“JEWS OF ASIA”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4402, 14 March 1941, Page 3

“JEWS OF ASIA”

CHINESE IN THAILAND. SUBDUED SPIRIT. (By E. C. S. Marshall, Foreign Editor of The Sun, Sydney.) When their New Year comes round shortly the Bangkok Chinese will beat fewer drums and let off fewer crackers than one might expect. The mood of the big Chinese quarter, where one can pass through whole blocks of shops and dwellings without seeing one Thai face, is subdued.

In recent years Thai Nationalist firebrands, imitating Hitler’s campaign in their own way, have called the Chinese “ the Jews of Asia,” and, though incidents have been few, the

common people are learning to dislike them because of their stranglehold on business.

Between producer and consumer stands the figure of the tireless Chinese, who is almost the universal tradesman, shopkeeper, and broker of Siam. He represents probably ninety per cent of the commercial class, and drains Thailand of her life-blood by sendingtthe bulk of (his gains’ to China.

Often he has a family there, and remits money for its maintenance; or he builds up a fund there to keep him in his old age, when he will shake the dust of Thailand from his feet and return to die among his own folk. MONEY TO CHINA. The total number of Chinese in Thailand is probably over two millions. Government statistics show 524,000, but these presumably embrace only the Chinese who have not Thai nationality. A Chinese whom I

asked the number of his people here said “ Three millions ” without blinking.

Eight years ago an eminent Chinese banker congratulated his countrymen in Thailand on the fact that all through the depression they had not diminished the scale of their remittances home. For these he gave a figure, possibly exaggerated, which was about equal to one-third of the total revenue of the Siamese Government in recent years. Whatever the precise figure( and it cannot be ascertained) Thailand is unable to “ take it.” The losses by Chinese remittances hold her back. In terms of monetary capital she is extraordinarily poor. Only a few years ago fewer than 3000 Siamese (the world did not speak of them until last year as Thai) had annual incomes above £220. This is a country where the Siamese numbered over 12,000,000 (the population given to-day is: Thai, 13,840,000; Thai, plus foreigners, 14,464,000.) The greatest fortune in the country is Siamese ownership at the time in question was, apart from the Privy Purse, one well under £4OOO a year. The majority of income tax payers were Government officials or foreigners whose incomes were derived from salaries alone. Figures for to-day would probably correspond. Thailand lives chiefly by the rice crop. To acquire a stock of national wealth readily useable for capital needs, she must look to the margin between the production and export values of her rice—a margin at present taken for the most part by the Chinese up-country buyer, transporter, miller, and broker—and put beyond her reach. There are people, even in high Thai quarters, who say that the Chinese must be hounded out; but for a reason which the moderate Thai admit, there can be no sudden sweep.

The Thai are not yet ready to du without the Chinese. They are themselves intelligent and charming, but they lack natural inclination for business. If they have a choice of a career they usually want to be Government officials or professional men. Often, if you find a Thai concern which seems to be getting along nicely, you will discover a woman behind it—perhaps an elderly widow. There is no point, then, in Thai abuse of the Chinese; and there is even danger to Thailand in the cry, “ Kick the Chinese out ! ” The Thai must be careful not to pull down the existing economic structure before they have something to take its place. The wiser of them fully recognise this. FARMERS DEEP IN DEBT. One line the Government is following promises a solution without dislocacation. It is the “ pet ”’ of Financial Adviser W. A. Doll, a Briton, who in his annual reports has harked back to it time after time. The peasants are being helped to form co-op-eratives with the aim of cutting out the middleman. The scheme is manysided, but the first thing it does is to lift the farmer out of debt in which he is usually buried to his eyes.

What favours “ rescue work ” of this sort is that the Chinese creditor of the farmer has been too shrewd to foreclose on the land (after all, as a foreigner, he must go warily), and has chosen to take his payment from produce instead, so that sometimes whole districts are working for him. The co-operative with credits originally furnished by the Government brings independence. Its activities may extend to marketing (and not of rice crops only), to land development (chiefly by irrigation), or to colonisation (efforts to ease overcrowded districts and settle farmers in under-populated .areas). In the past five years the number of co-operatives has from a little over 300 to 2500, and this year 800 will probably be added. Their accumulated balances will eventually enable them to have a bank of their own. The peasants are paying back advances faster than the law requires (a sidelight on the Thai rural character); and the failures of co-operatives have been less than one-half per cent —the lowest rate ever known. So a peaceful intrument promises, in course of time, to free the peasant and his Chinese master, and, through the liberated peasant, to change the economic outlook for Thailand. The Government also'favours the establishment of more and more Thai-owned business, to compete on favourable terms with the Chinese.

Thailand is countering various methods by which the Chinese preserved their strength. The Chinese would like to educate their children, here in schools using the Chinese language. The Thai Government frustrates them. It insists on all Thaiborn subjects learning Thai, and limits the number of school hours that may be spent on studying Chinese. Strict enforcement of such regulations has led to the closing of hundreds of Chinese schools, and it is now not so easy for the young Chinese, educated here, to go to China for higher education—he finds himself insufficiently equipped in point of language.

Therb used to be ten Chinese newspapers in Bangkok. To-day there is only one, and it has to watch its step.

Once the Chinese used to hold important Government offices, but present policy is against that.

The Chinese have made matters more difficult for themselves by gradually departing, in late years, from the custom of inter-marriage with the Thai. More Chinese bring wives now from China.

HOLD OF JAPANESE. The children of mixed unions, by the way, often showed special cleverness, were unusually good-looking, and, under their mothers’ influence, made excellent Thai citizens. In the present Government are important members, with an admixture of Chinese blood. Even the Premier is said to have a little.

The Chinese have damaged themselves with the Thai in another respect. Their private boycott of Japanese goods deprived the Thai of cheap articles, which they formerly bought. This accounts for the recent rise of small Japanese businesses here.

Thailand’s fight with the French of Indo-China has rather masked the Chinese problem for the moment. But it is not forgotten. The Thailand Chinese know it, and at their New Year —■ the occasion of occasions among Chinese abroad —they will attract as little publicity as they can. “ What would you do ? ” a Chinese asked me when we had talked about his people’s. situation.