Thailand's Grand Alliances with China and Dominant World Powers

A book traces the evolution of Thailand through alliances between the Thais, the Chinese and the dominant world powers.

Since the mid-19th century, according to Wasana Wongsurawat, the Thai elite has remained in power thanks to a simple two-part formula.

First, cultivate the support of leading Thai and Chinese businessmen to secure the economic base.

Second, align with the dominant global power of the moment.

With this formula, the elite has been able to negotiate a century and a half of revolt, revolution, ideological conflict, two world wars and three changes of global hegemony.

According to Wasana's repeated description, the alliance of the crown and Thai and Chinese capitalists was simply "formidable."

This formula explains why the monarchy not only survived but remained so powerful, and why the Chinese in Thailand find themselves in an exceptionally comfortable position compared to other diaspora communities.

Wasana teaches at Chulalongkorn University.

She earned a doctorate in Chinese history from Oxford before turning to the history of the Thai nation through the lens of the Chinese in Thailand.

She researched Chinese archives in Taipei as well as more conventional sources in Thailand and the West.

She argues that previous studies have failed to consider the crucial international context of national history.

Until the mid-19th century, Siam existed comfortably within the tribute system of imperial China, and the Chakri monarchy oversaw a network of self-supporting economic monopolies and a small coterie of Chinese traders and tax farmers.

The first change in global hegemony occurred with the rise of the British Empire, bringing about the first transition.

The British imposition of free trade and extraterritoriality initially broke up monopolies, undermining the interests of the Crown and capitalists, but not for long.

Extraterritoriality, which allowed Chinese businessmen to avoid Siamese law, created exactly the lawless conditions that primitive capitalism loves.

Free trade brought enough economic benefits for Britain to transform from a menacing colonialist to an international boss.

The alliance between the crown and capitalists flourished during the colonial era.

There were only two problems.

By the early 20th century, the resident Chinese community was significant, perhaps representing a third of the capital's population.

Siam wanted them to be citizens and taxpayers, but the Chinese nationalists wanted them to remain Chinese by blood and affection, and wanted them to finance China's modernization.

The Siamese government disliked Chinese schools that aimed to preserve Thai Chinese culture and loyalty, and disliked the large flow of remittances to the homeland.

In practice, however, there was little he could do about it.

The second problem is related to the complexity of the Chinese community.

At one end were the country's richest businessmen.

On the other, there was a mass of poor migrant workers, vulnerable to revolutionary ideas and secret societies.

In Wasana's vocabulary, these two segments were the "good" and "bad" Chinese.

It was necessary to cultivate the good and eliminate the bad.

King Rama VI opposed the Chinese, calling them "Eastern Jews" for being disloyal with their affections and money.

Wasana insists that these remarks were a reminder to the "good" Chinese to remain good.

The king also wrote warmly about the Chinese, especially those who supported his expensive projects and acted as his moles within the Chinese community.

The alliance was solid.

The second transition took place when the British Empire collapsed during World War II.

At that time, the emergence of Japan as a new Asian power held particular appeal for a new breed of Asian nationalists.

It was at this time that the "formidable alliance" between the crown and the capitalists was seriously called into question.

In 1932, a nationalist group overthrew the absolutist monarchy of Siam, abolished extraterritoriality, and began to establish a state in which nation and territory were congruent.

They turned against the Chinese, partly to force them to take Thai citizenship, partly to help their Japanese mentors who were at war with China, but mostly as a strategy to deflate the monarchy by undermining its strategic partnership with Chinese capitalists.

They closed Chinese schools and newspapers, reserved jobs for Thai nationals, nationalized businesses, and expelled Chinese from strategic areas.

But not for long.

Japan's defeat ended this challenge.

From 1943 onwards, the royalists began to manoeuvre to re-establish the old alliance.

In 1946, the United States became the new global axis, and Thai royalists quickly fell into line in support of the American Cold War agenda in Asia.

Chinese capitalists easily fell into line, relying on US-inspired development policies.

The United States insisted that the military be admitted to the alliance, resulting in a "royalist military dictatorship."

The survivors of those who had embraced the post-1932 challenge were imprisoned, murdered or driven into exile.

The "bad" Chinese were again demonized as communists.

Again, it was great.

With the American defeat in Indochina in 1975, another transition took place, and became more precise with the spectacular rise of China.

For Thai and Chinese capitalists, this transition was easy.

They returned en masse to their country as soon as the restrictions were lifted.

The crown was not far behind.

As Wasana astutely points out, Deng Xiaoping's first stop on his first foreign tour as leader of China in 1978 was Bangkok, and his first meeting was with His Majesty King Bhumibol.

Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn visited China two years later, making her 29th trip to accept her appointment as one of the "Best Friends of the Chinese People" in 2009.

Wasana suggests that historians of modern Thailand have spent too much time examining democracy, constitutions, and liberal ideas, and have thus missed the significance of this tripartite alliance between the crown, capitalists, and global power.

In his index, there are only three entries for the constitution, six for democracy, and none for liberalism.

This book contains superb passages of original and unusual research, notably in Chinese archives and newspapers, but also on remittances to China, the Yaowarat incident of 1945 and the Plapphlachai riot of 1974.

Yet the main attraction is the radical and polemical treatment of a century of history.

In the late 1980s, a handful of young Thai and Chinese intellectuals protested that both Thais and Chinese deserved greater recognition in the history of the Thai nation.

Here, 30 years later, they fill the frame.

The Crown and the Capitalists

Book Description:

Despite competition from much larger imperialist neighbors in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Thailand—or Siam, as it was once known—has managed to transform itself into a rival modern nation-state over the past two centuries.

Source: Bangkok Post