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THE HMONG IN LAOS: ECONOMIC FACTORS 33in doing any really objective research in Laos and in thecamps of Thailand. I have therefore had to rely on statisticscollected for various official reasons, none ofthem collected specifically to test the thesis. It mustalso be borne in mind that these figures represent onlymovement in and out of camps. It is most likely thatthousands more Hmong than get into the statistics havemoved across the border into Thailand without passingthrough a camp and equally likely that several thousandhave "spontaneously repatriated" to Laos.The figures I am giving here do not conclusivelyprove my thesis. On the other hand, they certainly donot disprove it. To play it safe, I would say that areasonable interpretation of available statistics tendsto support the thesis.First, annual arrivals of Hmong refugees in Thailandsince 1975, as set out in Table 2, invite analysis a-gainst an economic background. (Figures are actually forhill-tribe arrivals and include a few thousand Yao andsome members of other minority groups, but the great majorityare Hmong.)Two peaks are evident: 1975 and 1979. The reasonsfor the 1975 exodus are obvious enough: fear of retaliationagainst the Hmong by the victorious Pathet Lao andthe very sound economic reasons for leaving that I havealready gone into. But why should figures peak again in1979? If fear of such factors as "yellow rain" were theonly reason for leaving, why did 23,943 flee the countryin 1979 and only 1,816 in 1982? The real answer, I feel,has a lot to do with economics and the economic historyof the Hmong.For a long, long time Hmong have lived near larger,more dominant ethnic groups. Speaking as we must in generalizations:the majority ethnic groupsChinese, Vietnamese,Lao and Northern Thaiwere firmly entrenched inthe lowlands where they practiced irrigation methods togrow rice and lived in communities typified by permanenteconomies, permanent villages, permanent authority structuresand so on. The Hmong, on the other hand, werehopping around from mountaintop to mountaintop, practicingshifting cultivation in communities typified byshifting economies, temporary villages and temporary authoritystructures. During thousands of years of quietsubsistence farming, the Hmong lived near a majority cult45