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Thailand Introduction
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Figure 1. Thailand, 1987
A STABLE AND PROSPERING NATION located in the heart of
mainland Southeast Asia, Thailand faced the 1990s with abundant
resources, not the least of which was its people. Thai society
was characterized by a rich blend of cultural traits, an openness
to new ideas, and a high degree of adaptability to new
situations. Despite a certain amount of diversity, Thai society,
according to many observers, was bound together by three basic
tenets: Theravada Buddhism, support for the Thai monarchy, and
pride of citizenship in the only nation in Southeast Asia to have
maintained its independence throughout its history, including the
colonial era
(see
fig. 1).
Centuries of migration of various peoples into the region
centered on the valley of the Mae Nam (river) Chao Phraya,
followed by decades of conscious nation building by the rulers of
the Chakkri Dynasty, had resulted in a relatively homogeneous
society based on a wide range of cultural influences. The
majority of the populace could trace its lineage over the
centuries to the
Tai peoples (see Glossary) who inhabited
southern China in the first millennium A.D. Forced southward by
the pressure of an expanding Chinese empire, bands of Tai
filtered into Southeast Asia interacting with other ethnic groups
that had preceded them. By the late thirteenth century, the Tai
states of Sukhothai and Lan Na had been founded in regions
previously ruled by the Khmer and the Mon, respectively. Through
interaction with these two peoples, the Tai were exposed to the
culture, religion, arts, and languages of India. The Hindu-
Buddhist traditions of neighboring Mon and Khmer kingdoms
strongly influenced the development of the Tai concept of
kingship.
Following the fourteenth-century relocation of the Sukhothai
capital southward to Ayutthaya on the floodplain of the Chao
Phraya, Theravada Buddhism was made the state religion. The
Ayutthaya kings gradually extended their suzerainty southward
into the Malay Peninsula in the fifteenth century, where their
expansion was stopped by the Muslim state of Malacca. To the
east, Ayutthaya established intermittent control over the old
Khmer Empire. The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were marked
by frequent wars with the Burmese kingdoms to the northwest,
culminating in the destruction of the capital of Ayutthaya by the
Burmese in 1767. Out of the ashes of Ayutthaya arose a new Tai
kingdom centered at Thon Buri on the Chao Phraya Delta. In the
following century the rulers of the Chakkri Dynasty, having moved
the capital across the river to Bangkok, expanded their control
over neighboring Tai principalities centered at Chiang Mai to the
north and Vientiane and Luang Prabang to the east. The new
kingdom, known as Siam, also established a tributary relationship
over the Khmers of Cambodia. Trade with China and India was
greatly expanded, and Siamese control was established over many
of the trade depots of the Malay Peninsula.
The economy of Siam, as that of its predecessers, Ayutthaya
and Sukhothai, was based on wet-rice agriculture. The peasantry,
who worked not only their own rice fields but also performed
service for a lord or patron under a system known as
sakdi
na (see Glossary), made up the vast majority of the
population. Rice production was greatly increased in the second
half of the nineteenth century as new lands were cultivated by an
expanding peasantry. By the end of the century, Siam was a major
rice-exporting country, with most exports going to India and
China. Jobs associated with the rice trade--merchants, millers,
and stevedores--were filled by Chinese immigrants, who
increasingly flooded into the region from southeastern China
after 1850. Many Chinese also entered the lower echelons of the
Siamese civil service at that time.
The international side of Siam's rice trade was largely
handled by Western merchants. European traders and missionaries
had made their way to the Tai court at Ayutthaya as early as the
sixteenth century. Substantial Western impact on Siam, however,
began with the reign of King Mongkut (Rama IV, 1851-68). Prior to
his accession to the throne, Mongkut had had extensive contact
with Western missionaries and had studied European languages,
science, and mathematics. Determined that his kingdom should not
fall under Western colonial rule, as had neighboring Burma,
Mongkut established diplomatic and trade relations with Britain,
France, the United States, and other Western powers during his
reign. As a result, Siam became a part of the international
economic community. Under Mongkut's son and successor,
Chulalongkorn (Rama V, 1868-1910), major reforms and
Westernization of the bureaucracy and society were adopted. At
the same time, the central government tightened its control over
outlying territories in the North and Northeast geographical
regions that had previously been rather loosely governed through
local princes and chiefs. By the early twentieth century,
however, Siam had been forced to give up its suzerainty over Laos
and western Cambodia to the French and its control over four
Muslim states on the Malay Peninsula to the British. In return
for these losses, Siam became a protected buffer state between
French Indochina and British Malaya and Burma.
