INTRODUCTION
From 1989 until today, the People's Republic of China's use of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau, the Qiaoban 侨办, has conspicuously increased. In 1989, facing a freeze on investments from Western nations following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and also the subsequent economic recession, were crucial, motivating factors for the PRC's decision to revitalize the Qiaoban. Several scholarsFootnote 1 have noted that, since 1989, the aims of the Qiaoban have been directed toward replacing Western investments by attracting investment from overseas ChineseFootnote 2 investors, upholding the international reputation of Chinese business and industry, and supporting China's political interests in regard to accessing social, economic and political resources both domestically and abroad.Footnote 3
This article examines the policy implementation and practices of the Qiaoban as they are applied in the Northern Thai borderlands, where diasporic Chinese of various groups have been living along the border for many decades. Diasporic Chinese living in the Northern Thai borderlands can be divided into two main groups. Firstly, there are the “ethnic Chinese” (e.g. Teochiu, Hakka, Hainanese), who mainly came from coastal China in successive migration waves over the past hundred years. Secondly, there are the Yunnanese Chinese, who are mostly “Nationalist Chinese” and include remnants and descendants of the anti-communist Kuomintang Yunnanese (KMT) troops who fled from Yunnan into Burma and Thailand after the 1949 civil war. Although these two Chinese groups have shared a similar set of core cultural values and social relations, including Chinese education and cultural traditions, the historical background of the KMT, particularly their anti-communist politics, are notably different from the attitudes and allegiances of the so-called “ethnic Chinese”.
Drawing on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the borderlands, and particularly in the Yunnanese Chinese village areas between 2012 and 2013, this study uses information gained through qualitative research methods, including ethnographic field notes, interviews with key informants, and the analysis of relevant policy and historical documents. With the help of my locally based research assistant, we formally and informally interviewed several groups of key informants: e.g. leaders of the two different Chinese associations (the Yunnanese Chinese Associations in Chiang Mai and in Chiang Rai, and the Guang Ming Chinese Association in Chiang Rai; village leaders and leading members in different generations of Ban Nong-ook village; and former and current directors and Chinese teachers of the schools located in the village and in Mai Sai district, my research sites. The information gathered from these key informants, along with findings from observation of teaching activities, help piece together the historical background of the Yunnanese Chinese in border localities and especially a coherent picture of how internal conflicts among the different generations of the Yunnanese Chinese are nowadays shaped by several sets of circumstances. The study examines the cases of the two different Chinese associations in regard to their responses and interactions with the Qiaoban's cultural policies and practices. The first association is in Chiang Rai and the second is located in a Yunnanese Chinese village in the borderlands of Chiang Mai. Finally, this article examines how the effects of the implementation of the Qiaoban's policies and projects are understood by the local Nationalist Chinese in the Northern Thai borderlands, revealing increasing social tensions between the older and younger generations.
THE QIAOBAN: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE PRC'S OVERSEAS CHINESE POLICY
According to the Chinese government's official web portal in 2009,Footnote 4 the Qiaoban, or the “Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China”, is an administrative office which assists the government in handling qiaowu 侨务, or overseas Chinese affairs. The historical background of the Qiaoban can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, when, during the Qing dynasty, Qing officials established official bureaus to deal with the movement of “British Chinese” following the opening of treaty ports after the opium war. An Overseas Chinese office bureau was later established by the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party) with the express intention of creating government bodies, organs and offices that would persuade overseas Chinese to invest in mainland China and to help develop regulations, laws and policies that would combat communist ideologies and promote nationalist sentiments.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) later on inherited the Qiaoban framework and established the State Council of Overseas Chinese Affairs Office in 1978. In his examination of the Chinese government's efforts in managing overseas Chinese affairs during the 1980s, James ToFootnote 5 finds that the task set for the revitalized Qiaoban by the Chinese government was to maintain, protect, and enhance the rights and interests of overseas Chinese. This would include promoting overseas Chinese affairs, researching the needs of overseas Chinese, and intervening in order to resolve problems of a political or local nature. Following the 1989 freeze of Western investment and subsequent economic recession, the CCP widened and intensified its work on overseas Chinese affairs and policy. The relevant institutions and structures were re-established under the “Third Office of the United Front Work Department” (UFWD), a newly created institution, along with the Qiaoban, the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, the National Association of Overseas Chinese, the Dependent Overseas Chinese, the Overseas Chinese Commission (Qiaoweihui 侨委会), in addition to establishing Chinese embassies and consulates throughout the world. According to Pal Nyiri,Footnote 6 in the 1990s the Qiaoban had over 8,000 branches and affiliated mass organizations at various levels, including an Overseas Chinese Commission, a People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a trade union, a youth federation, a women's federation, and departments of culture, education, propaganda, civil affairs, foreign trade and customs. Together these institutional organs were given the task of working with overseas Chinese located all over the world.
