The centre of accumulation and consumption...... During Phibun's administration, economic nationalism had provided the policy and ideological framework for the wide-ranging involvement of the state in economic affairs. By the post-war years a large number of manufacturing and trading enterprises in both urban and rural areas had been taken over or penetrated by the state. However, the achievements of official goals to retrieve capital from aliens (particularly the Chinese) and enhance self-sufficiency were limited. Notably, many enterprises were still managed by ethnic Chinese who had become Thai citizens. Moreover articles produced by the enterprises (paper and gunny sacks, for example) did not reduce demands for imports of essential industrial items (such as machinery). The state enterprises (as well as many private concerns were run as fiefdoms by government departments and powerful office-holders