South-East Asia
Thai Cong
Molly Mortimer
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Lee Kuan Yew's visit to Bangkok; or the danger of a new Vietnamcum-Korea in Thailand.
Far back the fault lies in the indeterminate frontiers of the vast SinoRussian Empires. Only a little news filters west of the Sinkiang-Mongolian frontier troubles. Russian and Chinese maps of this vast area differ and Russia has resisted all the world cartographer efforts to have a sixteen inches to the miles map made. Similar vagueness helped to lose Turkey her nineteenth-century Asian possessions to Russia, and left China claiming perenniel sovereignty over ost of SouthEast Asia. Vietnam was a mediaeval Chinese province, as half France once belonged to Britain. But Russia and China never let go. Neither would have permitted international interference in South-West Africa had their title been as good as South Africa's. Lesotho could never have existed. As Tito sadly said, when accused of not helping Hungary: when Russia decides to stay in a country, there is nothing much to be done.
China has never given up shadow claims to Thailand, and Thailand holds the largest number of Chinese outside China from two centuries of steady immigration and assimilation. Although emotional pride of ancestry remained, it was not until external pressures from Peking to create communist subversion affected the Chinese community that the Thai government felt obliged to tighten up on immigration control and citizenship laws. Regretfully, Chinese secondary schools have been abolished and ideological textbooks banned. Great government control has
been established in economic life especially in the rice, tobacco and livestock industries, Chinese dominated. Alarm spread in the 'fifties when the local Chinese Chamber of Commerce was captured by Peking-orientated factors. Western aid has been stepped up: vide the current world bank support for the next Plan, and West German and American aid for the proposed Kraa Canal.
Above all there is a military threat to Thailand's northern border with China, where ' refugees ' infiltrate and two Chinese army corps of indeterminate status operate. China would have no difficulty at all in creating a Viet Cong motive leaving America once more holding up the reactionary south. Lee Kuan Yew's gesture of solidarity with Marshal Kittikachorn and, the US, together with tacit acceptance of the US bases in Thailand, is a clear warning to China that 'like-minded nations in the region' are co-operating for the ' strengthening of the fabric of peace and stability in South-East Asia.' It is a measure of Lee's determination, for he was never fond of the US, and unfortunately the bar, brothel and base image of aggressive affluence has not helped to endear America to the Thais. Nor are the current policies of Mr Whitlam in Australia reassuring concerning Commonwealth support.
Ironically, it may be that Soviet cooperation with the ASEAN group that will bolster up stability against Chinese subversion. But Lee Kuan Yew is used to supping off any convenient devil, and he has a genius for survival.
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