The aim of the QiaobanFootnote 7 and all the PRC-backed institutions directed at overseas Chinese during this time was to attract overseas Chinese investors to do business in mainland China, uphold China's international reputation, and win back the confidence and loyalty of overseas Chinese nationals both domestically and abroad. Two significant strategies introduced by the Chinese government were the dispatching and receiving activities of Chinese government delegates to overseas locations, and overseas Chinese visiting China.
The dispatching activities included the Qiaoban office and other institutional bodies sending Chinese overseas, including Chinese government delegates, volunteers and many other informal groups including tour groups to visit diasporic Chinese living abroad and cultivate numerous voluntary associations and networks with various economic and political actors. According to Cheng and Ngok,Footnote 8 in 1995, the PRC dispatched 526 delegations involving 21,966 people to visit overseas Chinese communities around the world. These delegations came from various groups including top party government officials from the provinces and municipalities, delegates or volunteers sent on job assignments and trading ventures, representatives on commerce and business meetings, volunteers offering education, health, technology, engineering and medical expertise, as well as experts in Chinese literature and language, cultural performance, dance and sports.
The receiving activities included an effort to strengthen the links that would engage overseas Chinese and returnees via economic, social and cultural linkages to China. When Chinese authorities and volunteers arranged visits to overseas Chinese communities, they would also invite diasporic Chinese leaders of associations and influential groups to visit China on expenses-paid trips. In China, moreover, several official administration and trade associations in various provinces and municipalities have since been constructed to facilitate and promote the return travel of overseas Chinese returnees. This includes holding conferences for diasporic Chinese businessmen and traders encouraged to invest in business in China, and organizing cultural events, activities and various summer camps to attract younger generations. It is worth noting, however, that the success of the Qiaoban offices in overseas Chinese affairs has varied due to the unequal degrees of development and infrastructure in the different administrative regions in China.Footnote 9
For the relationship between Thailand and China in particular, with the rise of China's economy currently, the Thai government and Thai people in general have come to view economic relations with China more as an opportunity than as a threat. Chinese–Thai partnerships have been welcomed in several economic sectors, encouraged by government and private associations in both Thailand and China. New economic motivations have also laid the ground for further blossoming of Chinese cultural exchanges, including Chinese language and the expansion of the Hanban,Footnote 10 which administers the Chinese Confucius Institutes in Thailand. Twenty-four Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, providing instruction at almost all levels of formal education throughout Thailand, have now been established. They represent approximately 25 percent of the total number of Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in Asia.Footnote 11 Across Thailand there are now more than a thousand official volunteer teachers and more than a thousand Chinese language courses.Footnote 12
Whilst the Hanban, funded by the PRC, has played a significant role in Thai education as a whole, the Qiaoban and its various institutional organs have been the most prominent, gradually gaining attention from overseas Chinese communities in Thailand, collaborating with Chinese schools founded for the diasporic Chinese, and extending their curricula and programs into several levels of Thai formal education. For example, the State Affairs Office of the Anhui Province Qiaoban commission recently sent six Chinese teachersFootnote 13 from Anhui to Thailand to teach the Chinese language for a period of between one and two years. The teachers were selected to train Thai teachers in how to teach the standard Mandarin Chinese language effectively. Additionally, the Qiaoban divisions in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Yunnan province have actively promoted Chinese culture via connections from southern China through to Thailand and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. In the Guangxi region and Yunnan province the Qiaoban offices sent representatives from their respective provincial governments to engage in the work of promoting Chinese cultural exchange programs and events such as Chinese language training, tours, art exhibition openings, youth camps and other cultural activities across the ASEAN region. According to the Xinhua news agency, in addition to holding youth camps, the Qiaoban in the Guangxi region and Yunnan province have also supported approximately a thousand students from ASEAN countries to study in Guangxi and Yunnan every year.Footnote 14
The Qiaoban, together with its affiliated institutional organs, such as the Chinese embassy in Thailand and the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai, has attempted to reconnect with diverse Chinese associations across northern Thailand, holding extensive meetings with the leaders of Chinese communities through the use of dispatching and receiving strategies. For example, the Qiaoban division working with the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai has offered assistance and facility support to develop local Chinese education and provide funding and scholarships for younger people to visit China. Additionally, they provide assistance for Chinese schools founded by diasporic Chinese communities in northern Thailand, providing them with educational materials, salaries for teaching volunteers, funding for classroom buildings, scholarships, computers, curricula and textbooks, and the like.
