World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [96]
4 Unlike the other Southeast Asian countries, however, Thailand pursued a unique strategy. It decided to “solve” its “Chinese problem” by eliminating the “Chineseness” of the Chinese minority—that is, by “turning Chinese into Thais.” Starting in the 1930s the Thai government began a systematic and ruthless campaign of forced assimilation.
Prior to the 1930s, most Thai Chinese spoke Chinese, attended Chinese schools, studied Chinese history, and maintained Chinese customs. In the 1930s the Thai government declared that Chinese schools were “alien” in character. Their very purpose was “to preserve the foreign culture of a minority population, to perpetuate the Chinese language and Chinese nationalism.” Accordingly, the government passed a decree requiring that in a 28-hour school week, 21 hours were to be devoted to studies in the Thai language. Mathematics, science, geography, and history were all to be taught in the Thai language. In addition, teachers in Chinese schools were required to pass difficult examinations in the Thai language.
As intended, the effect was a severe restriction of the Chinese language. As time went on, the government began closing Chinese schools altogether; twenty-five private Chinese schools were closed in July 1939, followed by seven more a month later. In addition, Chinese books were banned and Chinese newspapers shut down. Chinese social organizations were prohibited, and regulations were passed requiring “Thai dress and deportment.” Chinese culture generally was suppressed in a calculated effort to destroy ethnic Chinese consciousness and identity. At the same time, more subtle pressures for assimilation played a role as well. As late as the 1960s and 1970s, any Chinese with ambitions to succeed had to pursue a Thai education, adopt a Thai surname, speak the Thai language, and, ideally, marry into a Thai family.
5
Interwoven with these attacks on Chinese language and culture were a draconian series of anti-Chinese economic policies. Particularly in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, anti-Chinese commercial restrictions were enacted, discriminatory taxes levied, and Chinese industries nationalized. Chinese families were harassed for showing loyalty to China; several wealthy Thai Chinese were jailed for remitting money to the mainland.
6 During this period, fearful of confiscation, expulsion, and imprisonment, the Thai Chinese—like the billionaire Chiaravanont family, originally Chia—began shedding their Chinese surnames and Chinese traditions. As my student Kanchana put it, “You can tell who the Chinese are because they’re the ones with the longest last names. That’s because they felt they had to ‘out-Thai’ the Thai and because the Chinese weren’t allowed to take on Thai surnames that already existed.”
This, then, is the darker aspect of what many have described as the “seamless” or “blissful” integration of the ethnic Chinese minority into Thai society. To be sure, the fact that the Thai government’s assimilation campaign worked as well as it did may reflect other factors, such as the close cultural affinity between the Thais and the Chinese. Indeed, it is often suggested that the Thais and the Chinese share the same “ethnic roots.” Most Thais are believed to descend from people who lived in southwestern China until they were forced into what is now Thailand by the Mongols.
7 It is impossible to know for sure, but a government campaign to assimilate the Chinese into Indonesia or to encourage more ethnic intermarriage in Malaysia or the Philippines might not have worked at all.
The fact remains that the Thai government consciously pursued, in the name of the indigenous Thai people, policies to “eliminate” the Chinese as a distinct ethnic minority. Although Thailand’s policies were certainly preferable to the genocide pursued by Milosevic or the Hutu Power regime, it is obviously open to question whether an assimilation achieved through decades of confiscation, coercive social policies, and cultural obliteration is an end that justifies