Reform and modernization supported by Mongkut and
Chulalongkorn led to the rise of a Westernized military and
political elite who increasingly agitated for a liberalizing of
the political process. The Chakkri kings of the early twentieth
century and their close advisers were somewhat less concerned
with modernization of their rule and resisted efforts at
establishing a constitutional monarchy. In 1932 a small group of
Westernized military leaders and top bureaucrats organized a
bloodless coup, forcing a constitutional monarchy on King
Prajadhipok (Rama VII, 1925-35). Divisiveness within the coup
leadership, however, resulted in several decades of new
constitutions and repeated coups, led by various military-
bureaucratic factions.
In 1939 the highly nationalistic regime of Prime Minister
Luang Plaek Phibunsongkhram changed the name of the country to
Muang Thai (Land of the Free), or Thailand. Negotiation and
compromise by Phibun (as he was known) and his colleagues in
government enabled the Thai to avoid the whole weight of a
Japanese occupation force during World War II. Although
officially the Thai government had declared war on the Allies,
its declaration was never delivered or accepted in the United
States, which became a gathering point for Thai resistance
efforts. Following the war, the Thai military continued its
ascendancy in national life, and a growing communist insurgency
in the 1950s prompted a buildup of Thai military strength. The
United States government provided aid in the form of weapons and
training for the Royal Thai Armed Forces. As United States
involvement in Southeast Asia steadily increased during the
Second Indochina War (1954-75), Thailand gave permission for the
stationing of United States troops at a number of Thai naval and
air bases, which were expanded and modernized. Following the end
of the war and the detente between Beijing and Washington,
Thailand established its own detente with China, which agreed not
to support the Communist Party of Thailand. Thereafter, the
government applied a combined military-economic approach to
defeat the communist insurgents, who had dwindled to a handful by
the mid-1980s.
Student-led demonstrations in the 1970s had resulted in the
liberalization of government policies and a brief, but
unsuccessful, experiment with democratic government. By the late
1970s, the Thai military-bureaucratic elites were again firmly in
charge. Although the 1978 Constitution called for an elected
House of Representatives in the nation's bicameral legislature,
the National Assembly, the prime minister continued to be
selected by a small group of top-ranking military and
bureaucratic leaders with the official approval of the king.
There was no constitutional requirement that the prime minister
be an elected official, and not since 1976 had the position been
filled by an elected member of parliament. The members of the
Senate, largely drawn from the armed forces and police, were
nominated by the prime minister and approved by the king
(see The Central Government
, ch. 4).
As a constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama
IX, 1946-) had endeavored to maintain a low political profile
throughout his reign, and he appeared to be dedicated to the
expansion of the democratic process in Thailand. Bhumibol's
devotion to the welfare of his people was widely recognized. His
particular interests included agricultural research and water
resource management, and he had initiated some 4,600 development
projects in these areas. A working monarch, the king (as well as
his family) spent many months of the year visiting all corners of
the realm, acquainting himself with the problems and needs of the
people. Bhumibol's rare assertions of political influence had
been employed chiefly to maintain stability; in 1981 and again in
1985 he refused to support a military coup attempt, instead
backing the legitimately elected government and the Constitution.
Although the Thai government had been changed by an endless
succession of coups and countercoups following the 1932 revolt,
there had not been a successful coup since 1977. In 1987 Prime
Minister Prem Tinsulanonda had served seven years in the post,
despite the two attempted coups. The country's political
stability in the 1980s had provided a favorable setting for
Thailand's expanding economy.
By 1987 the Thai economy was continuing to rebound from the
worldwide recession that had resulted from the rising oil prices
of the mid-1970s
(see Economic and Financial Development
, ch. 3).
The economy grew by more than 6 percent in 1987 and was expected
to increase by at least that much in 1988. The manufacturing
sector increased by more than 8 percent in 1987, reflecting a
growing trend in the structure of the Thai economy toward light
industry. Although food processing and other agro-industries
continued to be important, expansion was taking place in many
industries, such as textiles, where production was up nearly 50
percent in 1987 over the previous year. Exports of manufactures
that grew rapidly in 1987 included plastic parts (up 187
percent), computer parts (up 111 percent), footwear (up 100
percent), and ball bearings (up 70 percent). In 1987
manufacturing accounted for about 22 percent of the gross
domestic product
(
GDP--see Glossary). Providing sufficient energy
for its fast-growing industrial base, however, was a serious
problem. Efforts were ongoing to find a cost-effective way to tap
the country's limited petroleum and natural gas potential.
