China challenges the old U.S.–Thai bond
The Eagle and the Elephant
by Stanley A. Weiss

BANGKOK - Despite global fears of the deadly chicken flu spreading across Asia, the world's leading actors and directors gathered for the Bangkok International Film Festival, where among the films generating a buzz is "The Siam Renaissance," the epic story of a Thai woman who travels back in time to the glory days of 19th-century Siam.

A world away, the Bush administration no doubt wishes it could turn back the clock to simpler times - when Washington and Bangkok were bound together by common fears of Red China. Back then, Thais celebrated the alliance of the eagle and the elephant. Today, the Chinese dragon portrays itself as the peaceful panda - a giant with a voracious appetite yet threatening no one.

Since October's Asean Summit here, attended by Presidents George W. Bush and Hu Jintao, commentators here have contrasted the arrogant, unilateral, terrorism-focused foreign policy of the United States with the deferential, multilateral, trade-oriented diplomacy of China. But as Thailand's former foreign minister, Surin Pitsuwan, told me, "Yes, the Americans can be loud and disrespectful and the Chinese are courteous and tactful, but we know where we stand with the Americans. With the Chinese we have to be careful."

A closer look reveals that longer-term cultural and economic forces in the region are shaping the competition between the United States and China for political, economic and military dominance in Asia. Bangkok is a barometer of how Washington and Beijing are measuring up.

U.S. officials love to remind their Thai counterparts of their long (by American standards) ties - how Siam was the first Asian nation to sign a friendship treaty with the United States in 1851 and how King Rama IV offered to send elephants to help President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

But this two-century old partnership pales beside the two millennia of cultural ties between China and Thailand. Many of today's Thais are of Chinese descent and speak proudly of their Chinese "blood brothers."

Record numbers of Thai students are enrolling in Chinese universities to learn Mandarin. "Thais hate to speak English," Major General Vivat Visanuvimo, a member of Thailand's national security council, told me in perfect English. "Before the end of the decade, China's 1.3 billion citizens will make Chinese the most used language on the Internet."

If Beijing represents familiarity, Washington signifies instability. Buddhist Thailand was shocked last month by coordinated attacks on schools, a police station and an army base in the country's south, where Muslims constitute a majority. Many fear that Bangkok's close cooperation with Washington in the war on terrorism may lead domestic extremists to forge links with regional terrorist groups.

How can Washington win back Thai hearts and minds?
First, don't panic. Stronger ties between Bangkok and Beijing do not necessarily translate into weaker ties between Bangkok and Washington. As the only people in the region to avoid colonization by the West, Thais place a premium on their independence. Bangkok has reverted to playing China and the United States off one another.

Indeed, when some Thai politicians worried aloud about Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's early overtures to Beijing, he responded by cooperating in Washington's war on terrorism. Thailand has since been designated as a major non-NATO ally.

Second, play your strongest hand. With $20 billion in bilateral trade, the United States remains Thailand's biggest trading partner. Beijing is trying to challenge American dominance with a new China-Thailand free trade agreement for agricultural products. But business relations between Thais and Chinese leave much to be desired. Practically every Thai private venture in China in recent years has failed, and only Chinese state-owned companies dare operate in Thailand today.

Thaksin, a business tycoon turned politician, sees his country as Thailand Ltd. to America Inc. Washington must make good on the free trade agreement it has proposed with Thailand, akin to its arrangement with Singapore. Slapping huge duties on shrimp imported from Thailand, as U.S. shrimp farmers proposed, is not the way to win friends and influence Thais.

Finally, think big. Washington should view Thailand as Beijing does - as the strategic and economic centerpiece of Southeast Asia. China is building roads and railways to Thailand and reducing tariffs along the Mekong Delta to serve the China-Asean free trade area envisioned by 2010.

Washington should respond by embracing Thaksin's ambitious leadership of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue, Asia's fledgling version of the European Union. Thailand's Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, who along with Thaksin, has spearheaded the effort, told me that the 18 Asian nations now part of the ACD need to "increase our bargaining power instead of competing with ourselves." Washington's energetic support for an Asian economic union would go a long way toward repairing America's tarnished image in the region.

There is no going back to the golden days of the U.S-Thai Cold War alliance. But whether China remains the panda of today or reverts to the dragon of yesterday, Washington and Bangkok still have common interests - chicken flu among them - that are best served by strengthening the enduring ties between the eagle and the elephant.