The subsequent recovery has been remarkably drawn out and almost 10 years on, you could say that we have been living through a Great Transition. 2  I would like to highlight three pivotal transitional forces that have shaped our economic and political landscape. First, after decades of rapid expansion, world trade has slowed down considerably. During 2012 to 2015, world trade volumes grew at around 3 percent per annum, much less than the pre-crisis average of 7 percent for 1987-2007. Cyclical factors have certainly been at work, but the slower pace of growth relative to world GDP points to deeper structural forces at work. Chief among these is the waning impact from the integration of China and central and eastern European countries into the world economy, as well as the diminished room for further international fragmentation of production through global-value-chain trades. More speculatively, rising protectionism may have also dampened trade in recent years. Nevertheless, the level of trade integration across the world is as high as it has ever been. Second, economies the world over have seen a rising contribution of the service sector to growth. A key driver of this transformation has been technological innovation, especially in digital communication. For the world as a whole, the share of services as a proportion of GDP is now as high as 70 percent. This shift has not been confined to advanced economies but can also be seen in emerging markets.
Navigating the Great Transition: An Emerging Market Perspective Speech by Dr. Veerathai Santiprabhob Governor of the Bank of Thailand School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University October 5, 2016  Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a pleasure for me to be here in New York and to have a chance to participate in the policy discussion at SIPA. Given the increasingly complex policy challenges facing the global community, the contribution that SIPA makes in educating future leaders to serve the global public interest is critical. I would like to thank Professor Ito for inviting me. He was one of my early mentors at graduate school and I have benefitted from his many insights ever since. This coming weekend I will be attending the Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. As you know, this is one of the biggest global forums for addressing issues related to the global economy and world financial market. The discussions will be especially pertinent this year given the complex and highly unpredictable state of the world that we face. Former premier Wen Jiabao once described China’s growth performance as “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable”. This seems like an apt description of the global economy at this juncture. Unstable because the proliferation of popular discontent fueled by rising income inequality amidst ongoing international conflicts have greatly elevated geopolitical uncertainty. Unbalanced because with anemic recovery of advanced economies, much of the growth in 1  the global economy continues to be driven by emerging markets.