absolutelyBangkok archive · Culture shock
Originally published May 6, 2010
So what about that Thai identity. The kingdom has so far been spared the racial chasm that openly split Indonesia and still today Malaysia. Are ethnic Chinese the shadowy masters of Thais? Name a leader here. They’re all of Chinese descent. Except, yes.
There is no Singapore without them. But what would Thailand today be without the Chinese. After centuries of immigration and assimilation there’s hardly a Thai family left without some Chinese blood.
Thailand’s a quasi-Chinese colony, internally taken over by immigrants whose diaspora did what Thais didn’t and took chances? Now traces of the old envious sinophobia rooted in socio-economics are back.
Blame it on the Chinese:
This despite their nearly seamless assimilation with a fairly full acculturation.
Excerpt from G. William Skinner, “Chinese Assimilation and Thai Politics”:
“In spite of the popular myth about the “unchanging Chinese,” the descendants of Chinese immigrants have been assimilating to Thai society since the beginnings of Chinese settlement in Siam (…) In the nineteenth century, some children and practically all grandchildren of Chinese immigrants achieved complete assimilation to Thai society. Fourth-generation Chinese were unheard of, not because Chinese had not been settled and rearing families for at least four generations, but because all great-grandchildren of Chinese immigrants had merged with Thai society (…) Assimilation is considered complete when the immigrant’s descendant identifies himself in almost all social situations as a Thai, speaks the Thai language habitually and with native fluency, and interacts by choice with Thai more often than with Chinese.”
One wouldn’t say Thailand’s Chinese are anti-Thai, on the contrary. There is no modern Thailand without the Chinese, these decent, hard working, successful people.
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