Decoding the case of Nene Royal on the AGT 2026 stage, through to Lisa and Milli — why Thai artists must export themselves as raw cultural labour while the 8,000-million-baht soft power budget sinks into events.
Series: Soft Power and the Fate of Thai Artists — EP.1: From 'Nichkhun and Lisa' to 'Nene Royal' — 3 Decades of Thai Kids Struggling, While the State Does Nothing but Ride the Wave!?
Decoding the contradiction of T-Pop and Thai music: when a 16-year-old must use an "American stage" as their launching pad, while government budgets remain mired in the events swamp.
The big question challenging Thailand's system of public administration right now is not whether Thai people have potential — because the answer is plain to see through the world-shaking phenomenon on the stage of America's Got Talent 2026 (AGT Season 21). "Nene Royal," also known as Praew — Rattikarn Amloi, a young guitarist and singer aged just 16 from Phuket province, won the Golden Buzzer in the Live Show round to advance to the finals, to thunderous applause and stunned silence throughout the hall, broadcast live on NBC television in the United States.
But the bitter irony is that whenever Nene Royal wins, we will inevitably see a parade of government agencies and politicians swooping in to ride the wave in full force.
The question, then, is this: why, at the very moment the public sector is championing soft power and has allocated a cumulative budget of more than 8,000 million baht, do the global achievements of Thai children always happen "outside the system" of government support? And why do billions of baht in public funds dissolve into temporary events with no sustainable ecosystem to show for it, leaving Thai children to fight their way onto international stages entirely on their own?
"Nene Royal" — Raw Talent Hitting a Ceiling
The journey of Nene Royal (Praew — Rattikarn Amloi) is the clearest structural reflection of this problem. Nene began picking up the guitar and practising rock and heavy metal music intensively from a young age, climbing through domestic music competitions such as the Overdrive Guitar Contest and building a presence on social media — only to collide with the ceiling of the Thai music industry, which offers no support for specialised music genres and no mechanism for exporting artists to a global level.
What made Nene a world-level phenomenon was not any Thai government policy, but her own decision to take herself and compete on a "global platform" — NBC in America — until she won over both the judges and audiences worldwide.
When viewed through the structural policy observations of Associate Professor Dr. Athasit Phankaew of the Faculty of Political Science at Thammasat University, and a research team that monitors cultural policy in Asia, a crucial point emerges: the victories of Thai artists abroad — whether in the case of Lisa, or in the case of Nene Royal shaking the American stage — are not products of Thai government policy. They are victories of individual potential and foreign industry systems. Thai artists are compelled to enter international competition and marketing structures on their own, because the Thai state has continued to regard soft power as merely a tool for organising publicity events, rather than as a serious strategic export industry to be built in earnest.
From 'Nichkhun' to 'Nene Royal': 3 Decades of Struggle
The phenomenon of Thai children making a name for themselves at the global level is neither new nor a matter of individual luck. It is a "historical pattern" that has repeated itself across 3 decades, through the evolution of artists in each era:
The Era of Pioneers and Blueprint-Setters (Nichkhun of 2PM and BamBam of GOT7):
The beginning of the T-Wave in the K-Pop world came from personal initiative and being spotted by foreign talent scouts with a keen eye. Nichkhun and BamBam had to fly abroad and train intensively within the South Korean label system (JYP) from childhood. What the Thai public sector did afterwards was not to build infrastructure to support the next generation — it was to bring Nichkhun in as a presenter for the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to attract tourists. It was, in the truest sense, "harvesting a crop they never planted."
The Era of Globally Influential Phenomena (Lisa — Lalisa Manobal):
The case of Lisa of BLACKPINK is the clearest indicator of the Thai entertainment industry's failure. The girl from Buriram with extraordinary dance talent had to audition alone among thousands in order to become a trainee at YG Entertainment for more than 5 years. When Lisa became a global phenomenon and spread Thai soft power — from smelling salts and elephant-print pants, to roti sai mai and tourist sites in Yaowarat — through her "ROCKSTAR" music video, all of that happened out of "personal love for her homeland," not from a single baht of the 8,000-million-baht soft power strategy budget.
The Era of Thai Private Labels Partnering with Global Platforms and Viral Soft Power (Milli — MILLI):
The case of "Milli" (MILLI — Danupha Khanatheerakul), the influential female rapper from YUPP! label, is the example that most sharply underscores the contradiction of the public sector. Milli made history as the first Thai solo artist to perform at the world-class Coachella music festival in 2022, through a partnership with international label 88rising, delivering a powerful show that went viral when she ate mango sticky rice on stage — sending mango sticky rice sales in Thailand through the roof overnight.