In order to understand the cultural politic and response of the two diasporic Chinese communities in the northern Thai borderlands toward the Qiaoban, I will first outline the general background and historical differences between these communities in relation to migration experiences, settlement and relationships to the Thai state.
DIASPORIC CHINESE COMMUNITIES IN NORTHERN THAI BORDERLANDS
Unlike other parts of Thailand where there is only one main ethnic Chinese community migrating by sea from coastal areas of China, the northern Thai borderlands have two distinct diasporic Chinese communities which self-identify with “Chineseness”: ethnic ChineseFootnote 15 (Teochiu,Footnote 16 Hakka, Hainanese, Cantonese and Hokkien), and Yunnanese Chinese.
The history of Chinese immigration to Thailand dates back many centuries, to the Sukhothai period of 1253. The term “ethic Chinese” refers to overseas Chinese whose ancestors came to Thailand by sea from coastal areas such as Fujian and Guangdong. Using dialect as a classificatory tool, the descendants of these ethnic Chinese can be divided into five main groups—those speaking Teochiu, Hakka, Hainanese, Cantonese and Hokkien (or Fujian) respectively. During the Rama V period (1870–1910), the Teochiu, Hainanese, and Hakka gradually moved to the northern parts of Thailand, in search of better economic opportunities. Thanks to new road and rail transport routes gradually being built during that period, seafaring Teochiu, Hainanese and Hakka moved into the area, settling first in Lampang Province, and then dispersing throughout the northern Thai region, including the Shan state and Laos. An important example is the Mae Sai border town in Chiang Rai, opposite Tachilek in Burma, where 90 percent of the population are descendants of Teochiu and Hakka Chinese migrants who moved from Bangkok to Phayao, Phrae, Nan, and Lampang Provinces to settle in Mae Sai. These ethnic Chinese descendants have been living in Mae Sai for several decades, engaging in cross-border trade with Myanmar via Tachilek and Keng Tung. Although their citizenship is Thai, in the socio-cultural sphere these ethnic Chinese groups assimilated to Thai culture while maintaining their Chinese identity, including participation in rituals and festivals organized by a voluntary Chinese association, called the Guang Ming Foundation.
The second group of diasporic Chinese communities in the northern Thai borderlands is Yunnanese Chinese. The Yunnanese Chinese in this area mostly migrated by land from southwest China, and are often categorized as “overland Chinese” and are thus differentiated from those ethnic Chinese who came to Thailand by sea from coastal areas of southeast or southern China. The Yunnanese Chinese language is related to the Southwest Mandarin dialect, as different in dialect as are Cantonese, Teochiu, or Hainan.
The Yunnan Chinese in northern Thailand can be divided into two groups. The first are the Hui, who can be further identified in two categories. First, there are the Muslim caravan traders who have engaged in long-distance caravan trade in mountainous areas of Laos, Thailand, Burma and Tibet for hundreds of years. Secondly, there are descendants of the Hui refugees and ex-soldiers who defected from the nineteenth-century Du Wenxiu Rebellion, a rebellion of the Muslim Hui people. The non-Muslim ethnic minorities fought against the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty in southwestern Yunnan Province during the nineteenth century. They are locally called Ho, Haw, Chin Ho, or Chin Haw by the Thais and others.Footnote 17
The second group of Yunnanese Chinese is the Han, or Nationalist Chinese, generally perceived to be ex-soldiers and supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Army (Kuomintang-KMT) who escaped from Yunnan into Burma after the communist takeover of China in 1949. At this time, the Nationalist Chinese, as a result of UN efforts first and the Burmese Army later, gathered several army units of the KMTFootnote 18 in the border areas of Burma and later settled in northern Thailand, where they established refugee villages in the 1960s.Footnote 19 The term Yunnan Chinese, therefore, is a broad category that includes people of very different sub-ethnicities, histories, and political identities (Huang Reference Huang2010). In this article, I use the term KMT Yunnanese to refer to those who fought in the KMT army units and their descendants, and refer to the Han and their descendants as “Nationalist Chinese”.
