If you want to say that Thailand has almost become a developed country, it is estimated that not many people will believe it.
For a long time, in the impression of Chinese people, Thailand is a tourist destination or a Buddhist country, occasionally mixed with a little element of curiosity, but few people will associate Thailand with the word developed.
The truth is, Thailand has had its glory days.
In that era when the colonial wave was raging, it was difficult for weak countries to escape the clutches of the powerful of the West, and Southeast Asian countries were no exception.
However, among Southeast Asian countries, Thailand is the only one that has not been colonized.
Why is Thailand so unique? Because of its flexible diplomatic strategy.
Thailand is located in the middle of the Indochina Peninsula, which belongs to the overlapping interests of Britain, France, the United States and Japan, and can also affect the Strait of Malacca by facing south.
Therefore, the European powers wanted to take it for themselves, but it was because the geographical value was too high for the colonists to occupy it alone, and whoever moved the idea of encroachment would be besieged by the rest of the country.
Thailand sees the minds of the great powers, so it is caught between the great powers in order to survive.
If you ride the wall properly, you can even reap the benefits at critical moments.
During World War II, Thailand used its superb pulling skills to repeatedly jump between the Allies and the Axis powers, and finally not only came out unscathed, but also expanded its territory along the way.
As a result, Thailand was known as the "Fox of Southeast Asia" at the time.
After World War II, Western countries successively shifted their industries outward, and Southeast Asia was known for its cheap labor, so it was the preferred region.
In the early 60s, the Thai government began to introduce foreign investment and implement a liberal economic policy.
Although Thailand received this wave of wealth relatively late, the momentum of development was not weak at all, and the average growth rate of Thailand's industry was more than 10% throughout the 60s.
In the 70s, due to the international environment, Thailand's economic growth gradually slowed down.
In order to stimulate exports, the Thai government has devalued the Thai baht three times since 1981, and at the suggestion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it has implemented a "basket of currencies" peg exchange rate system, in which the weight of the US dollar accounts for more than 80%.
The results are immediate.
Because the exchange rate of the Thai baht is artificially fixed, shielding the exchange rate risk, coupled with Thailand's open capital market, it has attracted a crazy influx of hot money from all over the world, and the real estate market and financial market have become hot.
From 1985 to 1995, Thailand's economic development was the fastest in the world, with a GDP growth rate of around 8%, a per capita national income of more than $2,500, and was classified as a middle-income country by the World Bank.
Thailand, along with Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines at that time, was also known as the "Asian Tigers".
At that time, Thailand's degree of development once made the Chinese delegation who came here to investigate envious.
Stimulated by perennial high growth, everyone in Thailand, from the top of the government to the common people, is very optimistic about the future, thus ignoring many of the problems that have been exposed in the process of development.
The first is that most of Thailand's economic lifeline is controlled by foreign capital.
Thailand itself has no industrial foundation, but it is just a free ride on the transfer of foreign capital, and it has only become a newly industrialized country.
Thailand has been producing cars since the 80s, but so far, there is still no car brand of its own.
Because no matter how prosperous Thailand's industry seems, the core is still the low-end supply chain of foreign investment.
In addition to the basic labor force can be controlled, the rest of the equipment, technology, core components and engineers are all owned by foreign companies.
The majority of profits are in the hands of foreign manufacturers, and the only thing Thailand can get is the meager profits that flow out of the fingernails of foreign capital.
In fact, at that time, Thailand still had a choice.
Either tighten the headband, work hard for several generations, and establish their own whole industry chain, or like the Asian Tigers, dig deep into their own advantages, take the export-oriented route, and become an Asian cargo distribution center or financial center.
But Thailand chose to lie flat because the prosperity brought by a liberal economy was too high.
In order to retain foreign investment, Thailand can only allow labor to remain cheap, resulting in the quality of its citizens always being pressed to the bottom.
The people at the bottom can leave to their children only the spirit of cattle and horses passed down from generation to generation, and the next generation will not have any ability to turn over in the foreseeable future.
In fact, it is normal for Thailand to do this, after all, you can make money lying down, so why bother to transform so hard.