Despite energy shortages, Thailand in the late 1980s was moving
assuredly into the category of newly industrialized country
(NIC), to join the ranks of its Asian neighbors Singapore,
Taiwan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and Hong Kong.
Agriculture, for centuries the cornerstone of the Thai
economy, continued to be of major importance. The chief exports
were rice, rubber, cassava, maize, and sugar
(see Agriculture
, ch. 3). Agriculture's share of GDP, however, had declined from 22
percent in 1982 to less than 17 percent in 1987. Part of the
slowdown in the growth of agriculture was a result of the
unavailability of new arable land. Moreover, most of the new land
that had been opened in the 1960s and 1970s had been turned to
agriculture at the expense of Thailand's forests, which had
dwindled from more than 50 percent of the country in 1961 to less
than 30 percent by 1987. Although processing of agricultural
commodities remained important, Thailand's growing manufacturing
sector was increasingly becoming based on such products as
integrated circuits, motorcycles, textiles, jewelry, electrical
appliances, and plastics.
In the late 1980s, there was some disagreement among policy
planners over which sector of manufacturing should be most
strongly supported and emphasized. Some felt that support for
agricultural processing would best benefit the poorer
northeastern and southern regions. A project particularly
designed to help the region east of Bangkok was the Eastern
Seaboard Development Program. Under this plan a new deep-water
seaport was being built at Sattahip, both to relieve the pressure
on Bangkok's overcrowded Khlong Toei port and to encourage
development of the eastern region. Included among the projects
were fertilizer and petrochemical plants. Also being developed
was a new railroad line from Sattahip eastward to Rayong. Aside
from the energy shortage, the inadequacy of the infrastructure--
ports, railroads, and highways--was the country's most serious
economic problem. Its greatest economic asset was its highly
adaptable, increasingly skilled work force.
Thai society, taken as a whole, was reasonably homogenous.
The Tai ethnic stock, Tai language family, and Theravada Buddhism
were common denominators for about 85 percent of the population.
The presence of other ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups
created some tensions in Thai society. Even among these groups,
however, most members thought of themselves as Thai citizens
owing allegiance to the Thai king and state. Among Thai citizens
who were both ethnically and linguistically Tai, there were
important differences. The dialect spoken by the Central Thai was
considered the standard for the country and was used in
government and schools. There were, however, nearly as many
speakers of Thai-Lao, the dialect of much of the Northeast and
parts of the North. The Southern Thai spoke yet another dialect.
All of these dialects were mutually intelligible, but with some
difficulty. Most Tai speakers were also Theravada Buddhists
(see Religion
, ch. 2). Among the non-Thai minorities, the Chinese were
the largest, amounting to about 11 percent of the population.
Most Chinese spoke Central Thai, at least as a second language.
The Chinese varied in their degree of assimilation into Thai
society; assimilation often depending on the length of time their
families had been in the country.
The next largest minority group was religious rather than
ethnic. Thai Muslims included ethnic Malay, Thai, Cham, and South
Asians. The majority of Muslims, however, were Malay who lived in
the four southern provinces on the Malay Peninsula, a
traditionally disadvantaged part of the country. Several Muslim
separatist insurgent groups in the provinces near the Malaysian
border continued in late 1987 to be a thorn in the side of the
Thai military. Each of the other minority groups numbered less
than 1 percent of the population. Among these were various hill
tribes, who were part of larger groups living in Laos, China, or
Burma. Largely assimilated were the Mon and the Cham peoples,
most of whose ancestors had been in the region for centuries. The
Khmer were also fairly well integrated for the same reason, with
the exception of several hundred thousand Khmer refugees driven
into Thailand since the 1970s by the continuing war in Cambodia.
Other refugee groups included the Hmong from Laos.
Since the 1960s, the Thai central government had taken a more
enlightened view toward its minority peoples than in the past,
when its policies vacillated between suppression, neglect, and
forced assimilation. Partly as a result of King Bhumibol's
interest in the various minorities, increasing government
assistance was being given to these groups in the form of
improved health and social services and agricultural assistance.
Although Thai society as a whole was enjoying the benefits of
modernization--improved health care and sanitation, education,
and modern tools and conveniences--it also faced the usual
problems associated with too rapid modernization. Bangkok,
particularly, endured problems of overcrowding, pollution,
traffic, housing shortages, unemployment, and the social ills of
crime, drug abuse, and prostitution.
