Bangkok is a city of the world, but is it a world city?
The answer is an enthusiastic though qualified yes, judging from the results of a spirited discussion between long-term foreign residents, several of whom had first encounters with Thailand dating back to the 1960s.
Everyone agreed that cosmopolitan Bangkok has evolved in myriad ways, emerging as a world city at a time when great colonial ports formerly thought of as world cities -- Shanghai and Hong Kong in particular -- are shedding foreign residents and turning inward.
Singapore is or was a contender, though some argue its relatively small size and high degree of control vitiate against top status.
The only Asian city that received unanimous recognition in our very informal and unprofessional poll was Tokyo.
Key criteria included a large population, cosmopolitan quarters, connectivity, openness, tolerance and perhaps even permissiveness. Some great cities like Jakarta or Sydney were deemed too peripheral to the international flow of people and goods.
The amazing numbers of tourists who pour through Thailand certainly bolster its image as a really cosmopolitan place, but tourism does not make it a world city. If it did, the Costa del Sol in Spain would be a contender.
Consider Las Vegas -- lots of people fly in and fly out -- but no one mistakes that for cosmopolitan living. Ditto for the beautifully situated San Francisco, which hosts too small a population and has too little going on to really qualify.
Once the discussion drifted away from Asia to the world, a historian among those debating the issue weighed in with, well, a bit of history.
"The original Weltstadte were London and Paris. Imperial Germany asserted that Berlin was in the same league. All three had considerable hard and soft power beyond their borders. In today's different world, not sure that any Asian city fits the original criteria."
Like all good points, this was a jump-off point for more argument.
By China's criteria, Beijing is the great world city, but it's closed itself off from the world too much to really qualify. It has the hardware and certainly the history, but it lacks the software.
Certainly, soft power should taken into account when judging a city's international weight.
While colonial era London and Paris set a high bar in that regard, (unfairly high), elevating their dialects to world languages, drawing on the riches of the world and influencing science and the arts in ways that are still evident and alive, it's perhaps unfair to expect that of any comer in the post-colonial world. Of course, Chinese is a world language and would qualify by these terms, but Japanese has no purchase outside of Japan and thus would not, despite the dramatic length and breadth of Japan's empire at the height of imperial expansion.
New York fits almost everyone's definition of a world city in terms of diverse population, massive infrastructure, connectivity, centrality to finance and soft power exports, which range from abstract expressionism to Broadway show music to graffiti. Having the headquarters located in the middle of New York City is a nice thought, though many Americans might not look at it that way anymore.
One can only hope that New York's most controversial, arrogant and obnoxious real estate developer, a certain Donald Trump, does wreak havoc on the city that his followers love to hate.
Was Berlin a world city or not? The term Berlin Babylon suggests as much, but if Weimer Germany was indeed a world capital of culture, that quickly changed with the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Germany's soft power was potent -- the music alone amazing, and its cutting-edge science was second to none. Ditto for its autobahns and infrastructure, but the toxic xenophobia and politics of hate did it in.
India has the great port cities of Mumbai and Kolkata, not to mention the British-designed New Delhi, and it's hard to imagine cities with greater domestic diversity, but they do not measure up as the kind of place where foreigners of all stripes can seek refuge or establish themselves as long-term residents.
Shanghai, the epitome of a world city at its height, generously took in refugees and riff-raff from all around the world, and besides having French, English and Japanese quarters, it was a lifesaver to Jews fleeing Europe and Russians fleeing communism.
Alas, China closed itself off to the world under Mao Zedong to the point where foreign residents could be measured in mere hundreds, and despite the hoopla of its subsequent opening to the world, it is again closing itself off from the world even as its exports surge. Singapore is in a liminal position due to its compact size and tight controls.
World cities come and go. What could be more emblematic of a world city than ancient Rome, Alexandria or Constantinople? China's Chang'an and Xanadu, Luoyang and Beijing are exemplars of the same.
Hong Kong's demise is visible in real-time, and even stalwarts Paris and London aren't what they used to be. Madrid lost its mojo a long time ago. Moscow, at its peak of international socialism, closed itself off from half the world.
It's the fluidity of which is perhaps why Bangkok, regarded as exotic, backward and provincial for much of its history, can after the last quarter century of development, now be seriously viewed as a contender. The introduction of rational public transportation in the form of the Skytrain and MRT is a critical inflection point, as is the unparalleled expertise in housing, feeding and entertaining hordes of foreigners, with tourist arrivals at approximately 30 million a year.
Thai hospitality and hotel expertise is not a trivial consideration as best practices are imbued with a tolerance for people of all backgrounds in the best of the world city tradition. And despite being neither a colonial power like Britain, France and Japan nor a colonial port like Shanghai or Hong Kong, Bangkok shines as a non-colonial exemplar of greeting the world head-on.
At its peak, Ayutthaya was arguably more of a world city than foggy old London, with a larger cosmopolitan population, a glittering metropolis and active trade spanning half the globe, from Europe to Persia, from the Indonesian archipelago to China. There were foreign settlements for the Dutch, English, French and Japanese, and a regular flow of Arab traders and Chinese junk ship merchants.
One need only consider Thai history and the illuminating example of Ayutthaya, a world city in its day, to realise there are ways of knowing and ways of doing things in Thailand that work in favour of world city stature. Tolerance for one, and civility to outsiders.
So, as foreign residents may sportingly argue among themselves about contemporary Bangkok's qualifications as a world city, Thais can rest assured that it is a contender. True cosmopolitanism is a tender living thing and has to be nurtured, but it is not beyond the ken of Thais to pull it off. After all, they've been there before.
Philip J Cunningham is a media researcher covering Asian politics. He is the author of 'Tiananmen Moon'.