Remarks by H.E. Mr. Don Pramudwinai,

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
of the Kingdom of Thailand,

at the Forbes Thailand Forum 2020: Thailand’s Megatrends

3 December 2020, Centara Grand Hotel & Convention Centre, Bangkok

MEGATRENDS AND THAILAND

Excellencies,

Millennials,

Generation Alpha,

Neo-digital natives,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction:

In the 1960s, one of the most popular television series was the Jetsons.  Since its debut in 1962, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon has become synonymous with the gleaming utopia promised by technology. The world where George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy Jetson lived, with robot housekeepers and ozone-scraping luxury smart homes that can dress and groom you by themselves, was a vertical manifest destiny, one where audiences could hang their starry-eyed hopes about the future.

And today the future is here. The Jetsons world is arriving at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that will merge the physical, digital and biological worlds together. The scale, scope and complexity of this Revolution already has begun to bring about transformation in many aspects of human lives. And as many believe, will possibly redefine us as homosapiens.

What are megatrends?

Before we get too deep, let us begin at the same place with the understanding of the term “megatrends” that have been used ubiquitously.

Megatrends are generally defined as sustained and macro forces of development. They are paradigm shifts.  Megatrends affect and alter society, culture, business, economy, and personal lives in so many and most consequential facets.  Megatrends are disruption, destruction, and creation of opportunities, and they are not limited to any one industry or any one country.  Megatrends are often equated with innovation.  But they are not necessarily just about innovation.

A case in point--the invention and spread of the printing press catalyzed a megatrend of the 15^th century.  It changed the way information was distributed, and that change was permanent, (until being rendered obsolete by e-books of our time).  There was no way to put the printed book genie back into the bottle. 

The printing press changed all sorts of things.  It created new jobs—printers, papermakers, booksellers, and even a new religion (Protestant).  It stimulated the development of vernacular languages, broke the power of elites to control information.  It was what we would call today—the “destructive creation.”

However, climate change, aging population, urbanization, and the rise of new superpowers, are among the megatrends that are non-technological innovation.

Present-day Megatrends and Thailand

Fast forward to our present time, we are witnessing two megatrends that converge—the Covid-19 pandemic and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Ready or not, we all are living through a future history class. 

In Thailand and elsewhere in the world, Covid-19 has underscored the fact that no institution or individual alone can address the economic, environment, social and technological challenges of our complex, interdependent ecosphere.  The pandemic has accelerated systemic changes that were brought forward at the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Those challenges were evident before the arrival Covid-19, prompting the Thai government to speed up and fine-tune the responses and readiness to both.

The economic lockdown, social distancing, the ensuing intense anxiety, deep sense of isolation and disorientation, exponential increase in social media habit as the only critical means of psychological connectedness, the fear of economic ruin and of death, pent-up anger, the heightened social and economic disparities, are  among the issues that require well-calibrated solutions and initiatives on the part of government.

The Thai government realizes that the most effective answer to the Covid-19 and Covid-induced crises would be the availability of the vaccine that is affordable and fairly accessible to all our people. The administration has placed the availability Covid-19 vaccine at the top of the national agenda.  It has reached out near and far to maximize the chance that the Thai people will not stand at the end of the line to get the vaccine.  The government has supported the partnership between our indigenous organizations with overseas research and pharmaceutical bodies. It has joined the collective initiative of the World Health organization (WHO) called COVAX and its ACT (Access-to-Covid-Tools) Accelerator which is a ground-breaking global collaboration to fast-track the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.  And there exists also at least one indigenous R&D effort by one local university, Chulalongkorn University, which is moving at a good pace. So, either separately or collectively, the Thai government has secured Thailand’s place in the front rows of Covid-19 vaccines.  We have acted as a responsible member of the international community whose shared creed is--with this pandemic, no one is safe unless everyone is safe.

The Thai economy was severely hit by the pandemic as it depends heavily on external factors. As the world economic activities came to a halt and the global supply-chain and travel were disrupted, our two largest national revenue-earner sectors—exports and tourism, literally came to a complete stop.  Combined, the two sectors represent about 70 percent of our GDP.

As the result, the economic and development fault lines that emerged in 2019 due in part to the depressed world price of rice and rubber—Thailand’s two major exported commodities got accentuated. They represent our critical crossroads for 2021.