Many descendants of those Hui traders and ex-soldiers and KMT Yunnanese are now located along the northern Thai border in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Mae Hongson provinces (as well as in the Shan state of Burma, the border adjacent to the northern Thai border). Yunnanese Chinese who live in these mountainous areas have played key roles in trade, commonly serving as intermediaries in the trade of opium, jade stones, and daily items with other ethnic peoples during the 1960s to 1980s.Footnote 20 During the 1970s, the Thai government decided to use remnants of the KMT soldier force to fight communist guerrillas hidden in mountainous areas of the northern borderlands. Following the assistance the soldiers provided in suppressing communist forces in Thailand, the Thai government gradually began to grant Thai citizenship and different categories of legal status (aliens, displaced people and independent immigrants) to the KMT forces and their dependants as a reward for their victories in the battles of the 1970s.Footnote 21 As for residential legal rights, the Thai government initially defined Yunnanese Chinese as refugees and distinguished them from the early Teochiu, Hakka and Hainanese Chinese migrants. However, after the Yunnanese finally surrendered their arms in the 1980s, the Thai government promised to offer them Thai citizenship, and also granted them land for resettlement and farming in northern Thailand.
According to Chen Chu Shan, a leading member of the Yunnanese Chinese Associations in Chiang Mai, there are today eighty-eight villages in northern Thailand inhabited by Yunnanese Chinese. Thirty-three of these villages are located in mountainous areas of Chiang Mai province. There are fifty-five villages in foothills and rural areas of Chiang Rai. Apart from these villages, some of the Yunnanese Chinese settlers also dispersed to the urban towns of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Bangkok. The total population is now estimated at approximately 200,000 Yunnanese Chinese across these eighty-eight villages, not including the Yunnanese Chinese living in cities. To help take care of Yunannese Chinese in these local areas, there are at least three main voluntary associations, including the Yunnanese Chinese Associations in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Bangkok, which were established during the 1980s by Yunnanese settlers and the former KMT generals of the Third and Fifth KMT Armies.
THE QIAOBAN AND CULTURAL PRACTICES IN THE NORTHERN THAI BORDERLANDS
The Qiaoban's support of various Chinese cultural practices are examined here through a case study of diasporic Chinese communities in Mae Sai district, Chiang Rai, and a case study of a new PRC Chinese school in a mountainous village of Chiang Mai built through a collaboration of leading Yunnanese Chinese in the village with funding provided by the Qiaoban. Mainly, it has been the Yunnan Qiaoban, or the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Yunnan Province, which has played the most important role in encouraging the improvement of Chinese education in the Yunnanese-Chinese villages.
The Qiaoban: Connecting Chinese Associations in Mae Sai
In the case of Mae Sai, from 2005 onward the Qiaoban office of Yunnan Province has promoted particular cultural activities and exchanges through two main Chinese voluntary associations (the Guang Ming Foundation established by ethnic Chinese, and the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Rai set up by the Yunnanese Chinese). These activities and exchanges are both symbolic and strategic, in that they aim to tie political support for the PRC together with participation in Chinese cultural activities. As mentioned above, the Guang Ming Foundation was established by a group of wealthy ethnic Chinese in Thailand. The Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Rai was established in 1981 by Yunnanese settlers, under the leadership of the former KMT general Chen Moxiu or (in Thai) Charoen Prideepot. Generally, both associations aimed to improve the quality of life in the border area, providing education, health-related services and social relief. While the Guang Ming Foundation has pursued its social services and philanthropic activities more openly among the general public, the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Rai has limited its main objectives to providing general assistance to Yunnanese Chinese settled in fifty-five villages in Chiang Rai, particularly those who are from families of the KMT troops who escaped through Myanmar into Thailand.
With the aim of targeting education as a gateway for improving quality of life as well as preserving Chinese language and culture, both institutions have focused their charitable activities on building and managing schools. Referring to Suangsuda Aeramporn, chief executive president of the Guang Ming Huaqiao private school, the Guang Ming Foundation, with monetary assistance from ethnic Chinese businessmen in Bangkok and Chiang Rai, has invested over thirty million Baht in the Guang Ming Huaqiao private school established in 2007, which now has approximately 500 students in grades one to twelve, covering both primary and high school education. The students are the children and descendants of Chinese immigrants who settled in Chiang Rai and nearby provinces, as well as Chinese children living in Myanmar. The latter group goes back and forth across the Thai-Myanmar border every day to study at the school.
