30 Facts About Thai Chinese

Thai Chinese have been deeply ingrained into all elements of Thai society over the past 200 years.

Thai Chinese are a well-established middle class ethnic group and are well represented at all levels of Thai society.

The rapid and successful assimilation of the Thai Chinese has been celebrated by the Chinese descendants themselves, as evident in contemporary literature such as the novel Letters from Thailand by Botan.

When King Taksin, himself the son of a Chinese immigrant, ruled Thailand, King Taksin actively encouraged Chinese immigration and trade.

Early Thai Chinese immigration consisted almost entirely of men who did not bring women.

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Many Thai Chinese immigrants prospered under the "tax farming" system, whereby private individuals were sold the right to collect taxes at a price below the value of the tax revenues.

Local Thai Chinese community had long dominated domestic commerce and had served as agents for royal trade monopolies.

Legislation by King Rama VI that required the adoption of Thai surnames was largely directed at the Chinese community as a number of ethnic Chinese families left Burma between 1930 and 1950 and settled in the Ratchaburi and Kanchanaburi Provinces of western Thailand.

State corporations took over commodities such as rice, tobacco, and petroleum and Thai Chinese businesses found themselves subject to a range of new taxes and controls.

People of Chinese descent are concentrated in the coastal areas of Thailand, principally Bangkok.

The rapid and successful assimilation of Thai Chinese has been celebrated in contemporary literature such as "Letters from Thailand" by a Thai Chinese author Botan.

In 1890, despite British shipping dominance in Bangkok, Thai Chinese businesses oversaw 62 percent of the shipping sector and served as agents for Western shipping firms as well as their own.

In Bangkok, Thai Chinese dominated the entertainment and media industries, being the pioneers of Thailand's early publishing houses, newspapers, and film studios.

Waves of Han Thai Chinese immigration swept into Siam in the 19th and early-20th centuries, peaking in the 1920s.

Ethnic Thai Chinese then moved into extractive industries—tin mining, logging and sawmilling, rice milling, as well as building ports and railways.

Thai Chinese described them as "avaricious barbarians who were 'entirely devoid of morals and mercy'".

Thai Chinese depicted successful Chinese businessmen as gaining their success at the expense of indigenous Thais, prompting some Thai politicians to blame Thai Chinese businessmen for Thailand's economic difficulties.

Thai Chinese became the targets of state discrimination while indigenous Thais were granted economic privileges.

Highly publicized profiles of wealthy Thai Chinese entrepreneurs attracted great public interest and were used to illustrate the community's economic clout.

Thai Chinese entrepreneurs are influential in real estate, agriculture, banking, and finance, and the wholesale trading industries.

On 17 March 2012, Chaleo Yoovidhya, of Thai Chinese origin, died while listed on Forbes list of billionaires as 205th in the world and third in the nation, with an estimated net worth of US$5 billion.

Thai Chinese comprise 96 percent of Thailand's 70 most powerful business groups.

Thai Chinese businesses are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of Overseas Chinese businesses operating in the markets of Southeast Asia that share common family, ethnic, language, and cultural ties.

The economic power of the Thai Chinese is far greater than their proportion of the population would suggest.

Development policies imposed by the Thai government provided business opportunities for the ethnic Chinese.

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Many Thai Chinese have sent their children to newly established Chinese language schools, visit China in record numbers, invest in China, and assume Chinese surnames.

The Charoen Pokphand, a prominent Thai conglomerate founded by the Thai-Chinese Chearavanont family, has been the single largest foreign investor in China.

People who are of mainly Chinese descent are descendants of immigrants who relocated to Thailand as well as other parts of Nanyang in the early to mid-20th century due to famine and civil war in the southern Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Hainan, and Fujian .

Notable Hainanese Thai Chinese families includes the Chirathivat family of Central Group and Yoovidhya family of Krating Daeng.

The few retaining native Thai Chinese surnames are either recent immigrants or resident aliens.