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Richard J. Coughlin Biography

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“Page 88: Under the absolute monarchy [in Thailand] it was customary for the King to confer titles of nobility on some influential Chinese merchants, titles comparable to those bestowed on high officials. Such men tended to identify their interests with those of the government and to draw closer to Thai society, assuming Thai names, dress, often wives, and moving in the company of officials. Yet they maintained their standing in the Chinese community, and in fact seem to have been useful intermediaries between that community and the Thai government. … On higher levels of commerce, many Chinese have found Thai officials likewise indispensable for continuing success in business, and consequently leading officials have been made nominal directors of Chinese companies.”

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“Page 138: The second consequence [of measures to reduce Chinese economic dominance] is a development of closer ties with the élite members of Thai society. The larger Chinese business men, in order to protect their extensive interests from economic controls and eventually nationalization, have formed financial alliances with leading Thai politicians and military men, who are simply made directors of Chinese companies at a handsome remuneration. A person with substantial financial interests in a business is not likely to destroy it. By the end of 1952, it is estimated that ‘hundreds of government officials and other members of the Thai élite were either fully “cut in” on Chinese businesses or serving on the boards of Chinese firms in a “protective” capacity [and] a majority of the most influential Chinese leaders had formal business connections with government officials and other members of the new Thai élite’ (Skinner 1958:187). There is little evidence that these Thai were more than paper directors, and individuals kept their positions only so long as they remained politically powerful and thus useful to their Chinese friends, but on the higher levels both groups found good reasons to work together. This development stands in rather marked contrast to the apparent conflict of economic interests one finds at the lower economic levels.”

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“Page 155: Before the War, textbooks used in Chinese schools in Southeast Asia were published mainly by two large printing concerns in China (the Commercial Press and the Chung-hwa Book Company, both in Shanghai) and were identical with textbooks used in China itself. Thus, pupils attending Chinese schools in Thailand were given as strong an indoctrination of Chinese nationalism as students in China proper; China was accorded paramount attention, invariably referred to as ‘our country’, and little attempt was made to foster an appreciation of local Southeast Asian traditions and history.”

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“Page 1-2 One of the most serious concerns of the Thai government for the past forty years or so has been the presence within the national society of an economically powerful minority group whose way of life is alien, and in some respects incompatible, to the Thai way of life. How to assimilate this minority, or at least to reduce its influence nationally, is a question which has troubled a succession of Thai monarchs and prime ministers. To speak of the Chinese minority as constituting a problem is only to recognize this concern felt in varying degrees by all Thai political leaders. Yet, the Chinese living in Thailand are peaceful and self-disciplined, a thrifty and very industrious people who have made significant contributions to their adopted land—to what extent, then, can they be regarded as a ‘problem’? While the Chinese problem has many dimensions, at is first of all an economic problem, and it is precisely this aspect which looms largest for the Thai. As they see it, the Chinese, welcomed into the Kingdom years ago by a generous government, have since that time subtly undermined the livelihood of the Thai people themselves. They have driven the latter from various skilled crafts, monopolized new occupations, and through combination of commercial know-how and chicanery have gained a stranglehold over the trade and commerce of the entire Kingdom. The Thai see the Chinese as exploiting unmercifully their advantageous economic position: the Thai are obliged to pay high prices to the Chinese for the very necessities of life, and on the other hand are forced to accept the lowest price for the rice they grow. Through deliberate profiteering, according to standard Thai thinking, this minority has driven up living costs, hitting especially hard government employees on fixed salaries. It is also charged that profits made by the Chinese go out of the country in the form of remittances to China, which means a continuous and gigantic draining away of the Kingdom’s wealth. To protect their favored economic position, one hears, the Chinese have not hesitated to bribe officials, which in turn has undermined the efficiency and morale of the public service. Efforts to protect the economic interests of the Thai people through legislation have been only partially effective, again because of Chinese adeptness at evasion and dissimulation.”

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“Page 11: Yet the very fact of contact over a period of time has inevitably produced changes among the overseas Chinese. Like Chinese everywhere they have a well-ingrained cultural pattern of adaptability and flexibility. Culturally and socially this minority in Thailand has learned to accept Thai ways without, however, losing its attachment to Things Chinese. The question is whether these changes represent simply protective coloration or true identification with Thai society. It is the seemingly opportunistic and vacillating quality of their cultural and social dualism which has made the Chinese, in the opinion of many responsible Thai, only summer patriots and fair-weather citizens. In the other countries of [Southeast Asia], the colonial powers protected and encouraged minority interests, and under colonialism these groups flourished.”

