deng Xiaoping's visit to Thailand in 1978. 1978 was the first 506 00:55:07,310 --> 00:55:12,210 Southeast Asian tour of Deng Xiaoping after the opening up of the People's 507 00:55:12,210 --> 00:55:18,060 Republic of China. People like to talk about him seeing Lee Kuan Yew but in 508 00:55:18,060 --> 00:55:24,810 fact the first person he visited was the king of Thailand, before Lee Kuan Yew. He 509 00:55:24,810 --> 00:55:28,410 was also invited to join the Ordination of the then Crown Prince who was the 510 00:55:28,410 --> 00:55:32,940 current King and and there's a reason for that 511 00:55:32,940 --> 00:55:40,319 because in fact at least up to the Second World War the largest number of ethnic 512 00:55:40,319 --> 00:55:46,140 Chinese are, in the world, in Southeast Asia. The largest number of ethnic 513 00:55:46,140 --> 00:55:51,540 Chinese in Southeast Asia was in Thailand. This is according to Chinese 514 00:55:51,540 --> 00:55:58,020 and Japanese sources so Thailand has for a long long long long time has 515 00:55:58,020 --> 00:56:04,530 been a very important backyard for people from the Mainland. At the same 516 00:56:04,530 --> 00:56:09,599 time you have, after that, following that, you have the Chinese starting to 517 00:56:09,599 --> 00:56:15,890 invest in mega projects in the Greater Mekong sub-region, in Laos, Cambodia, 518 00:56:15,890 --> 00:56:22,619 Myanmar and in Vietnam and then recently, more recently you have the One Belt One 519 00:56:22,619 --> 00:56:27,869 Road Initiative which also includes a bit of Southeast Asia, mainland Southeast 520 00:56:27,869 --> 00:56:33,060 Asia and you have the film "Lost in Thailand" which has caused the enormous 521 00:56:33,060 --> 00:56:38,880 influx of mainland Chinese tourists to Thailand so what has changed 522 00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:49,349 since? The first thing is that back in the days the only way to make it big as 523 00:56:49,349 --> 00:56:55,230 a Chinese businessman is to have connection or alliance with the 524 00:56:55,230 --> 00:56:59,579 central government, with a court or with the military government right? 525 00:56:59,579 --> 00:57:05,400 But in the 21st century you don't need that anymore, the example, the clear 526 00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:10,589 example is the museum in Udon Thani in that if you can tap into Chinese 527 00:57:10,589 --> 00:57:16,099 investments in the Greater Mekong sub-region, if you can tap into the 528 00:57:16,099 --> 00:57:20,880 capital of the Chinese tourists, of Chinese investors, you don't need 529 00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:25,319 approval from the court in Bangkok you don't need to build that connection at 530 00:57:25,319 --> 00:57:28,500 all, you can even be against the court and you can still make it big in 531 00:57:28,500 --> 00:57:33,329 business if you can tap into PRC capital. Another interesting thing is that 532 00:57:33,329 --> 00:57:37,980 everyone is frantically shifting alliances. They're shifting alliances with 533 00:57:37,980 --> 00:57:41,579 the People's Republic of China. You see, the court. The court actually was the 534 00:57:41,579 --> 00:57:47,009 first one to shift, as I said, 1978, Deng Xiaoping met with 535 00:57:47,009 --> 00:57:53,789 the King. 1980, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn started 536 00:57:53,789 --> 00:58:01,230 learning Mandarin so she is actually very much ahead of the game. The military 537 00:58:01,230 --> 00:58:07,529 also followed suit in their relationship with the People's Republic of China 538 00:58:07,529 --> 00:58:13,789 especially in the recent military government. Royalists' 539 00:58:13,789 --> 00:58:21,470 businesses, the businesses that have ties with the dynasty, are also very much 540 00:58:21,470 --> 00:58:27,329 gravitating towards China and even the Anti-Royalists businesses are also 541 00:58:27,329 --> 00:58:34,920 trying to tap into PRC capital. You have very clearly the transformation of 542 00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:40,309 ethnic Chinese identity in Thailand from a localized dialect based identity to a 543 00:58:40,309 --> 00:58:45,420 nationalized, an extension of the Chinese nation, of the People's Republic of China. 544 00:58:45,420 --> 00:58:52,349 People are not, the later generation myself included, of ethnic 545 00:58:52,349 --> 00:58:58,289 Chinese, do not speak dialect. It's almost impossible to 546 00:58:58,289 --> 00:59:04,410 learn dialect in Thailand but it's very easy to to learn Mandarin especially Putonghua. 547 00:59:04,410 --> 00:59:10,579 Thailand has the largest number of Confucius Institutes in 548 00:59:10,579 --> 00:59:15,349 Southeast Asia and in Asia. There're like fourteen or sixteen or something. 549 00:59:15,349 --> 00:59:22,880 Compared to two in Indonesia and one in Laos so we have a lot a lot a lot right. 550 00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:28,259 And mainland Chinese tourists now are holding up more than half the sky of the 551 00:59:28,259 --> 00:59:35,460 Thai economy so rapid signification of two-identity for economic purposes so 552 00:59:35,460 --> 00:59:41,430 it's not good enough to be Thai you know for tourism you have to be Thai in a way 553 00:59:41,430 --> 00:59:46,950 that mainland Chinese tourists would want to buy your stuff, so it has to be 554 00:59:46,950 --> 00:59:53,460 catered towards mainland Chinese tourists as well, so you see this very 555 00:59:53,460 --> 01:00:00,420 interesting transformation of the Chinese diaspora identity in 556 01:00:00,420 --> 01:00:08,970 Thailand vis-a-vis politics with mainland China. I'm sure I left out a lot 557 01:00:08,970 --> 01:00:17,839 of things but for now thank you very much and I look forward to questions.