To help improve the quality of Chinese education and enhance its reputation, the Guang Ming Foundation utilizes their connections with the PRC government: the Qiaoban, Chinese embassy, the PRC Consulate in Chiang Mai and Chambers of Commerce. The strong relationship built between these parties is evident in the assistance they are offered by the PRC Consulate in Chiang Mai for the purposes of supporting education and other associated activities. Recently, the Chiang Mai PRC consulate provided the school with Chinese textbooks,Footnote 22 computers and scholarships. Apart from this regular assistance, the Chiang Mai consulate also donates money when the Guang Ming Foundation requests funds for philanthropic activities. As requested by the Guang Ming School, twenty Chinese youth volunteers from China were recently sent by the Qiaoban to teach several subjects in the mainland simplified-character Mandarin writing system, a dispatching project that is planned to be repeated annually. The school and the Qiaoban office, referring to the chief executive president of the Guang Ming Huaqiao private school, have agreed to give joint assistance in funding the salary of each volunteer.
While the Guang Ming School was established to provide Chinese language education using the simplified characters of the writing system used in mainland China,Footnote 23 the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Rai established two private schoolsFootnote 24 to teach Taiwanese Mandarin using the traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan. The first school is the “Mae Sai Vocational Training School” of about 600 students, established in 1996 in Baan Tam village, one of the fifty-five villages in Chiang Rai where the KMT Yunnanese soldiers and their families settled after 1949. This school teaches in Taiwanese Mandarin at the primary, secondary and high school levels, and this has recently been extended up to the college level in business, computing and commercial accounting courses. This school is now able to provide a guarantee from the Education Ministry of Taiwan that students who pass the examination system and graduate from the school will be admitted to higher education in Taiwan. The other school is the “Wai Win School”, which was founded in 1999 to provide educational support for Yunnanese Chinese descendants living in the Mae Sai municipality. There are 900 students, who come from downtown Mae Sai and other nearby areas. The school teaches in Taiwanese Mandarin from kindergarten level to high school. There are around twenty-five teachers, who graduated either from the higher education system in Taiwan or from this school. These two schools are run by the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Rai and are supported financially by Taiwanese donors, including the Taiwan government and some Taiwanese foundations.
It is important to note that while the Guang Ming Foundation has a strong connection with the PRC, the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Rai and the Yunnanese Chinese in the border area decided that they would only accept assistance from the Taiwan government and Taiwanese networks. Despite recent offers from the Qiaoban representatives, and the strong social connections to both Taiwanese and the PRC governments, the community leaders felt they could not ignore the bitter history between the Taiwan and PRC governments over the past fifty years. Today, the tension created by this refusal of assistance continues to be felt when PRC offers are made in the form of charitable donations, and in funding and assistance for different ethnic Chinese groups living on the Northern Thai border.Footnote 25
Most recently, the PRC government, through the Qiaoban, has made efforts to gain influence over the Yunnanese Chinese, especially those Nationalist Chinese who have a close relationship with the Taiwanese government, by offering assistance and development gifts to the Yunnanese Chinese Association. Recently, the Yunnan provincial government sent an official letter to the Yunnanese Chinese Association, offering to donate computers, laptops, textbooks and youth volunteers to the two Yunnanese Chinese Association schools. This offer from the Qiaoban and the Yunnan provincial government, however, came with the condition that the two schools must change from their Chinese education system to the official mainland Mandarin writing system. The offer requiring the schools to change to using the simplified writing system used on the mainland was promptly rejected by the elder leaders of the Yunnanese Chinese Association, among whom the elder committee members and former soldiers felt that adopting simplified Chinese as a standard would also imply an acceptance of mainland communism and thus make light of their “bitter history”. The elders' political and Chinese identity was intimately connected to their Taiwaneseness, as distinct from PRC Chinese identity, language and culture.
The Qiaoban: Building a Mainland-oriented School in the KMT Village
Ban Nong-ook village, a village of the Yunnan Chinese, and known as “KMT village”, is situated in Chiang Dao District, the border area of Chiang Mai Province. This village and nearby villages in the mountainous area along the Thai-Burmese border were the army base of the Third Field Army under Gen. Li Wenhuan. Today, this village has 1,569 households, and a population total of 7,504 that includes a diversity of ethnic people living along the border: Yunnanese Chinese, Shan, Tai Yuan, Lahu and Ahka.
Like other Yunnan Chinese in northern Thailand, Yunnan Chinese in Ban Nong-ook gradually accepted Thai citizenship after the 1980s, becoming long-term residents in Thailand. In terms of cultural difference, the majority of Yunnanese Chinese have maintained their traditional Chinese culture, preserving core cultural customs and practicing popular ritual practices, as well as retaining Chinese education that includes the use of traditional Chinese characters as retained in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and other overseas Chinese communities.
