| ID | 185618 |
| Title Proper | Interlacing China and Taiwan |
| Other Title Information | Tea production, Chinese-language education and the territorial politics of re-sinicization in the Northern borderlands of Thailand |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Hung, Po-Yi |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | While most ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand are Thai citizens now, their everyday lives are a site where we can witness the political power entanglement of China, Taiwan and Thailand. With this in mind, this paper aims to look into the relationship between global China and overseas Chinese from the perspective of the ethnic Chinese in the northern borderlands of Thailand. The purpose is not just to disclose the multiplicity of global China in people's everyday lives, but also to complicate the picture of overseas Chinese as portrayed in top-down grand narratives about global China. I argue that the ongoing re-Sinicization in South-East Asia and the territorial geopolitics among China, Taiwan and Thailand have opened a conceptual space for the ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand to flexibly articulate themselves within the changing geopolitical economy. I use tea production and related Chinese-language education programmes, two separate but intertwined cases, to address these issues. By looking beyond the competition, conflict and dilemmas between China and Taiwan, I argue that Taiwan's previous engagement with agricultural transfer to Thailand and the rooting of pro-Taiwan identity and discourse in language education have paradoxically paved a way for China to stretch its influence into the everyday lives of the Chinese communities in the northern Thai borderlands. |
| `In' analytical Note | China Quarterly vol. , No.250; Jun 2022: p. 417-439 |
| Journal Source | China Quarterly No 250 |
| Key Words | Taiwan ; Thailand ; Chinese Diaspora ; Kuomintang ; Sinicization ; Global China ; Yunnanese |