plunging the Thai peasant into poverty by charging high interest rates, the reality was that the Thai banking business was highly competitive. Chinese millers and rice traders were blamed for the economic recession that gripped Siam for nearly a decade after 1905. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Chinese would lose control of foreign trade to the European colonial powers, but served as compradores for Western trading houses. Ethnic Chinese then moved into extractive industries—tin mining, logging and sawmilling, rice milling, as well as building ports and railways. While acknowledged for their industriousness, the Chinese in Thailand were scorned by many. In the late 19th century, a British official in Siam said that "the Chinese are the Jews of Siam ... by judicious use of their business faculties and their powers of combination, they hold the Siamese in the palm of their hand". 20th century By the early 20th century, the resident Chinese community in Bangkok was sizable, consisting of perhaps a third of the capital's population. Anti-Chinese sentiment was rife. In 1914, the Thai nationalist King Vajiravudh (Rama VI), published a pamphlet in Thai and English—The Jews of the East— employing a pseudonym. In it, he lambasted the Chinese. He described them as "avaricious barbarians who were 'entirely devoid of morals and mercy'". He depicted successful Chinese businessmen as gaining their success at the expense of indigenous Thais, prompting some Thai politicians to blame Thai Chinese businessmen for Thailand's economic difficulties. King Vajiravudh's views were influential among elite Thais and were quickly adopted by ordinary Thais, fueling their suspicion of and hostility to the Chinese minority. Wealth disparity and the poverty of native Thais resulted in blaming their socioeconomic ills on the Chinese, especially Chinese moneylenders. Beginning in the late-1930s and recommencing in the 1950s, the Thai government dealt with wealth disparities by pursuing a campaign of forced assimilation achieved through property confiscation, forced expropriation, coercive social policies, and anti-Chinese cultural suppression, seeking to eradicate ethnic Han Chinese consciousness and identity. Thai Chinese became the targets of state discrimination while indigenous Thais were granted economic privileges. The Siamese revolution of 1932 only tightened the grip of Thai nationalism, culminating in World War II when Thailand's Japanese ally was at war with China. After 1947 coup d'état, Thailand was an agrarian economy hobbled by state-owned enterprises. The Chinese provided the impetus for Thailand's industrialization, transforming the Thai economy