The Thai government recognizes that this is the time to make crucial choices, to reset priorities and the urgency of reform, and to reinvent to build a more inclusive, cohesive, and sustainable future.  Agility, transparency and trust are the three pillars in the government’s efforts in reviving the economic growth and improving the people’s livelihood.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution that is built upon the Third—the Digital Revolution, is an extremely fast-moving phenomenon—progressing at a more aggressive pace than any of the three previous revolutions. This revolution is characterized by oceans of big data, the rise of autonomous machines and robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genomic mapping, distributed ledgers such as blockchain, and the Internet of Things.  The Thai government realizes that in today’s new environment, governments must be more data-driven, people-focused, and agile than ever before.  Agility enables governments to create legislations and policies that address the innovations of 4IR. Agility also requires governments to be “future-savvy,” relevant, and proactive.

Our Eastern Economic Corridor Initiative or EEC is one of Thai government’s endeavors to be effectively responsive to the New Normal and its multifaceted challenges.  EEC is a special economic Zone that was designed to be the catalyst, the pull and push factor for Thailand’s 21^st Century economic and technological development. It leverages on Thailand’s geographical locality, and on our comparative advantage in healthcare, agriculture, logistics and infrastructure. The government also seeks to propel our communication technological development into 5 and 6 G by partnering with the world top players in the field. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in the position to bring to Thailand best practices around the world in novel areas such as human genome and preventive and regenerative medicine, AI, automation, fintechs, digitalization, urbanization, smart cities, upskilling and reskilling of labor forces, especially those in vocational education, clean energy technology, new auction and public works bidding formats to improve transparency, data-driven infrastructure, digital commerce to name a few. The Ministry through its international and regional cooperation has been working towards enhancing Thailand’s trade, commerce and investments position as well as keeping the overseas markets open to our exports.

Internationally, the world is witnessing a sea change in global and regional power equations that began at the end of the Cold War. The power began to shift from the West to the East, from North to South, smaller nations are making their pressure felt in the new international equation.  The different paces of major economic and technological advancements between the existing major powers and emerging ones contribute the paradigm shift: the global navigation satellite systems advancement is a case in point.

Against this backdrop, Thailand has been maintaining our centrality and strengthening our role and active participation in the regional and international arenas.  Our twin-pillar foreign policy has helped Thailand navigate safely through several international waters due to global paradigmatic shift brought about by the Fourth IR.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The 21^st century technological revolution is sometimes called the Age of Disruption.  The velocity, scope and systems impact of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. They are happening at an exponential rather than linear pace. Billions of people are now connected by mobile devices with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge. No longer just pipe dreams or imaginary wishful thinking are, for example, the colonization of other planets, robots in space and in the workplace, electric/self-driving cars, robot butlers, flying cars, working in virtual reality, e-wearable screens, 3D printed food, fridges that order grocery for you, smart toothbrushes that send data to your dentist, smart mirrors that check your health. The impact of these transformations on people, on business, on government are unfathomable accompanied by both opportunities and challenges.  In the movie, the Jetson family lived happily ever after, and James Bond always won.  But in life, every transformation comes with a price tag.

Already, the term “together alone” starts to reverberate with the enhanced social media connectedness. The development of cities has brought people physically closer, but all that people acquire has been shallow acquaintances.  We have created devices that allow us to see someone’s face in real-time while they’re standing on the other side of the planet, and the time it takes to contact someone has gone down so low, it’s measured in milliseconds. And yet, as technology brought people closer, we somehow managed to lose the ability to connect with others in epic proportions.

In Thailand, as in every country around the world, the change in social and cultural fabric is one challenging byproduct of the technological transformation. The “together alone” phenomenon can take empathy, humility and civility out of human relations equation. Unemployment, underemployment, poverty and changes in business models and behavioral preference can mean more social disruption and increased disenfranchisement.

Closing Thoughts

All these issues will be confronting our Generation Z as well as the government alike.  As we face and build this 21^st century Brave New World, we will be faced with choices.  We are standing at a pivotal moment, a moment in which we can shape and steer our systems and governance and center them around opportunity and efficacy.  Or we face extinction.

Nelson Mandela once said, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. So – let us choose hope, be innovators, dream big, and foster agility. The key to our success may lie in the teaching of King Rama 9 on Sufficiency Economy whose tenet is to seek balance in everything we endeavor to do and achieve.  Sufficiency economy philosophy is not about keeping the poor poor and deprived.  It is about being on a firm and well- balanced footing as we move forward into the unfamiliar realm of the future.

Thank you.