Multicultural Challenges and Redefining Identity in East Asia by Nam-Kook Kim

Author:Nam-Kook Kim [Kim, Nam-Kook]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317093664
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

State-to-State (Mis)Understanding

It seems that whenever the Thai and Chinese states start trying to understand the true nature of each other’s relationship with the overseas Chinese, they run into conflict, Sino-Thai relations are damaged, and the ethnic Chinese in Thailand suffer the consequences. The same was true at the dawn of the era of the nation state, with the Chinese revolutionaries toppling the Qing Dynasty, King Vajiravudh being paranoid of ethnic Chinese republican tendencies (Vella 1978), and the overseas Chinese community in Siam being overly excited about the political transformations in the land of their ancestors. By the earliest decades of the twentieth century, both the Chinese and Siamese elite had become much better informed of each other’s policies and political connections. The overseas Chinese themselves, with their extended trade connections across the continent and having arduously maintained ties with their home country, were more aware of the monumental changes that were taking place in China than ever before. This becomes a major problem when the leaders of both states attempt to establish a modern nation state almost around the exact same time. King Vajiravudh, the father of Thai nationalism, came to the throne in 1910, barely a year before the Chinese Revolution overthrew the Qing Dynasty, and less than two years before Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of the Republic of China in 1912. All of a sudden both the Siamese and Chinese state demanded the complete and undivided loyalty of the overseas Chinese in Siam—the sojourning community that had been “trans-national” even before the nation state came into being. Vajiravudh resented the fact that Siam’s economy was nearly monopolized by the ethnic Chinese merchant class, that too much money was being remitted to China, and that the Chinese community’s enthusiastic support for the Revolution in China might spark dangerous ideas of revolution and republicanism among the Siamese masses (Atsawaphahu 1912). Chinese Nationalist leaders resented the fact that the ethnic Chinese in Siam had been burdened with so many taxes and yet treated as second-class citizens. Not recognizing that it was precisely the trans-national nature of the overseas Chinese that made them so successful in business and hold such great influence in international trade, both Chinese and Thai states attempted to nationalize the ethnic Chinese in Siam through the system of public and Chinese education while increasing pressure, both socially and culturally, for the overseas Chinese community to completely sever ties with “the other” nation. The ethnic Chinese, on the other hand, preferred to remain trans-national, happy enough to oblige to the self-image of the grateful refugee in the realm of His Majesty’s unbounded benevolence while maintaining ties with their extended family in China and exercising their sense of patriotism by supporting the revolutionary government in the land of their ancestors. Fortunately, the early nationalist movement in Siam was not much more than hot air, Vajiravudh penned several anti-Chinese articles and published them in a royally sponsored newspaper. The articles, though titled with quite racially offensive terms, such as,

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