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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   14387 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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I think you could expand it a bit. Still some quite Chinese areas of Thailand/Indonesia even if they copped more out-and-out oppression. Plus enclaves around the world of varying degrees.

As I understand it Thailand forcibly assimilated the Chinese so now everyone pretends not to notice that all the rich are Chinese (although some assimilation did occur, a lot of intermarriage etc, certainly much moreso than with affluent overseas Chinese anywhere else in SEA).

The Thai-Chinese population is the largest diaspora population in the world, but previous iterations of the government essentially forced a bunch of surname changes and as much integration into broader Thai culture as possible. I think the intermarriage rate is higher for Thailand due to religious compatibility being easier than with Indonesia/Malaysia's muslim majorities since that's frequently a huge sticking point in actually formally marrying in those countries.

Religion is very relevant, especially in Malaysia, but the Chinese are still endogamous in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines despite substantial non-Muslim, non-Chinese populations in each of them.

Singapore has roughly the same base as Malaysia? I'm the white husband of a Malaysian Chinese woman and I receive considerably less side-eye at family gatherings than the Malaysian Indian husband of a distant cousin. There's pretty considerable color bias there which IMO doesn't really factor in as much with Thais who are still seen as part of the broader East Asian fraternity.

Even the passport bro Chinese boomers on the hunt for second-wife/mistresses from Malaysia and Singapore will generally go Thailand, Vietnam (admittedly Viet-Chinese as much as possible), Laos or whatever before they'd ever touch an Indian.

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