ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that there are three levels of misunderstanding that together constitute the foundation of the Thai-Chinese assimilation success story the cosmological misunderstanding, the state/majority to minority misunderstanding between the populous Thai and the ethnic Chinese community, and the state-to-state misunderstanding between the Chinese and Thai states. Southeast Asia has always been the region to host the greatest number of ethnic Chinese outside of mainland China. At least up to the conclusion of World War II, Thailand was the country with the largest overseas Chinese population in the world. Cosmologically from the Hindu perspective the center of the universe was somewhere to the west, probably somewhere in the Himalayas, intimately related to the major rivers of the subcontinent. The great popularity of Theravada Buddhism, too, puts Siam at the periphery as the religion originated in South Asia and was then introduced to Southeast Asia at a much later period.
