"...Shan is a Burmese rendering of Siam. The Thai call our Shans as Thai-yai or Elder Thai – and Tai or Thai is only a dialectical rendering. The Tai Speaking Peoples stretch from North East India, through Burma, the Kachin and Shan States, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and south and southwest China. Chinese Prime Minister Chou-en-lai of PRC [Communist Mainland China] said in 1957 to Soa Shwe Thaike, who was the first President of the Independent Burma, that in China there were then 100million Tai/Dai Speaking Peoples in China..."