>Chinese diaspora
I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.
I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.
And they are often a distinct community, with their own language (a dialect from where they came from in China). They were often economic migrants, so tend to be seen as a "merchant class" in these countries and hold quite a lot of political power.
The Peranakan in Malaysia are a good example. And there is continued strife in those countries as these Chinese-Malaysian often have much more political power than their numbers alone would suggest.
[0]: Actually I think this is true of most of South East Asia where the Chinese community doesn't have as distinct a separation as Malaysia and Singapore
Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city, and is also Thailand’s richest region by far.
Do you have a source for that because that has not been my experience?
> As of the 2000 census, there were 6,355,144 registered residents in the city. However, this figure does not take account of the many unregistered residents and daytime visitors from the surrounding metropolitan area. More than 50% of Bangkokians have some Chinese ancestry.
They are still Thai, they often don’t even speak Chinese, just ethnically Chinese (and then I guess it depends on how you count mixed ancestry).
This is like saying “most English people can speak French” vs “a majority of English people learn some French at school”
So it is quite possible that the argument of Thai people being Chinese would parallel more strongly; English people don't just speak a bit of French, they have the same ancestors and may as well be French. Hopefully the ethnic Chinese entered Thailand under more rosy circumstances!
That’s not really true though unless you take an excessively liberal interpretation of what it means to be French. The Celts weren’t French, the Danes weren’t French, the Romans weren’t French, the Saxons weren’t French, and even the Normans had only been in France for a century before invading, although they picked up the local language pdq. The only people to successfully invade after 1066 were the Dutch, and they would assure you they weren’t French.
> and the Thai tourist economy at least likes their money
Yeeees, but the government (regardless of which) has been talking about trying to move to richer tourists since forever, and discouraging large numbers of Russian and Chinese tourists who they think spend less. So yes, lots of Chinese tourists, but if they could wave a magic wand to replace those with Japanese, Korean, and American tourists, they'd do it in a heartbeat
> Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city
This is untrue, although I've heard (and would believe) that the majority of middle-class Bangkok has some Chinese heritage
> and is also Thailand’s richest region by far
Actually, until Covid's effect on tourism, that crown was held by Phuket, although Phuket also has a high Chinese influence.
Places like koh chang (my personal favorite) become really deserted, not devoid of people, but you might be the only person at some lazy restaurant or bar that was full and bustling just a few weeks ago.
It turns out most Chinese tour operators throughout SE Asia run a completely vertical business, wherein they own all touchpoints their guests interact with (e.g. the restaurants, the bus company, the gift shops, etc.). Further, these are all staffed by immigrant Chinese. This results in all tourism profits being captured by Chinese nationals and businesses (and being exported back home as remittances) while burdening local infrastructure. Locals hate this.
For what its worth, I never heard / witnessed any hostility towards local ethnic Chinese (Peranakans), whose status, as the parent comment notes, is locally prominent. (Though there have been some bloody clashes in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_Chinese...
[0] Living in SE Asia, lots of extended chats with locals throughout the region.
I heard the exact same complaint in Italy. Chinese tourist groups come to Venice, annoy all the locals by dropping trash on the floor, but only buy their souvenirs at Chinese-owned gift shops. And they sleep on the Chinese-owned cruise ship.
I saw lots of chinese people at Pica Pollos across the country, but never saw them outside the restaurants and don't know much about where they live or what life is like for them in the DR. I'm not sure if each pica pollo is run by a chinese family that lives on site at the restaurant.
Then the comment, paraphrasing, "they think they're Chinese when they're not Chinese nationals at all". If their ancestors were from China, they don't "think" they're ethnic Chinese, they are ethnic Chinese. Unless you get into the nitty gritty clans and groups of the gigantic landmass. The use of "think ... although" indicates you disagree with how they identify their ethnicity. Thus I assumed you felt it was a problem.
Apologies if I read intentions that weren't there.
Just as an example of something with a flimsier premise. Say a German American who doesn't speak the language, don't have known family there, have no loyalty to Germany, celebrate none of the German festivals, and the only indication left is a last name Schmidt. We don't say, "huh the German diaspora is everywhere" when these people say their ancestors are from Germany.
Consider the way Russians-in-exile perceive themselves in the current geopolitical context.
This is super common in Europe. We have people who think of themselves as X and speak Xian as their mother tongue even though the region has been part of Y country for centuries.
Slovenians, for example, managed to survive under foreign rule for about 1100 years before re-gaining independence.
