Thai Chinese
Thai Chinese are people of Chinese descent in Thailand. Thai Chinese are the largest mixed group in the country and the largest overseas Chinese community in the world with a population of approximately 9.5 million people, accounting for 11–14 percent of the country's total population as of 2012. It is also one of the oldest and most prominently integrated overseas Chinese communities, with a history dating back to the 1100s. Slightly more than half of the ethnic Chinese population in Thailand trace their ancestry to Chaoshan, proven by the prevalence of the Teochew dialect among the Chinese community in Thailand as well as other Chinese languages. The term as commonly understood signifies those whose ancestors immigrated to Thailand before 1949.
The Thai Chinese have been deeply ingrained into all elements of Thai society over the past 200 years. The present Thai royal family, the Chakri dynasty, was founded by King Rama I who himself was partly Chinese. His predecessor, King Taksin of the Thonburi Kingdom, was the son of a Chinese father from Chaoshan. With the successful integration of historic Chinese immigrant communities in Thailand, a significant number of Thai Chinese are the descendants of intermarriages between ethnic Chinese and native Thais. Many of these descendants have assimilated into Thai society and self-identify solely as Thai.
The Thai Chinese are well-established in the middle class and upper classes of Thai society and are well represented at all levels of Thai society. They play a leading role in Thailand's business sector and dominate the Thai economy today. In addition, Thai Chinese elites of Thailand have a strong presence in Thailand's political scene with most of Thailand's former Prime Ministers and the majority of parliament having at least some Chinese ancestry. Thai Chinese elites of Thailand are well represented among Thailand's rulers and other sectors.
Demographics
Thailand has the largest overseas Chinese community in the world outside Greater China. 11 to 14 percent of Thailand's population are considered ethnic Chinese.Official status
Etymology
Thailand's longstanding policy was not to regard Thai Chinese as a separate ethnicity, based on the principle of considering all Tai groups living in Thailand as part of the Central Thai people. By endonym, with partial success, now Thai Chinese refer themselves as , however, the term often creates ambiguity among the various Tai groups in the country, especially the Central/Southern Thai who also call themselves the same, these groups Thai Chinese refer as or .In cases where details are required, Thai Chinese people refer to themselves as , or sometimes may refer to the ancestral lands as or , which well known that the Central Thais and Mons were not indigenous to these two provinces but recent internal migration, Bangkok and Chonburi. The term Krungthepians still pinned a resentful connotation towards Central Thais, when Krungthep accent is considered as prestige dialect of Central Thai language, while the Central Thai language of Central Thai people is considered an inappropriate language, known as .
Identity
For assimilated second and third generation descendants of Chinese immigrants, it is principally a personal choice whether or not to identify themselves as ethnic Chinese. Nonetheless, nearly all Thai Chinese solely self-identify as Thai, due to their close integration and successful assimilation into Thai society. G. William Skinner observed that the level of assimilation of the descendants of Chinese immigrants in Thailand disproved the "myth about the 'unchanging Chinese'", noting that "assimilation is considered complete when the immigrant's descendant identifies himself in almost all social situations as a Thai, speaks Thai language habitually and with native fluency, and interacts by choice with Thai more often than with Chinese." Skinner believed that the assimilation success of the Thai Chinese was a result of the wise policy of the Thai rulers who, since the 17th century, allowed able Chinese tradesmen to advance their ranks into the kingdom's nobility. The rapid and successful assimilation of the Thai Chinese has been celebrated by the Chinese descendants themselves, as evident in contemporary literature such as the novel Letters from Thailand by Botan.Today, the Thai Chinese constitute a significant part of the royalist/nationalist movements. When the then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is Thai Chinese, was ousted from power in 2006, it was Sondhi Limthongkul, another prominent Thai Chinese businessman, who formed and led People's Alliance for Democracy movement to protest the successive governments run by Thaksin's allies. Mr. Sondhi accused Mr. Thaksin of corruption based on improper business ties between Thaksin's corporate empire and the Singapore-based Temasek Holdings Group. The Thai Chinese in and around Bangkok were also the main participants of the months-long political campaign against the government of Ms. Yingluck, between November 2013 and May 2014, the event which culminated in the military takeover in May 2014.
