Kuomintang's Forgotten Army in Thailand

I’m reviving this thread to post a link to a fantastic piece in today’s Taipei Times by David Frazier, in what is apparently the first in a five-part series. In this article, he visits schools in northern Thailand, in Arunothai, a place about 120 km from Chiang Mai. This community is one of many settlements of the so-called “forgotten army” / lost army / KMT diaspora out of Yunnan following the Chinese Communist takeover of what was soon renamed the PRC. Seven decades later, the people in these communities in Thailand are facing new challenges, or opportunities, depending on one’s point of view. Schools are one site of change, as Frazier’s extraordinary reporting makes clear.

Guy

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And this is why soft power is important. In that village it is the ROC vs. the PRC for hearts and minds. This is the U.S. vs. China on a smaller scale, and with the current regime’s short-sighted eviscerating of USAID, the Americans have ceded a potent advantage to the Chinese. The winds of Belt & Roads seem to be swaying that village toward the mainland there. It’s just a matter of those of the older generation with still vivid memories of the civil war slowly dying off.

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It makes sense for the villagers to get support from both sides. I don’t see the problem myself it’s their life anyway.

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And a scarily marginal one, I’m sure.

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At least the Thai government seems to be granting them citizenship these days. For many years they couldn’t get passports because they were considered non-Thai.

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In the movie Tropic Thunder the jungle dwelling opium-growing baddies spoke Mandarin, strange for a film supposedly set in Vietnam, until one of the characters mentioned they’d probably drifted into Laos or even Myanmar in the Golden Triangle during their helicopter flight. Presumably old KMT remnants (easier to find Mandarin speaking actors instead of Lao or Burnmese ones).

At a personal level, sure, but which way the collective choices of those they remained in Thailand leans shows whether the US or China has control of the information space in South East Asia.

These are people whose parents and grandparents endured unspeakable hardships just because they hated the Chinese Communists and had other family members who stayed in China persecuted by the CCP. Having these people turn and say I prefer the CCP is a serious indicator of how the image of the US is faltering globally.

They stayed in Thailand because they would have been published severely and lived as Lower class citizens as exKMT soldiers and officers and their families in China (apart from the whole hating communists bit ) so staying in Thailand was probably better for many of them. They could move on from those villages over generations if they wanted to I guess. Not saying it was great either way. They are Yunnanese ethnic people living 200km from Yunnan it makes sense that they’ll reconnect, these people had no ties with Taiwan originally.

Orders of magnitudes more former KMT officers and soldiers willingly surrendered to the CCP than those who refused and suffered in the jungles of Myanmar. The truth is no one knew how the CCP was going to turn out, and since there was no real distinctions between the KMT and the CCP when the KMT’s own army and military school was funded by the Soviets, plenty of KMT officers and soldiers didn’t really mind going to either sides.

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Yes but I’m saying they were treated badly in China and during the cultural revolution even worse so I don’t think these people in villages in Thailand got such a raw deal, seems they were ok.

There is another dimension to this, the leaders of this group would have been making bank from heroin…

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From our perspective, it’s much better for them to have stayed in Thailand, knowing what had happened in China through out the 60s and the 70s. However, life in remote mountainous areas of Thailand without actual Thai citizenship and being refused to come to Taiwan and get Taiwanese citizenship probably sucked too. It’s also easy for the descendants to look at the prosperity China enjoyed in the last 20 years and forget that prosperity wouldn’t be shared with non-CCP people.

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Part Two from David Frazier appeared in today’s Taipei Times. This time, he focuses in on financing and the drug trade—perhaps the most notorious fact about this community.

Guy

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In Part 3 of the series, David Frazier turns his attention to Mae Salong (see map below) and an ongoing “battle for ‘historical memory.’” Like the other articles in this series, it’s a fascinating read.

Guy

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In Part 4 of the series appearing earlier this week, David Frazier looks more closely at the educational tug-of-war between the PRC and Taiwan in reaching out to members of this diaspora community in Thailand. Perhaps the sharpest point in this report is Taiwan’s seemingly unshakeable commitment to being a Sweatshop Island and the dubious and perhaps in some cases illegal attempts to rope overseas students (including students in this diaspora community) into “work-study” programs—in short treating them as part of a disposable reserve army of labour, and not as students who deserve to receive a quality education.

The final report in this series appeared today. I’ll post about it soon.

Guy

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And finally Part 5, which pivots away from the diaspora communities in Northern Thailand to discuss diaspora politics in the capital, Bangkok. Frazier specifically looks at the Chung Hua Association and its history, including—last year—the ethnoracialnationalist ravings of none other than Ma Ying-jeou who delivered an ethnoracialnationalist speech there in August 2024. If you think this man is your friend, I highly recommend checking out some of the translations of his speech in the report linked below.

This organization in Bangkok is however more than the sum of Ma’s ravings. It instead might be thought of, in Frazier’s vivid turn of phrase, as “a smoothie of pre-1949 KMT ideology, 21st century PRC propaganda, practical cooperation with Taiwan’s DPP government and that unique Thai capacity for guilt-free pragmatism.” In this way, at least for now, this association rolls along . . .

Guy

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It’s a bit stupid for me—or anyone—to look at this remarkable series of reports and still want more. But I admit I do still want more. I wonder if Frazier could write about the work of high profile members of this diaspora such as filmmaker Midi Z and how he imagines stories linking Taiwan and these communities in Thailand and in Burma. It would also be interesting to see his take on how the community centered on Huaxin Street in Zhonghe is doing nowadays. Much more could be written on these and other related topics. But for now, consider me impressed by this series of reports, from which I learned a lot, and kudos to the Taipei Times for publishing it.

Guy

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