What if the situation reverses and Thailand is no longer given a chance to make money?
In the early 90s, the dollar began to harden against major currencies.
Under the peg exchange rate system, the Thai baht had to follow the sharp appreciation of the US dollar. As a result, Thailand's exports have been hit hard, falling from nearly 20 percent annual growth in the past to negative growth.
A decline in exports leads to a rapid widening of the current-account deficit, that is, a deficit in which trade expenditures exceed revenues.
In 1995, Thailand's current account deficit was US$16.2 billion, or 8.3% of GDP.
You must know that Thailand's economy is mainly driven by exports, so it has fallen into passivity all of a sudden. In order to cover the deficit, Thailand has to open up more of its capital account and borrow foreign debt.
But Thailand's deficit is not limited to this, and since the 80s, the Thai government has not capped public spending.
As mentioned earlier, the majority of profits are in the hands of foreign companies, and with tax incentives, not much actually falls into the hands of the government.
In order to meet the demand for unlimited profligacy, the Thai government has to keep borrowing.
As a result, when Thailand's economy was at its hottest, there was a strange phenomenon, on the one hand, there was a large influx of hot money from all over the world, and on the other hand, the scale of Thailand's foreign debt rose sharply.
By 1996, Thailand's external debt had reached $93 billion, contributing to high inflation.
After all, Thailand's economy has been developing rapidly for so many years, and the people are not too worried about high inflation.
Under the influence of the "hot" economic scene, many people still take out their money to invest in wealth management and real estate, waiting for considerable returns.
The government is heavily indebted and the financial sector is overheating, and the bubbles created are very exaggerated.
At this time, the Thai government is a bit of a tiger, and if it wants to reverse the economic downturn, it needs to implement an expansionary monetary policy, which means abandoning the exchange rate system pegged to the dollar.
If the peg is abandoned, the baht will easily depreciate, making the debt burden larger and the domestic economic situation worse.
In the end, the Thai government decided to increase its intervention in the foreign exchange market, raise interest rates, and try to maintain the peg system.
However, the high interest rate policy has also suppressed investment and consumption, which has also further deteriorated the Thai economy and given the financial predators an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
In Soros's eyes, Thailand, with its overheated finances and extremely fragile system, is a treasure with great potential.
When the Thai government chooses to resist hard, it means that the time has come to short Thailand.
In early February 1997, Soros and other international investors launched the first wave of tentative attacks on the Thai baht, borrowing $15 billion in forward Thai baht contracts from the Bank of Thailand, and then selling them in large quantities in the spot market.
Under the wave of large-scale selling, the Thai baht exchange rate fell sharply, causing panic in the market.
In order to calm the turmoil, the Bank of Thailand used $2 billion in foreign exchange reserves to intervene, and finally pulled the exchange rate of the Thai baht back against the US dollar a little.
But that's just the beginning.
Since May, international speculators have launched several rounds of fierce offensives to sell the Thai baht aggressively.
This is despite the fact that the Bank of Thailand has repeatedly used its foreign exchange reserves, and has even dragged Singapore into the fray.
But everything was in vain, because Soros had already figured out Thailand's hole cards, and with Thailand's foreign exchange reserves, he couldn't hold it at all.
Sure enough, by the end of June, when Thailand had depleted its last $30 billion in foreign exchange reserves, the situation was completely irreparable.
On July 2, Thailand announced that it would abandon the peg exchange rate system, which had been maintained for more than a decade, and implement a floating exchange rate system.
On that day alone, the Thai baht fell by more than 30%.
The collapse of the Thai baht is only the first step, and the financial predators have prepared so many bullets that they will not be satisfied with just shorting the baht.
They want to sweep all of Southeast Asia.
As a result, the Philippine peso, Indonesian rupiah, and Malaysian ringgit have become the targets of predators.
The aftermath reverberated throughout Asia, eventually causing a financial crisis that shocked the world.
In the midst of this crisis, Thailand's economy has plunged into an unprecedented recession, with many banks and financial institutions failing and companies going bankrupt en masse.
