Modelling Culture Contact and Chinese Ethnicity in Thailand.

This article focuses on Chinese ethnicity in Thailand. Southeast Asia provides a fertile social laboratory for studying ethnicity and ethnic relations. Thailand is dominated by Thai who have allegedly assimilated the Mon, Chan, Lao and Chinese into the Thai society. Researcher G.W. Skinner found that a majority of the descendants of Chinese immigrants in each generation merged with Thai society and became indistinguishable from the indigenous population to the extent that fourth-generation Chinese are practically non-existent. He felt that the reason why many Western and Chinese observers had grossly overestimated the number of Chinese in Thailand was due in part to their failure to see the extent of assimilation, as they note the large migration of Chinese, but fail to see that a large proportion of the Chinese migrants in each generation merge with Thai society. Economically, the Chinese play a vital role in Thailand. The Chinese migrants were needed to provide manpower for agriculture and shipping as well as for expansion of trade.