History
First wave (Before 1767)
Traders from China began arriving in Ayutthaya by at least the 12th century. In the 1420s, Chinese merchants were involved in the construction of the major Ayutthaya temple Wat Ratchaburana and left several Chinese inscriptions and cultural objects within the temple's crypt, including the inscribing of several Chinese family names. According to the Chronicles of Ayutthaya, Ekathotsarot had been "concerned solely with ways of enriching his treasury," and was "greatly inclined toward strangers and foreign nations".Following the Qing revocation of the private trade ban in 1684, Chinese immigration to Siam steadily increased, particularly following the massive Southern Chinese famines of the early 18th century. Approximately 20,000 Chinese lived in Siam in the 1730s and were prominent in the city of Ayutthaya and were a prominent faction within the Siamese court by 1767.
Second wave (1767–1911)
When King Taksin, himself the son of a Chinese immigrant, ruled Thailand, King Taksin actively encouraged Chinese immigration and trade. Chinese settlers came to Siam in large numbers. Immigration continued over the following years, and the Chinese population in Thailand jumped from 230,000 in 1825 to 792,000 by 1910. By 1932, approximately 12.2 percent of the population of Thailand was Chinese.The early Chinese immigration consisted almost entirely of men who did not bring women. Therefore, it became common for male Chinese immigrants to marry local Thai women. The children of such relationships were called Sino-Thai or luk-jin in Thai. These Chinese-Thai intermarriages declined somewhat in the early 20th century, when significant numbers of Chinese women also began immigrating to Thailand.
Economic recession and unemployment forced many men to leave China for Thailand in search of work to seek wealth. If successful, they sent money back to their families in China. Many Chinese immigrants prospered under the "tax farming" system, whereby private individuals were sold the right to collect taxes at a price below the value of the tax revenues.
The local Chinese community had long dominated domestic commerce and had served as agents for royal trade monopolies. With the rise of European economic influence, however, many Chinese shifted to opium trafficking and tax collecting, both of which were despised occupations.
From 1882 to 1917, nearly 13,000 to 34,000 Chinese legally entered Thailand per year, mostly settling in Bangkok and along the coast of the Gulf of Siam. They predominated in occupations requiring arduous labor, skills, or entrepreneurship. They worked as blacksmiths, railroad labourers and rickshaw pullers. While most Thais were engaged in rice production, the Chinese brought new farming ideas and new methods to supply labor on its rubber plantations, both domestically and internationally. However, republican ideas brought by the Chinese were considered seditious by the Thai government. For example, a translation of Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People was banned under the Communism Act of 1933. The government had regulated Chinese schools even before compulsory education was established in the country, starting with the Private Schools Act of 1918. This act required all foreign teachers to pass a Thai language test and for principals of all schools to implement standards set by the Thai Ministry of Education.
Third wave (1911–1949)
Legislation by King Rama VI that required the adoption of Thai surnames was largely directed at the Chinese community as a number of ethnic Chinese families left Burma between 1930 and 1950 and settled in the Ratchaburi and Kanchanaburi Provinces of western Thailand. A few of the ethnic Chinese families in that area had already emigrated from Burma in the 19th century.The Chinese in Thailand also suffered discrimination between the 1930s and 1950s under the military dictatorship of Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram, which allied itself with the Empire of Japan. The Primary Education Act of 1932 made the Thai language the compulsory medium of education, but as a result of protests from Thai Chinese, by 1939, students were allowed two hours per week of Mandarin instruction. State corporations took over commodities such as rice, tobacco, and petroleum and Chinese businesses found themselves subject to a range of new taxes and controls. By 1970, more than 90 percent of the Chinese ancestry born in Thailand never have Chinese or Taiwanese nationality with Thai only nationality instead. In 1975, diplomatic relations were established with China.
Culture
Han Chinese intermarriage with ethnic Thais has resulted in many modern Thais who have claimed distant Chinese ancestry. Thais of Chinese descent are concentrated in the coastal areas of the country, principally Bangkok. Considerable segments of Thailand's academic, business, and political elites are of Chinese descent.The influence of Chinese cuisine on Thai cuisine as a whole has been profound, to the point where there is no longer a clear differentiation between Thai Chinese cuisine and native Thai cuisine. Traditional Thai cuisine loosely falls into four categories: tom, yam, tam, and kaeng. Deep-frying, stir-frying and steaming are methods introduced from Chinese cuisine. The street food culture of much of Southeast Asia was introduced by Chinese immigrants during the late 19th century. As a result, many Thai street foods are derived from or heavily influenced by Chinese cuisine. Street food was commonly sold by the ethnic Chinese population of Thailand and did not become popular among native Thai people until the early 1960s, when the rapid urban population growth stimulated the street food culture, and by the 1970s, it had "displaced home-cooking."