This study will focus its attention on the entrepreneurial role of the overseas Chinese in Thailand and their changing status within the context of the Thai political dynamics. The 1960 census of Thailand reports a population of 26,257,860, of which 409,508 are Chinese citizens either because of birth in China or registration with Chinese diplomatic officials at the age of sixteen. However, observers generally place the number of persons who habitually speak a Chinese dialect and conform to Chinese behaviour patterns in most social situations at about three million to three and a half million. This would make the Chinese community in Thailand, after that in Malaysia, the largest single group of the fifteen odd million Chinese resident abroad.