With the intention of preserving Chinese culture, Gen. Li Wenhuan and a few educated village leaders established the Hua Xing School in 1971. The school's establishment was motivated by the desire to continue Chinese education as a primary means of transmitting Chinese culture to successive generations. Since its establishment, the Hua Xing School has been distinctive due the presence of Han Chinese, its apparent goodwill toward Taiwan, and continuing anti-communist sentiment. The school, like the two schools in Mae Sai district mentioned above, has been supported by Yunnanese Chinese from local villages and the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Mai. The school has approximately 1,350 students and teaches classes from primary to high school. Courses and lessons are offered in several subjects (history, mathematics, English, geography and Chinese culture), and Chinese language is taught using Taiwanese Mandarin with traditional characters. The Hua Xing School, and other Chinese schools along the mountain, normally hold classes on weekday evenings and Saturday mornings, leaving the daytime hours for children to attend Thai school. This structure conforms to Thai education law (the 1999 Education Act), which guarantees the right of all children in Thailand to receive free basic education for fifteen years.
The Hua Xing School has recently been registered as a private school for non-formal education, and licensed by the Private Education Commission of the Ministry of Education of Thailand. The formal registration and licenses have helped certify the school to guarantee that students who graduate from the school are officially able to further their higher education or to find jobs outside the village. Approximately twenty-nine teachers have graduated from the higher education system in Taiwan. There are also voluntary teachers from Taiwan who usually pay a visit for three months during the summer, to help teach some of the subjects and train local Thai teachers. The textbooks and other educational tools are brought in from Taiwan, however the school depends on the villagers' support and donations in order to meet its financial requirements. After the change in the political situation in Taiwan during the 2000s, the Taiwanese government reduced its financial support and its donations, including educational assistance. Today, all assistance for the Hua Xing School and other schools in Chiang Mai comes from the Yunnanese Chinese Association of Chiang Mai, made up of individual Yunnanese Chinese donors, Taiwanese donors, and non-governmental organizations in Taiwan (e.g. the Ciji Foundation).
A significant change occurred when the PRC expressed interest in Ban Nong-ook in 2010. Another school, called the Jiaolian School, was established by some of the second-generation KMT leaders, but this school was financially supported in part by the Chinese consulates in Chiang Mai and the Qiaoban, and by extension, the PRC. According to Wang San Xian, the current director (who was a former director of the Hua Xing School) during the 2000s, when Taiwan stopped sending textbooks to Chinese schools in Yunnanese Chinese villages, the director at that time asked the Chinese consulates in Chiang Mai to assist the Hua Xing School by providing textbooks, need-based grants, and education services. The Chinese consulates, with the support of the Qiaoban, promptly agreed to grant this favor. This assistance from the PRC has caused major arguments among elderly committee members in the village, resulting in the reassignment of Wang San Xian, who later set up a new school, the Jiaolian School, with the financial support of the Chinese consulates in Chiang Mai and the Qiaoban.
The Jiaolian School and its system are similar to the Hua Xing School in terms of their official registration under the Thai education system, administrative management, class schedules and students. A total of 1,200 students study across several levels from primary to high school. Class teaching covers multiple subjects (geography, mathematics, English and history), which are taught in the Chinese language using standard Mandarin, and training is provided to Thai teachers for a period of one to two years. To facilitate students, the school provides cheap-rate dormitories for those who arrive from other provinces, and also provides school buses for those whose homes are in nearby villages. For many students and their families, the scholarships and cheap tuition help make the Jiaolian School more attractive to them than the Hua Xing School. The Jiaolian School provides one hundred scholarships every year. These scholarships are offered partly by the Jiaolian Foundation established by Wang San Xian and his networks in Northern Thailand and Myanmar and partly by the Chinese consulates in Chiang Mai.
In regard to the main difference between these two schools, it is worth noting three remarkable elements. Firstly, while the Hua Xing School teaches in Taiwanese Mandarin using traditional characters, the Jiaolian School uses the Mandarin Chinese language in simplified characters, following the PRC. Secondly, the Hua Xing School has their classes, lessons and textbooks designed by Thai professionals who graduate from Taiwanese universities. To approve the education certification in the Taiwanese system, Taiwanese teachers and/or education officers from the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission, R.O.C. (Taiwan) usually visit the school to conduct an evaluation every year. In the Hua Xing School and other schools of the Yunnanese Chinese, textbooks, especially in history, reflect a predominantly different nationalism (Taiwanese and Thai), particularly in regard to the history of migration and anti-communism from 1949 until now.