As the national leadership looked ahead to the 1990s, its
major concerns were the continued stabilization of the polity,
encouragement of economic growth, and resolution of the security
problems of the country. By the late 1980s, internal security was
largely under control, with communist insurgents dwindling to a
small number and Muslim separatist groups mainly a nuisance
factor in the South
(see Insurgency
, ch. 5). External security
was more problematic. Vietnam, which had invaded Cambodia in late
1978, continued to occupy the country, causing a steady stream of
Khmer refugees into Thailand. Relations between Bangkok and
Beijing grew increasingly cordial during the 1980s as a result of
the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. This issue also brought a
growing solidarity among the membership of the Association for
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Although resolutions and endless
rounds of talks were sponsored by the regional organization, by
late 1987 the ASEAN nations seemed no closer to being able to
induce Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia either through
negotiation or through the pressure of regional and world
opinion.
* * *
After the manuscript for this book was completed in the
autumn of 1987, there were a number of important developments
affecting Thailand both domestically and internationally. On
April 29, 1988, King Bhumibol decreed the dissolution of the
House of Representatives at the request of Prime Minister Prem,
who had been faced with increasing disunity in the political
parties that made up the ruling coalition. New elections were
scheduled for July 24, 1988, amid calls from student and labor
groups for a prime minister who was an elected member of
parliament. On election day, the Thai voters gave 87 seats in the
357-seat House of Representatives to the Chart Thai (Thai Nation)
Party, which formed a 215-member coalition government with four
other parties: Social Action (Kit Sangkhom) Party, Democrat
(Prachathipat) Party, Rassadorn (People) Party, and United
Democracy (Saha Prachathipatai) Party. All but the United
Democracy Party had been partners in the previous government. In
a surprise move, Prem refused an invitation by the ruling
coalition to head the new government, saying he was responding to
the people's call for an elected prime minister. The coalition
then selected Chatichai Choonhaven, leader of the Chart Thai and
deputy prime minister under Prem, to take the number one spot,
thus giving Thailand its first elected prime minister in twelve
years. Chatichai, who left the military in 1958 to serve as a
diplomat and cabinet official, was considered to be probusiness
and not likely to change Prem's economic policies significantly.
The Thai economy continued to boom in the first half of 1988.
Exports were projected to total US$12 billion for the year, up 20
percent for the second year in a row. Foreign investment in
Thailand increased 30 percent in 1987 to US$210 million, with
applications for investment up 140 percent to 1,057. Investor
confidence was expected to continue under the new government.
Tourism, the country's largest foreign exchange earner, was up
23.6 percent in 1987, which had been billed as "Visit Thailand
Year." Visitor arrivals during the first half of 1988 signaled an
even bigger year, and more than 3.5 million tourists were
expected.
Particular attractions for visitors in 1987 and 1988 were two
grand national celebrations accompanied by elaborate pomp and
pageantry. On December 5, 1987, the country celebrated King
Bhumibol's sixtieth birthday; and July 2, 1988, marked the forty-
second year and twenty-third day of Bhumibol's reign. Passing the
mark set by his grandfather, Chulalongkorn, he thus became the
longest ruler of the 200-year-old Chakkri Dynasty. Both occasions
were marked by an outpouring of the tremendous love and respect
of the Thai people for their monarch.
The first half of 1988 was also marked by regional
developments important to Thailand's sense of national security.
While on a visit to Moscow in May, Prime Minister Prem was
informed by the Soviets of Vietnam's pledge to withdraw 50,000
troops from Cambodia in 1988. Hanoi already had withdrawn 20,000
troops in December 1987 and, according to its own projections,
would be down to 50,000 troops by the end of 1988. These forces
it promised to withdraw by its previously stated timetable of the
end of 1990. Thailand at first reacted cautiously to the news. By
mid-June, however, with its usual flexibility in foreign affairs,
Bangkok was rolling out the red carpet for visiting Vietnamese
foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach. The following month, the
Vietnamese-controlled government in Cambodia freed the first
group of an estimated 120 Thai prisoners it had promised to
release in order to improve relations with Thailand.
Bangkok's response to the new developments in Cambodia was
also expressed in concert with the other ASEAN nations. In July
the regional organization sponsored informal peace talks in
Jakarta between the four warring Cambodian factions and other
interested parties, including Vietnam, Laos, and the ASEAN
countries. Little that was concrete came out of the Jakarta
Informal Meeting other than an agreement to hold another meeting
in 1989 at the senior official level. The Jakarta meeting did
mark, however, the first time the various Cambodian factions had
all sat down together to talk. In any event, more progress had
been made in 1988 toward alleviating Thailand's most serious
security concern than had been made in the previous decade.
August 24, 1988
Barbara Leitch LePoer
Data as of September 1987
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