Nationality and ethnicity are very different concepts.
for a more American example: Ask any of the indigenous peoples how they feel about their American, Canadian, Mexican, etc. nationality.
> Consider the way Russians-in-exile perceive themselves in the current geopolitical context.
Those who I've spoken to identify themselves as Russian citizens temporarily in exile, whilst I am ethnically Russian who has no connection to the country at all. I don't think these are the same.
You have Bretons that are ethnically close to Irish/Scotish, Alsaciens who are ethnically Germans, Basque who are similar to the Spanish Basque, Corse who want to be independent...
A better example of a country that more or less encompass an ethnicity would be Germany, or Japan. But even there you'll find exceptions (Ainu in Hokkaido, Okinawa being also ethnically different as Ryukyu vs Yamato...)
The fact that it has substructure and blurred lines doesn't mean it isn't a valid abstraction.
Another interesting tidbit is that after a civil war in China, part of the Chinese army that lost the war fled to northern Thailand. And there they settled in the mountains [0].
From my understanding (from a Dutch man that lives nearby who used to be a travel guide in Thailand) many (Thai-)Chinese people here in northern Thailand still maintain very close ties with their families in Taiwan. Also, several villages here also have their own little "China-towns", which can be interesting places to visit.
> The soldiers' war did not end after their own "long march" from Yunnan to Möng Hsat in Burma's Shan State. The Burmese soon discovered that a foreign army was camped on their soil, and launched an offensive. The fighting continued for 12 years, and several thousand KMT soldiers were eventually evacuated to Taiwan. When China entered the Korean War, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a desperate need for intelligence on China. The agency turned to the two KMT generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China for intelligence-gathering missions. In return, the agency offered arms to equip the generals to retake China from their bases in the Shan State. The KMT army tried on no fewer than seven times between 1950 and 1952 to invade Yunnan, but was repeatedly driven back into the Shan State. The ending of the Korean War in 1953 was not the end of the KMT's fight against the communist Chinese and Burmese armies, which continued on for many years, supported by Washington and Taiwan and subsequently funded by the KMT's involvement in the Golden Triangle's drug trade.
>In 1961, Tuan led some 4,000 battle-weary KMT troops out of Burma to a mountainous sanctuary in Mae Salong in Thailand. In exchange for asylum, the Thai government allowed them to stay on the understanding that they would assist in policing the area against communist infiltration. As a result, most of the village's inhabitants today are ethnic Chinese and direct descendants of those KMT soldiers. At the same time, General Lee of the 3rd Regiment established his headquarters at Tham Ngob, north-west of Chiang Mai. The KMT army was renamed "Chinese Irregular Forces" (CIF) and was placed directly under the control of a special task force, code-named "04", commanded by Bangkok.
> After the soldiers reached Mae Salong, China and Thailand struck an agreement to transfer the administration of the group to the Thai government. The provincial governor of southern Thailand, Pryath Samanmit, was reassigned as the governor of Chiang Rai, to oversee the KMT division, but upon taking up his position, Samanmit was killed by communist insurgents. Soon afterwards, the KMT division was ordered to assist the Thai government in countering the advancing armies on Thailand's northern borders and the internal threat from the Communist Party of Thailand. Fierce battles were fought in the mountains of Doi Laung, Doi Yaw, Doi Phamon, and Mae Aabb, and the communist uprising was successfully countered. The bloodiest operation was launched on 10 December 1970, a five-year-long campaign that claimed over 1,000 lives, many from landmines. It was not until 1982 that the soldiers were able to give up their arms and were discharged to settle down to a normal life at Mae Salong. As a reward for their service, the Thai government gave citizenship to most of the KMT soldiers and their families.
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The current map of China is one variation of many, many historical maps, which vary considerably. (Ask the Tibetans, in particular.) It might look like a cohesive government today, but so did the USSR - the Communists suppressed the ethnic differences, but the USSR exploded into many different countries when the Communists lost power - including Ukraine, Belarus, Modova (afaik), the Baltic states, Central Asian countries, and more.
I wonder what the truth is of China now; it's a question nobody asks.
If the European Union had been more successful and had a couple more generations totally immersed speaking English, you could imagine some Chinese people in the year 2123 saying 'wow, Europe is actually a whole Civilization politically unified as a nation. Who would have thought".
That'd be true today in a timeline where Napoleon won.
Or a timeline in which the Roman Empire never collapsed. Which is what I think is a better comparison to China.