As Yang Jin Yu, the current director of the Hua Xing School explained,
Our new textbooks, which are reedited by Thai-Taiwanese teachers and published in Thailand, never write about Chinese history. The main content only includes Thai culture, traditions and customs, history of involuntary migration, Doi Mae Salong history, and the history of the Kuomintang armies who helped the Thai state fight communism in the region.
On the other hand, at the Jiaolian School, all textbooks, classes, lessons, curriculum and teachers are imported from PRC-approved curricula. As Chen Laoshi, a teacher who grew up in Ban Nong-ook, explained,
Studying a curriculum imported from the PRC usually improves the content. We hope that our children whether they are poor, and regardless of their citizenship, have the opportunity to further their study either domestically or abroad in China. We give much attention to Chinese culture, history and geography because now China becomes the golden dragon, rising up in the world economy.
Lastly, while the Hua Xing School is supported by Taiwanese donors who have sympathy with Yunnanese Chinese, the Jiaolian School mainly receives its educational support from the PRC. For example, the Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China in Chiang Mai provided financial donations to construct the school building, also granting one hundred scholarships for a total of US $9,000 every year. Additionally, the Qiaoban and the provincial government of Yunnan provide a quota every year that allows fifty student graduates from their school to further their higher education in mainland China. More importantly, in the case of some students who arrived or were born after the 1990s and do not have proof of Thai citizenship and Thai identification cards, the Chinese consulate helps facilitate an overseas Chinese passport for each of these students so that they can continue their education in mainland China. As for the Qiaoban, it arranges for more than ten contracted voluntary teachers every year to teach multiple subjects, and provides textbooks for Chinese instruction in Chinese schools under their supervision. The Qiaoban has also sent an “outstanding professional” teacher to help balance responsibility in academic roles, and to train local teachers. The Qiaoban and the consulates also grant financial assistance every year to the school to organize cultural activities: Chinese Painting, Chinese Calligraphy contests, Chinese speech and Chinese chess games during special events (Chinese New Year, Chinese National Day).
It is quite evident that the Yunnanese Chinese have attempted to reach a compromise with the PRC in regard to the school curricula and education. So far, however, little progress has been made. As Yang Jin Yu, the current director of the Hua Xing School, said,
We had been using textbooks from the PRC for three years (2010–2013) owing to a lack of assistance from Taiwan. But the textbooks imported from China use different Chinese writing systems from what we had been using in the past. So we decided to abandon the textbooks from China and have replaced them with our own Taiwanese textbooks reedited and published in Thailand for six subjects: English, Mathematics, History, Geography, and Chinese calligraphy. We are all Thai people living in Thailand. We are not Chinese or Taiwanese, so we accept all help from anyone who will kindly affiliate with us.
It can therefore be argued that the Yunnanese Chinese have engaged in attempts to reach a compromise with the PRC, motivated by the desire to seek new opportunities in regard to their Chinese identity and their location in the northern Thai borderlands.
INCREASING TENSION IN THE YUNANNESE CHINESE COMMUNITIES
A comparison of the educational assistance provided by the PRC and Taiwan governments to the two main diasporic Chinese communities (ethnic Chinese and Yunnanese Chinese)—namely Chiang Rai in Mae Sai, and in Ban Nong-ook, Chiang Mai—suggests that there has been a tendency for the two governments to offer their support to diasporic Chinese in a competitive fashion, using their networks in an attempt to gain influence over ethnic Chinese, and the Yunnanese Chinese in particular. Simply put, the PRC's assistance and support of Chinese education for ethnic Chinese (Teochiu, Hainanese and Hakka) in Mae Sai have succeeded in significantly rebuilding and (re-) networking political and cultural relationships with this diasporic community. Contrastingly, the offer from the PRC to the Yunnanese Chinese communities was promptly rejected by the elderly leaders of the Yunnanese Chinese associations, especially the elder committees, and the former soldiers who endured bitter experiences in their political struggle against communism in China and Thailand over the past five decades.
More importantly, the current study has found that the offer from the PRC to the Yunnanese Chinese communities has engendered a major discussion between the elder and younger generations within the core leadership of the Yunnanese Chinese community, especially among those with KMT Yunnanese roots in the border area. Questions were raised regarding this “bitter history”: how it would be resolved, and the best way forward for everyone, including Yunannese Chinese children, in the future.
More interestingly, this study found that the serious disagreement between the Yunnanese Chinese's different age groups, especially in Ban Nong-ook in Chiang Mai, may go even further in dividing the village into two main groups who follow different political and cultural ideals as represented by the main schools: the Huo Xing and the Jiaolian School. These schools have built up their institutional structures and represented themselves having taken regard of the opposing support systems stemming from the PRC and Taiwan respectively.
