6. The Chinese immigrants

Oct 07, 2004

Chinese immigrants have played a huge role over the centuries in helping build Bangkok into one of the most prosperous cities in Southeast Asia. Researchers believe the Chinese originally found new homes in Siam 1,000 years ago,

settling first in great numbers in what became the south of Thailand, and then, from the 14th to mid 18th centuries, in Ayutthaya.

The Siamese court recognised their talents as business agents, traders and seafarers, and employed many to mediate pacts with foreign countries, rewarding them in turn with the freedom to conduct their own business and domestic affairs.

Between 1782 and 1851, the first three kings of the Chakri dynasty supported Chinese immigration as an aid to trade. Historians say that in the reign of Rama III, fully half of Bangkok’s 400,000 citizens were Chinese. American academic William Skinner conjectures that by 1850, that number had increased to at least 300,000, and 95,000 more arrived each year over the next century. The influx dropped only with the birth of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

In a 1986 report, academics at Yunnan’s Southeast Asia Study Institute cited four main reasons behind the massive Chinese migration to Thailand. Exports of rice blossomed in Rama IV’s reign, and during that of his successor, from 1905 to 1909, Siam shipped out 885,000 tonnes – 40 per cent of its overall output.

Second, mainland China simply lacked enough arable land to sustain its farmers. A third factor was the new steamboat lines launched by British companies, which brought people from Hong Kong and Shantou (Swatao). The final impetus for immigration came from natural disaster and war.

Most – 95 per cent – came from Guangdong, Fujian (Hokkian) and Zhejiang provinces, with many more arriving from Yunnan province. Most were Taechew, Hainanese and Hakkan (Kae).

The Taechew worked as retailers, construction workers and rice millers, or on sugarcane, pepper and tobacco plantations.

Most Hainanese worked in the sawmills and ports and on rubber plantations, or became gardeners or pig farmers.

The Hakkan were craftsmen, peddlers, rickshaw drivers and housekeepers.

People from the south of Fujian preferred working in the mines of southern Thailand, or on barges. Those from Guangdong went into construction.

Collectively, their economic contribution was immense. Until 1855 they ran all the rice mills in Bangkok, and even then the number of Chinese immigrants accelerated with the signing of the Bowring Treaty with Britain.

From 1870, they were building more rice mills and using steam engines to help process up to 200 tonnes a day. In 1912 there were 50 mills in the capital that belonged to Chinese, and more in the provinces.

The merchants who bought the unhusked rice from Siamese farmers were Chinese, as were the traders who shipped the rice abroad, including to China. The only role in the chain they shunned was the actual growing.

It was an auspicious beginning, and things only got better. The immigrants gradually adapted to Thai ways and via a mutual cultural osmosis countless business-minded descendants become leaders of Thai society.

Nithinand Yorsaengrat

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