Recently Chang Noi watched a brilliant film about hill people petitioning for Thai nationality. Strikingly, the leaders were speaking Thai much better than, ummmm, several Cabinet ministers. Speaking Thai “properly” used to be one of the tests for “being Thai”. But what is happening when those running the nation can’t do it, and those denied nationality can?

The way the nation is imagined is changing. To examine how, we have to remember the original formula when the Thai nation was first imagined around a century ago.

National history: the Thais are a race who migrated from the north to claim their manifest destiny in the Chaophraya basin.

National culture: Thais are usually Buddhists and always loyal to the King.

Nation’s backbone: the peasant.

National aim: independence (from the threatening colonialists), later adapted to "national integrity"

National elite of privilege: officials, especially the military, because they defend King, independence and national integrity, uphold Buddhism, and exemplify Thai behaviour.

Nation’s enemy without: the Burmese because they won't stop attacking, wrecking the capital, and destroying Buddhism (even though they are Buddhist themselves).

Nation’s enemy within: originally the Chinese (because they were loyal to China not Siam), but this later changed to "communism".

National beauty: traditional Thai femininity, later changed to the Thai-farang luk-kreung look when Thais became “modern”

Cultural workaround test for nationality: because so many people were not ethnic Thai, there had to be a workaround of "acting like a Thai", of which the simplest proof was speaking the language well.

This whole formula was attacked most fiercely by the Thai-Chinese intellectuals for the obvious reason that much of it was designed to control the immigrant Chinese and their dangerous proclivity for generating wealth and thinking freely. The formula has been changing for some time. But the advent of the current Cabinet, in which probably all the ministers have some Chinese heritage, is a critical point. How then is the nation being reimagined?

History: the ancestors of the Tai are the ancient inhabitants of China below the Yangxi (the Yue). They migrated westward a long time ago and got mixed up with other sorts of people. Others stayed in China and got mixed up with the Han. So there is a common, mixed-up culture across monsoonal Asia. The Chinese who migrated to Thailand later are not really different. They just took a different historical route.

Culture: unchanged.

Backbone: the entrepreneur, and especially the small and medium version (peasants have almost disappeared, and the few remaining will be converted into entrepreneurs by the village fund etc).

National aim: independence but especially economic independence in the face of globalization. This requires economic growth through the revival of the entrepreneur.

Enemy without: maha-amnat (the great powers), as Prachai Liaophairat said in late 1997. His latest, delightful ad for TPIPL has the naive Thai marathon runners redirected into a crocodile pond by a tricky gang including Clinton and Soros.

Enemy within: the Burmese. This is very complex and still evolving. The threats are bad things which come across the border to destroy the Thai nation, especially drugs, diseases, stray artillery shells, and absurdly young guerrillas waving automatic weapons. These are "Burmese" because this establishes an easy continuity with the old external enemy. In truth, much of it comes from anti-Burma rebels. Others who live near the border and might somehow be involved are included among the enemy within. This includes hill peoples inside Thailand who are accused of helping to courier drugs, and coming to Thailand recently (from Burma) to get Thai land and Thai nationality. Recently Meeju, the Akha activist who has Thai nationality, has been "denationalised" because she espouses the cause of these people, and can now be harassed by the authorities.

Elite of privilege: officials are losing ground because they cannot deliver the nation-rescuing objective of economic growth. Thaksin has a nice line about "mere technocrats". The elite now are the leading entrepreneurial families. Last week the Mother of the Year award went to the matriarch of a telecom dynasty. The super-elite are those entrepreneurs with political access. A sure sign of elite status is when you are absolved from the behaviour standards which the state imposes on ordinary people. So the tourist authority spends millions encouraging Thais to vacation in the country, but ministers take their families overseas at every opportunity. This same absolution applies for gambling, luxury consumption, etc.

National beauty: the Thai/farang luk-kreung stars who dominated the entertainment world are taking a back seat. In the TV dramas they now play the villains. To provide them with employment, we are treated to an avalanche of gangster stories in which the luk-kreung stars' duty is to die en masse in the last episode after expending enough ammunition for a small war. The new stars, both male and female, have delicate faces and frames which would go down just as well in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shanghai. A few carry the surnames of great Sino-Thai dynasties as added authentication.

Cultural workaround test: the “speaking Thai properly” test no longer works. Perhaps such a standard is no longer so important now that the ethnic definition has been loosened. Perhaps a visual test will replace the oral one (see “national beauty”).

The old formula was very much a state creation and hence rather clear and definite. The new one is emerging from the haze of everyday life. It’s not so clear. And of course it’s contested. Indeed, one reason Thaksin and his government make many people so uneasy may be precisely because they help to define and legitimate changes which have been emerging over a long time, and which not all can accept.