Phibun's administration encouraged economic nationalism and espoused staunchly anti-Chinese sentiment despite his own Chinese ancestry. Sinophobic policies were imposed by the government to reduce the economic power of Siam's Chinese minority and encouraged the Thai people to purchase as many Thai products as possible. In a speech in 1938, Luang Wichitwathakan, himself of Chinese ancestry, followed Rama VI's book "Jews of the East" in comparing the Chinese in Siam to the Jews in Germany, who at the time were harshly repressed.