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“Page 15: This prohibition to emigration [from China] applied not only to persons wishing to settle permanently abroad but often to itinerant merchants as well. It seems to have stemmed, at least in part, from the Chinese attitude of superiority with regard to other peoples. A Chinese who preferred to live among barbarians must likewise be an inferior person.”

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“Page 16: …the character of the Chinese immigrant gradually changed from that of a simple Oriental trader or labourer to an essential middleman between Western importers and exporters on the one hand and the mass of the peasant population on the other. Chinese shopkeepers and itinerant traders funneled the manufactures of the West from European import houses in Bangkok to the indigenous population throughout the Kingdom, and at the same time acted as collection agencies for local products—tin, shellac, rubber—exported to the industries of the West.”

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“Page 22: Yet it would be a mistake to consider these immigrants of the last several decades alone and friendless in an alien land. Even before leaving China, their way had been smoothed by good organization and a spirit of co-operation. The prospective immigrants merely registered with a hotel in any of the cities of South China, and this hotel secured passage for the immigrant and his family if necessary—usually on the open deck of a European coastal steamer—took care of legal documentation, and saw that at their destination the emigrants were welcomed by persons speaking their own dialect, guided safely through immigration inspection and finally housed at another Chinese hotel until a more permanent residence could be found. … Once in Bangkok, the usual port of disembarkation, the immigrant was certain to have helpful hands extended from relatives, friends from his own village in China, or persons speaking his dialect. Through these persons, living quarters, a job, and perhaps sufficient capital to get started as a street hawker would be provided without question.”

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“Page 32: The phenomenal commercial success of the Chinese in Thailand, and indeed throughout Southeast Asia, has no single or simple explanation. Certainly this success is partly attributable to such personal qualities as perseverance, capacity for hard work, and business acumen, but one of the most important factors has been the tight social and economic organization developed by overseas Chinese communities. Such communities in Southeast Asia appear remarkable self-sufficient and to many observers seem to form alien societies within the host society. They have proved unusually effective, on the one hand, for encouraging mutual aid and co-operation among heterogeneous linguistic and socio-economic groups and, on the other, for providing protection from hostile or competitive individuals and governments. Better than most people the Chinese have learned the dictum that ‘in unity there is strength’. Their organizational cohesion furnishes much of the answer not only to the economic well-being of the Chinese as a group but also to the persistence of their cultural patterns and values in an alien and sometimes unfriendly social environment. This is a community of interest as well, for the wealth accumulated by the successful business man is used in part to support a multiplicity of ethnic organizations: trade guilds, a powerful Chinese Chamber of Commerce, dialect associations, benevolent and charitable organizations, surname associations, religious groups for both men and women, sports associations and social clubs.”

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“Page 33: Each of these associations is a distinct unit, each one pursues its own goals, but taken in their totality these associations direct the life of the community. These associations control business competition, regulate prices, mediate disputes, provide a system of social security, and act as intermediaries between the individual and the Thai government.”

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“Page 35: There is one outstanding difference between these [Chinese associations in Thailand] and those found in the villages of South China. In China, family and kin groups were predominant, and in fact other groups tended to be relatively unimportant. Just the reverse is true in Bangkok. Here, family and kin groups are numerous but exert small influence on the direction of community affairs. The real locus of power lies with business groups and the regional or dialect associations, both of which are formed on non-kin lines.”

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“Page 44: A Chinese immigrant arriving in Bangkok is assured of ready assistance from his dialect group, and this help is offered without question by people who speak his own language and know his needs. Through them, he is put in contact with relatives or persons from his own village in China. They see that he is housed and given work. Later the association stands always ready to give help when needed—to offer advice on sending remittances to China, to provide interpreters when dealing with officials, and to intercede when the immigrant runs afoul of the government’s red tape. Like the prototype institutions of China, the dialect association provides educational and medical facilities—more elaborate in fact than anything available in the rude villages of South China, and a continuing system of protective services in times of crisis or misfortune. In Thailand the individual Chinese who needs a loan, a job, or help of any kind will ordinarily appeal to his relatives first as he would in China. When these are unable to help, he can usually get assistance from his dialect association. While the type of problem brought to the attention of the dialect association may differ from problems faced in China, the fact remains that the association stands ready to help the individual Chinese in precisely the same manner and with the same spirit as he would expect from his clan group in China. Furthermore, just as everyone with the same surname and family origin was considered a member of the clan in China and therefore entitled to assistance from other members, so in Thailand all persons of a certain dialect groups are considered ipso facto members of the dialect association and thereby entitled to its full assistance.”

