And her husband. For fear of upsetting China. Story here. And you guys think it’s bad when Obama or someone of similar stature won’t meet with the man himself. (Well, okay, that’s bad, too.) But this is just plain ridiculous.
Thailand is forever sucking up to China. Whenever the Thai prime minister of the day makes a state visit to Beijing, remarks about “gone to take orders from the masters” are common.
Is there much sympathy for the Dalai Lama/free Tibet movement among Thais?
No. In general, the locals neither care nor know very much about anything outside of Thai borders and are not at all what you would call political unless it involves Thai politics. A very insular society.
??? Obama met the Dalai Lama. It was in the map room of the White House so the message was even more pronounced.
Didn’t Thaksin (ousted Prime Minister) joke that he could hold his minister’s meetings in Chineses language? The point being that most ministers where second or third generation Chinese immigrants.
Yes, but I was referring to last year, when Obama declined to meet the Dalai Lama before the former’s trip to China. That sparked much criticism.
That is correct, he did. and ethnic Chinese in the government is a relatively recent development, just in the past 30 or 40 years. In the wake of the communist victory in China in 1949, it was actually illegal for quite a while for ethnic Chinese to hold positions in the Thai government or high positions in the military.
That pretty much left only business school for their sons to enter, thus enhancing even more the already-renowned business prowess of the local Chinese, perceptions of which were already strong; witness the statesman who stood before parliament in the 1930s, referred to the local ethnic-Chinese businessmen as “the Jews of the East” and expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler’s way of dealing with the problem in Germany, along with a suggestion that Thailand follow suit.