This study gives evidence of at least two conditions by which to interpret the above situation. Firstly, there are the external conditions of political and economic change in Taiwan after the 2000s, and the change of government from the KMT Nationalist Party to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The change of political power in Taiwan led to a decline in aid and financial support for the Yunnanese villages in Thailand.Footnote 26 Even though the KMT Nationalist Party came back to win the elections in 2008 and again in 2012, the aid and financial support from Taiwan was not restored to its prior levels. The loss of financial aid and the reduced scholarships for young students to study in Taiwan has had a significant impact on the Yunnanese Chinese communities' younger generations, who had hoped to gain Taiwanese financial and educational support and possibly seek better lives in Taiwan. For these younger generations, Taiwan was no longer the destination of hope for those who wanted to leave the village, seek opportunities to study, work and settle, and make better lives for themselves. Without formal assistance from Taiwan, many younger generations are now happy to seek jobs in Thailand, and even plan to move to mainland China.
Secondly, the younger generations have depoliticized their elders' political attitudes and ideologies. The serious disagreement between the younger and elder Yunnanese explicitly reveals the elder Yunnanese Chinese’ desire for ethnic identity to be deeply rooted in their historical background and multiplicity of identities. This is an identity and aspiration which is very different from that of the younger generations. For the older members of the community, especially the former soldiers of the KMT, the history of political unrest and the violence and suffering they endured will never be forgotten or depoliticized. The elderly Yunnanese who settled in northern Thailand after the 1960s, although paying respect to the Thai nation and becoming Thai citizens, are still strongly against communism as an ideology, and view themselves as Yunnanese Chinese living in northern Thailand, but who maintain loyalty to the Nationalist Party in Taiwan. But, for the younger generations, their aspirations for future success attract them to the idea of seeking economic achievement via the rise of China's regional and international economic success.
Today, many younger generations among the Chinese communities in the Thai borderlands claim that they do not prioritize political ideologies, whether communist or anti-communist, as a framework for understanding their world. Rather, they prioritize education and argue that, as Yunnanese Chinese, they should not avoid the PRC because a Chinese education provides an open door to economic growth and opportunity.
Thirdly, the younger generations participate in a process of reflexively self-identifying with multiple identities. According to Duan Ying,Footnote 27 the young Yunnanese are living in a Thai social world in which their self-identities are not framed through a history of KMT soldiers nostalgic for their Yunnan homeland or Taiwan. With a bilingual education—studying Thai language and culture as required by the Thai government—and studying Chinese through the PRC Chinese and Taiwanese systems, their self-identities have become those of locally born Chinese in Thailand, who are looking for economic opportunities in Thailand and hoping for a bright future in Thailand or elsewhere. They seek to gain from the trans-border economic blooming of regional relationships among Thailand, Taiwan and mainland China.
In agreement with Duan Ying's argument, the current study has found that for the borderland Chinese communities, studying Chinese is viewed as an opportunity to gain benefits and earn income that would not otherwise be available. While Thailand is important as the country of the everyday life of the family and community, mainland China and Taiwan are the sites of hope for rapid economic development. For younger generations, the PRC has come to mean a better path for pursuing an ethnic identity that allows for making a better living in a tough world. What happened in the past to their grandparents and parents is not meaningless for them. It is not that the elderly Yunnanese Chinese have wasted their time in telling the old stories. What has emerged, however, is an evolving social formation that accrues out of the new influences from mainland China.
CONCLUSION
This article suggests that the Qiaoban and the PRC have had a significant influence in regard to the hopes, goals education, economic trajectory, and cultural identity of diasporic Chinese living along the northern Thai border. It finds that the Qiaoban operates within a cultural politic, through which education has been a strategic and successful location for gaining the interest of Chinese living in the northern Thai borderlands.
Despite their active efforts to engage the Nationalist Chinese and their descendants, it could be said that the PRC has been largely unsuccessful. For the Nationalist Chinese, their experience of suffering during the 1949 civil war and their political identity as bearers of anti-communist sentiment continue to provide active meaning and motivation. The PRC has however gradually gained more diplomatic influence over the Nationalist Chinese communities, resulting in tensions among the different generations. Although the young Nationalist Chinese now see themselves as belonging to Thailand and absorbing Thai culture, their Chinese identity has altered significantly, in that it is no longer tied to anti-communist sentiments. Their future is now in question, will it be depoliticization? A renewed Chinese identity? What new desires might become possible?
