Two Fronts of the Same War? Loans, Textbooks, and Anti-communism between Taiwan and Thailand, 1949-1960s

Abstract

Centered around a loan program in Cold War Thailand, this article shifts attention from superpower proxies to Asian financial infrastructures. Directed by its Taipei headquarters, the Bank of China in Bangkok extended loans to Chinese schools, provided that they adopted Taiwan-sanctioned, Hong Kong-published textbooks, not “pro-communist” ones from Singapore. Departing from scholarship’s focus on US patronage, the story of this program highlights the bank’s centrality to an overlooked constellation of Asian agents of financial aid. It brings together bankers, educators, and textbook publishers, and demonstrates how cross-strait rivalries over financial agencies were inextricably linked to similar struggles for influence on overseas Chinese education. Braiding state sources from Taiwan and Thailand with memoirs and school materials from Hong Kong and Singapore, this multi-scalar account stretches beyond nation-states and their corollaries of diplomacy and hierarchy, recasting Asia as an engine of the Cold War world.