* Out of Swatow (Shantou)

I wrote the following article on the founding family of the Bangkok Bank empire as a sidebar to the Forbes Asia feature published in July 2021 issue. It was shelved for lack of space in the magazine, but why let a good sidebar go to waste?

I did add a recent event: the 2022 death of Chin’s oldest son, Hong Kong-based Robin Chan. He was a pro-Beijing “patriot,” but his son, Bernard Chan, is much more active in that regard, as you can see from links to his name below. Bernard is so patriotic that he even gave up his US and Thai citizenships in favor of a Chinese one. It’s interesting then that Bernard’s first cousin, Ken Sim, has just been elected mayor of Vancouver, Canada.

The Thailand branch of the family has stayed out of politics, at least publicly. The sole exception has been physicist Kalaya Sophonpanich, a former Democrat MP. The reputation of the Democrat Party, Thailand’s oldest political party, has been stained by the Democrat-led government that ordered the 2010 army crackdown on unarmed democracy demonstrators. But when Kalaya was first elected in the early 2000s, the Democrat Party was widely regarded as the cleanest political party and the most committed to rule of law and democratic, parliamentary governance.

Better known as Swatow for most of the 20th century, the Shantou area was the homeland of many Chinese emigrants who sought their fortunes in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand. Something else that I omitted: Like both his parents, the current bank president, Chartsiri Sophonpanich, is Catholic. I don’t know if Chartsiri’s Swatow-born grandmother was Catholic, but it wouldn’t be surprising since the city has Christian churches dating from the treaty port era. SC

Although born across the river from Bangkok in 1908, Chin Sophonpanich—also known as Tan Biak-ching and Chen Bichen—was sent at age five to live on the modest farm of his grandparents in the Teochiu-speaking area that surrounds what was then the thriving treaty port of Shantou (“Swatow” in local dialect) in eastern Guangdong province. When his father lost his job as a sawmill clerk, Chin was recalled to Thailand at age 17 to help support his four sisters. Beginning as a laborer while studying the Thai language, he worked his way up from construction company clerk to trader in lumber, hardware, rice and gold, according to Sons of the Yellow Emperor by Lynne Pan.

During World War II, when Thailand, then known as Siam, was occupied by the Japanese, Chin was a member of Seri Thai, the anti-Japanese underground. He was even awarded a medal for his activities at the end of the war. He stumbled into the banking industry in December 1944 under inauspicious circumstances. Three years into the Japanese occupation, the European banks that had dominated Siam since the late 19th century had long been shut down. Thailand’s economy was in shambles and inflation was soaring. Despite his hostility towards his country’s Chinese residents, Thailand’s ruler, General Phibun Songkhram, encouraged local Chinese traders to set up commercial banks.

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* Safety questions and shady sales tactics are chilling the China-Tesla love affair

By Jill Shen and Susan Cunningham
TechNode
13 April 2021

When Mi Jiayi was shopping for a car in Hangzhou in early 2020, there was no question in his mind it would be a Tesla. For the 30-year-old legal advisor with a local investment conglomerate, it would be the first car he ever owned. 

His respect for Tesla CEO Elon Musk was one factor in the appeal of the brand. On test drives, he was attracted by the design and some of Tesla’s fancy technological features. “The vehicles look so gorgeous compared with some other cars in similar price ranges,” he recalled. “Also, its Autopilot system is good at detecting vehicles and pedestrians on the road,” Mi said (our translation).

Specifically, he was hoping to buy a Long Range Model 3, which was expected to become available sometime in 2020. The car boasted a driving range 50% longer than the Standard Range Plus model. In other words, it could be driven 223 more kilometers (139 miles) without a recharge.

At first, he had no interest in the standard-range version, which had been available for order in China since October 2019. But when he repeatedly asked about the long-range Model 3’s launch date at a local showroom, the sales staff told him it wouldn’t hit the market at least until the end of the year, Mi told TechNode. The sales staff finally convinced Mi and he placed his order in early March 2020, signing up for delivery in May. He was surprised when the vehicle was delivered on March 31, nearly two months earlier than expected. MORE

* How the TechNode community sees China tech in 2021

By Susan Cunningham
TechNode.com
January 2, 2021

The most important theme of 2020 wasn’t the emergence of a technological innovation. Rather, it was how the pandemic supercharged certain existing trends in China while revealing cracks in the firmament we should have seen long before. At least, that’s what some thoughtful members of the TechNode community said in a remarkable display of consensus.

We asked them to reflect on the tech year in the time of coronavirus, and point to what we can anticipate in the year ahead.

They say that fast growth is likely over (and that’s a good thing). They say that many, many ordinary Chinese people lost their blind faith in giant tech (welcome as well). And governmental authorities began making firm strides toward regulation.

Whether pertaining to monopolies, fintech, or protection of personal data, long overdue regulations are now coming, our experts say, but what form they take will surely be a major source of worry, relief, and dispute in 2021. Will authorities, for example, regulate community group buying to protect vulnerable small enterprises?

Perhaps most significant of all, it turns out that tech trade wars were just beginning back in 2019. MORE

* Landfill Fodder: On Adam Minter’s “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale”

Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter (Bloomsbury, 2019)
Reviewed by Susan Cunningham
Los Angeles Review of Books

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE out-of-style clothing we dump in the charity bin? Or the decades of furnishings downsizing empty-nesters donate to the local thrift shop? What follows the surge of self-satisfaction we feel as responsible recyclers, along with the hope that someone else will get a little pleasure from our discarded things? In Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, the intrepid Adam Minter sets off to find some answers, traveling from his home in Malaysia to interview cleaners, sellers, sorters, exporters, and importers in Japan, India, West Africa, and North America.


As with his first book, Junkyard Planet (2013), which focused on the far-flung fates of discarded scrap metals, Minter, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, does his best to sift sense from dodgy data. But it’s his vibrant sketches of entrepreneurial characters and his dives into obscure industrial histories that make a persuasive case: Discarded goods are becoming a big environmental problem. MORE

* Report on 5th Conference on Media Development

I served as the rapporteur at this annual conference in Yangon and wrote the attached report (as pdf). The subtitle is “Inclusive Independent Media in a New Democracy.” The presentation of a study at this conference about gender equity in media gave me the idea for this story for Mizzima. The conference’s chief sponsor is the Swedish NGO International Media Support

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