What deserves structural consideration is that Milli's rise came from her individual talent and the refinement provided by a Thai private label working directly with a foreign platform. Yet on the day the global viral moment occurred, the public sector rushed to wake up, ride the wave, voice its enthusiasm, and promptly move to nominate mango sticky rice for cultural heritage registration — even though throughout the entire process of developing the artist and the Thai hip-hop industry, the public sector had never once established a budget subsidy system or a learning ecosystem to support it.
The Era of Breaking into Asia's Entertainment Giants and Western Stages (Nene Pornnabpan and Nene Royal):
On the Asian side, "Nene — Pornnabpan Pornpenpipat" started as an artist in Thailand with no systemic backing, and had to take herself to compete in the show Chuang 2020, ultimately debuting as part of BonBon Girls 303 in China's C-Pop industry. Meanwhile, the more recent case of "Nene Royal" (Praew — Rattikarn) further underscores this gap: because the Thai music industry has no space and no market for niche rock and heavy metal genres, a 16-year-old was left with no choice but to leap over the T-Pop system and take herself to America's Got Talent on NBC — entirely on her own.
Dismantling the State's Excuses: Abandoning the Domestic Ecosystem
Of course, when the failure to push Thai artists to the global level is pointed out, the favourite excuse that government and policy circles tend to deploy to obscure the problem goes something like this: "Artists like Nichkhun, Lisa, BamBam, and even Nene Pornnabpan all grew and made their names through the capital, investment, and intensive training systems of major entertainment labels in South Korea or China — that is a matter for foreign industries. How could the Thai government possibly subsidise or provide budget support on foreign soil?"
This question may appear reasonable, but it is in fact "the construction of a fallacious logic to deflect structural accountability." The core of the rebuttal is not a demand that the Thai government carry its budget across the ocean to subsidise foreign record labels. The root problem is "the absence of a domestic ecosystem and training labels that meet international standards." What has happened over the past 3 decades is that the Thai music and arts industry has lacked infrastructure, lacked tax incentives, lacked skill development funds, and lacked strong intellectual property protection — to the point that Thai children of genius-level potential have had "no other choice" but to take themselves outside the system and "export themselves as raw cultural labour," to be refined, developed, and have tens of thousands of millions of baht in added value extracted from them by foreign entertainment labels. And when those products finally ripen on the world stage, the Thai public sector does nothing more than wake up and "ride the wave" — claiming credit for work it never did, to manufacture a fleeting image, day by day.
The Equation of Failure: The Thai State Rides Waves, It Does Not Build Systems
When the paths of Nichkhun, BamBam, Lisa, Nene Pornnabpan, and Nene Royal are laid out side by side in the equation of cultural development, a sharp structural contradiction becomes apparent. Countries across Asia and the West regard the creative industry as an "economic engine," while the Thai public sector treats it as nothing more than a "venue for organising publicity events." This dimensional difference is reflected clearly through 3 strategic inequalities:
Discovery and Refinement: Abroad, the public sector and industry collaborate to build training label systems, artist development funds, and talent scouting systems that meet international standards. In Thailand, the discovery and refinement of talent is left entirely to families and private capital. Thai artists must struggle and bear all financial risk entirely on their own from the very beginning.
Structural Value Creation: World-class entertainment industries invest budgets in foreign market research, intellectual property development, and international copyright protection. The Thai state, by contrast, dissolves its public budget into organising events, cutting ribbon banners, holding press conferences, and setting up temporary exhibition booths that leave no structural impact.
The Role of the State: Successful countries position the state as an "ecosystem builder" that supports legal and tax infrastructure. But the role of the Thai state over the past 3 decades has been nothing more than that of "a wave-rider in waiting" — only showing up on the day artists succeed on the world stage under their own power.
Over the past 3 decades, the evidence is empirically clear: the potential of Thai people has never been inferior to any nation on earth. Yet what demands to be questioned is this: while Thai youth must struggle using their own funds and take themselves to compete on foreign stages, where exactly did the cumulative soft power budget of more than 8,000 million baht disappear to?
Follow the dissection of the 8,000-million-baht budget — how it flows into the bureaucratic system, and the structural lessons from South Korea's KOCCA — in EP.2 (Final): Dissecting the 8,000-Million-Baht Budget — Money Circulates but Has No Target: Major Surgery Before It All Goes to Waste?