The impact of the crisis on society has also been devastating –
The number of unemployed people is as high as 3 million, and a large number of wealthy and middle-class people have returned to poverty overnight, and shareholders are jumping from high-rise buildings every day;
Since the Thai baht has almost been reduced to waste paper, the already high prices have gone straight to the sky;
Thefts, robberies, and murders are frequent, and the world's famous tourist destinations are in chaos.
It can be said that Thailand at this time is only one step away from bankruptcy.
At this point, the IMF finally cleaned up the mess.
It extended a helping hand to the countries of Southeast Asia, offering to provide large amounts of aid funds.
As we all know, the IMF has always had no treasures, and every aid it disburses has strict conditions.
The IMF's conditions for Thailand are the familiar old formula, liberalize the financial market and control over state-owned assets, and facilitate the entry and harvesting of foreign capital.
Thailand has no choice but to drink poisoned liquor.
The bankruptcy crisis was temporarily resolved, but at the cost of a large number of high-quality assets being looted by multinational corporations, and the country's savings were plundered for decades.
At the same time, per capita GDP plummeted by half, and the living standards of ordinary people plummeted.
After a decade of recuperation, Thailand has barely recovered to 1996 levels, but the foundations that have been siphoned off are not so easy to rebuild.
Thailand, which was eager to cross the threshold of a moderately developed country, is now trying to find a way to survive and not become a developing country.
This is what economists often call the middle-income trap, where the economy is stagnant and cannot go up, but it is easy to fall off.
After 97 years, Thailand's pillar industry has changed from industry to service industry.
Since the industry can't afford it, it is also a strategy to focus on tourism.
As long as Thailand maintains the improvement of tourism supporting facilities and lowers the cost of tourism, it will be able to maintain a steady growth in tourist flow.
When tourism is booming, it can also drive the development of other industries, killing two birds with one stone.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, successive Thai governments have been working in this direction, and the most outstanding of them is the Thaksin government.
Since Thaksin took office, Thailand's economic growth rate has been good, maintaining above 5 percent for a long time, and it has also achieved a balance between the national budget and the budget.
But that's all there is to it.
It's not that Thaksin can't do it, it's that it's touched a minefield.
After his successful re-election, Thaksin wanted to carry out a deep reform, but as a result, he touched the interests of the Thai king and the military, and was finally pushed down the center of power by the Thai military in 06 and forced to flee overseas.
In the decade or so that followed, Thailand was caught in a cycle of frequent coups.
The root cause is that the class contradictions are getting bigger and bigger, and the government is not able to reconcile them at all.
When the two factions quarrel with each other, the army will come out, launch a coup d'état to take over the government, and then the popular election will re-form the government, and when the new government fails to adjust again, a new round of coups will be launched, and the cycle will be repeated over and over again, so as to achieve a strange cycle.
Thailand's economy is also up and down, and it is enough to maintain stability, let alone reform and development.
The only thing Thailand can do is to keep the tourism market from collapsing.
After two years of suffering, in order to revive the tourism industry and attract more tourists, Thailand has come up with some strange tricks, the most controversial of which is to promote the legalization of marijuana.
On February 8, 2022, the Thai government abandoned its decades-old anti-drug tradition and removed marijuana from its drug control list, becoming the first country in Asia to legalize marijuana.
Thailand's aim is to tap new cash crops to increase agricultural added value, and to use flying leaves to attract tourists.
After two years of implementation, what is the effect?
It's hard to say about the effect of pulling the economy, and the hospital business is quite hot.
According to Thai media reports, just a few days after the policy was opened, there were multiple cases of cannabis abuse and being taken to the hospital for emergency treatment.
How widespread is this stuff in Thailand today?
In 2021, there were 1.89 million cannabis users in Thailand, and in 2022, the number soared tenfold.
If you are not careful, you are likely to accidentally eat food or drinks containing flying leaves, because after the policy was liberalized, such things are as common as condiments.
The Thai government regretted it a little.
Last year, the new prime minister, Saitha, publicly said that he would work to correct the wrong policies of his previous government and reformulate laws to limit them.
Anti-drug determination is good, but one thing is more crucial.
If the country wants to develop steadily, the regime must first be stable, and the speed of change cannot be as fast as that of a marquee.