The opposing sides of Thailand\u2019s political divide have found a common cause: Do not let foreigners buy homes and lands.
The sentiment is pushed by news headlines that bold the word \u201c\u0e02\u0e32\u0e22\u0e0a\u0e32\u0e15\u0e34\u201d (to sell the country; traitorous, betraying one\u2019s nation).
We imagine 1972\u2019s \u201cFist of Fury,\u201d in which Bruce Lee encounters the \u201cNo Dogs And No Chinese Allowed\u201d sign in Shanghai during the 1930s.
We hallucinate a Bangkok restaurant with a sign, \u201cNo Dogs And No Thais Allowed.\u201d
We prefer the sign, \u201cFree entry for Thais, XXX Bath for foreigners.\u201d
We argue, Thais already don\u2019t own homes and lands, now we would have to rent from foreigners.
Last week, the cabinet approved measures to attract \u201cwealthy\u201d foreigners to Thailand with a 10-year visa, giving them many rights, including land and real estate ownership.
We have flashbacks of early Rattanakosin-era, where foreign courts had jurisdiction on Thai soils\u2014a time when Thai peasants had to crawl for foreigners. We prefer Thai peasants to crawl for homegrown \u201csocial superiors.\u201d
In a nutshell, we are still stuck in the past.
The problem with the law isn\u2019t Thais losing out to foreigners. As many have argued, \u201cWe don\u2019t even own homes and lands now.\u201d Exactly, and this has nothing to do with foreigners but the economic inequality in Thailand.
The real problem with this law is granting exclusive privileges to the rich. The essence of the global problem isn\u2019t one nationality versus another, but the \u201chave\u201d versus the \u201chave not.\u201d
Case in point: We have all been taught in school that Myanmar is the enemy. The reality, however, is, Myanmar and Thai generals are the best of friends. At the same time, ordinary Myanmar and Thais find common ground in fighting against unjust power.
Clouded by xenophobia, we can\u2019t even recognize that every baht and satang a foreigner spends here goes into the Thai economy.
In global competition, competitive advantage comes with \u201cbrain gain,\u201d regardless of race, creed, or breed. Not \u201cbrain drain,\u201d because we value race, creed, and breed over human excellence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The opposing sides of Thailand\u2019s political divide have found a common cause: Do not let foreigners buy homes and lands. The sentiment is pushed by news headlines that bold the word \u201c\u0e02\u0e32\u0e22\u0e0a\u0e32\u0e15\u0e34\u201d (to sell the country; traitorous, betraying one\u2019s nation). We imagine 1972\u2019s \u201cFist of Fury,\u201d in which Bruce Lee encounters the \u201cNo Dogs And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,14,13],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}