Международная научная конференция ЮВА в СПбГУ-65

Международная научная конференция, посвященная 65-й годовщине начала изучения языков ЮВА в нашей стране Circumventing the ColdWar divisions:Thailand and India in the South-to-South Diplomatic Space 349 The Period of Panchsheel in Thai Foreign Policy It is now necessary to focus on Thai rapprochement with the PRC in order to understand how Thailand between 1955 and 1957 fit into Nehru’s vision of postcolonial Asia. Following Prince Wan’s cordial encounter with Zhou at the Bandung Conference, Nehru’s strategy of ‘positive engagement with China’had borne fruit in Thailand as the Thai rapprochement with the PRC began. The continuing US pressure against relations with the PRC made it impossible for Prince Wan to respond officially to Zhou’s invitation [Waithayakorn 2011: 61; Tan 2018: 90]. Instead, Phibun and Prince Wan gave Sang, Phibun’s advisor, who had no official position, their consent to send a secret delegation to Beijing [Phathanothai 1994: 50–51; Kusalasaya 2002: 10–14]. Sang made arrangements in September for Ari Phirom and Karuna Kusalasaya to travel covertly via Hong Kong to try to establish communication with the Chinese political leadership. Ari and Karuna were suitable for this mission. They were Sang’s confidants, and each had contacts and attitudes necessary for this mis- sion to succeed. Ari was an old colleague of Sang’s in the Propaganda Department in the Second World War. Fluent in Chinese and Thai as he was born to a Chinese mother and a Thai father, he had translated and summarized Chinese newspapers, both Chinese and Thai publica- tions, for the government until the early 1950s. He also owned a Chi- nese- language school in Bangkok. His interactions with the Chinese publishing community in Thailand connected him closely with leftist circles, some of which had fled to the PRC to take on important political positions when their Chinese newspapers in Thailand were closed by the Phibun Government in late 1952 [Tan 2018: 90]. Ari’s interactions with the Chinese leftist circles in Thailand had also caused him to be in and out of jail under the Thai anti-Communist laws. For this, Sang had used his connection and influence to bail Ari out a number of times. As for Karuna, not only did he have diplomatic experience while working at the Indian embassy in Bangkok, but he was also an admirer of Nehru and his foreign policy of non-alignment [Kusalasaya 1999: 101–3, 152–5, 158–9, 160–2]. During the twelve years Karuna spent