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“Page 62: As an outgrowth of their mutual aid services, Chinese associations help to unify the Chinese population in the pursuit of common objectives; they stimulate ethnocentric sentiments among the Chinese. The Chinese minority in Thailand, like all complex societies, shows a great range of economic affluence, from persons of wealth down to those with very little and with little hope of getting much more. If the minority is to maintain its unity over a period of time, two things seem necessary: to devise a way to ‘spread the wealth’, so that economic differences are not continually intensified; and to encourage on the part of those with wealth an active interest in groups lower on the economic scale than they. … Significantly, one finds very little ‘class’ antagonism as such among Thailand’s Chinese, and despite the strong influence of communism among workers, no discernible resentment of the man of wealth or position.”

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“Page 48-49: In 1952, the government ordered the dissolution of the Central Labour Union, on the ground that the CLU was dominated by Chinese and run by Communists, and therefore could not adequately represent the interests of Thai labour. As noted above, the Central Labour Union was suspected of being dominated by Communists, but the latter did not show any unwillingness to co-operate fully with Chinese business interests.”

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“Page 49-50: … more than 30 different trade guilds (kung-hui) flourish among Chinese merchants and professional men in Bangkok … Their importance lies in the assistance they render in the economic adjustment of the Chinese immigrants and in the continuing services of an economic nature they perform for members—circulating trade information, advising on economic trends and policies, hindering the development of unwanted competition. … Membership in these trade guilds is entirely Chinese, either immigrants or their immediate descendants. To become a member of a trade guild, one has first to be engaged in a particular type of business or profession; and secondly, one must be approved by the leaders of that particular guild. Both these provisions work to exclude Thai. An individual cannot ordinarily become a goldsmith, or vegetable merchant, or printer, or take up any of the other occupations represented by these guilds without first learning the trade. This apprenticeship system is controlled by Chinese organizations, open normally to other Chinese whatever their dialect group affiliation, but closed to outsiders, i.e., the Thai …”

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“Page 71-72: Many Chinese business men adopt Thai personal and family names, particularly when dealings with the government are anticipated—an application for an export permit, say, signed with a Chinese name may be rejected out of hand, or inordinately delayed, while the same application with a Thai name will receive better treatment. The new surnames adopted ordinarily incorporate the Chinese family name, thus ‘Chang’ becomes ‘Changtrakul’, and ‘Hoon’ becomes ‘Hoonthrarasmi’, but this fact is no handicap to their use for all official purposes. The changes cited above that occur in names seldom reach as far as the home. Thai personal and family names by which individuals may be officially known are not used within the family group or even among close Chinese friends.”

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“Page 77-76: Marriage with non-Chinese, and this usually means with Thai persons, is openly discouraged. In the past, however, there is reason to believe that intermarriage was fairly common, and many public figures, including every Thai monarch since the middle of the 19th century, were partly Chinese. …in urban centres like Bangkok, where the Chinese are concentrated, research by the author shows that intermarriage is a phenomenon of the past. … the trend toward a numerical equality between the sexes in the Chinese community helps to explain the decrease in intermarriage.”

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“Page 81: The prejudices that exist are social and cultural [not racial], and of these there is no lack in either group. The Thai consider the Chinese uncouth because they are often loud and raucous in public, because they are noisy eaters, and have other food habits which the Thai deem very undesirable. They regard the Chinese as a dirty people who don’t bathe often, who neglect their personal appearance and befoul the areas in which they reside. To them, the Chinese are grasping, excessively materialistic, interested only in making money.”

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“Page 83: The Chinese hold equally strong prejudices about the Thai. With them, however, derogatory opinions are rarely expressed publicly, either in newspapers or by Chinese leaders. The typical Chinese meets any unpleasantness with a smile or a resigned shrug. Yet by associating with the Chinese one soon realizes the depth of their contempt and bitterness. The Thai are characterized as indolent if not outright lazy, untrustworthy, and slippery in business dealings. A Chinese merchant will rather employ an Indian as a watchman or chauffeur than hire a Thai. Almost universal is the belief among the Chinese immigrant group that Thai women are morally loose and therefore undesirable as wives. This is certainly an instance of a double standard for the signs of blatant promiscuity on the part of Chinese males are everywhere apparent. Scores of houses of prostitution are located in the Chinese districts of Bangkok, and virtually every Chinese hotel in the country doubles as a call house.”

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