The $60 watch that out-signals a Rolex in Thai politics

What happened Thailand’s newest political status symbol costs less than $60. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has been giving Casio AE-1200WH digital watches engraved with his name to cabinet ministers, senior bureaucrats and political allies, Bloomber reported. Watch fans call the model, with its retro world-map display, the “Casio Royale.” In Thai political circles, the people wearing Anutin’s engraved version have become known as the “Casio Connection.” How Thailand’s prime minister uses engraved Casio watches to reward political loyalty Deputy Transport Minister Siripong Angkasakulkiat, who received his after a cabinet meeting, said Anutin buys the watches at small shops and markets on trips around Bangkok and has them engraved before handing them out. “The value of what we wear isn’t just in its price. For me, it’s in the person who gives it,” Siripong said in an interview with Bloomberg. Thamanat Prompow, a power broker whose Kla Tham Party has been angling to join Anutin’s ruling coalition, has also been seen wearing an engraved Casio, a sighting that set off talk of a deal between the two. His party’s secretary-general suggested the watch had come straight off the prime minister’s wrist, Bloomberg reported. Government spokesman Ekkapob Pianpises said the gifts carry no political message. Anutin likes the watch because it is practical and wants to share it, he said. Thailand’s long history of luxury watch scandals Anutin’s own collection runs far pricier. He has declared 22 luxury watches worth more than 60 million Thai baht ($1.8 million) and was recently photographed wearing a Rolex Day-Date 40 at a birthday celebration for Newin Chidchob, the influential patriarch of Anutin’s Bhumjaithai Party. Newin wore a Richard Mille RM 30-01, Bloomberg reported. Expensive watches have tripped up Thai politicians before. In 2017, then-Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan faced an anti-graft investigation after photos showed him wearing a series of costly timepieces. Investigators examined 22 watches worth more than $1 million, which Prawit said he had borrowed from a wealthy friend who has since died. In December 2018, the National Anti-Corruption Commission ruled 5–3 that he had not intended to file a false asset declaration. The Jing Take The shift toward an affordable watch marks a sharp break with Thai politics’ long attachment to luxury timepieces. The watches also offer a window into the personal ties that have helped Anutin build one of Thailand’s most stable governments in decades, Bloomberg reported. Against his own collection, a Casio at a fraction of the cost reads as a loyalty statement. From a luxury point of view, the trend shows that luxury consumption is never the only marker of status. Quiet luxury with a personal touch can matter more, and class can come from the person who gives an item as much as from the name it carries. Napon Jatusripitak, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said personal gifts like these can leave recipients feeling obliged to return the favor and loyal to the giver, Bloomberg reported. Gift-giving has long been a way to cement political alliances, and it has long stirred controversy. A Casio, though, projects a more down-to-earth image than a luxury watch. Even so, coming from the prime minister, the cheap watch still marks its wearer as an insider to anyone who can read the signal. From China’s ‘Brother Watch’ to Chanel and Graff: luxury scandals across Asia History shows that luxury watches have rarely ended well for officials. In 2012, Yang Dacai (杨达才), then head of Shaanxi province’s work safety bureau, was photographed smiling at the scene of a deadly bus crash. Internet users dug up older photos showing him in 11 different luxury watches. Many were angered that he wore timepieces that seemed beyond a civil servant’s salary, and they nicknamed him “Biaoge” (表哥), a word meaning “cousin” that doubles as a pun on “Brother Watch.” In 2013, a Xi’an court sentenced him to 14 years for bribery and for holding a large amount of property he could not account for. Across Asia, politicians have also taken heat for wearing luxury in recent years, in Indonesia and South Korea among other places. The sentiment runs especially strong in the region, where internet users in countries including Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines have used social media to turn outrage over elite extravagance into memes and public shaming, at times escalating into formal corruption allegations. South Korea’s former first lady Kim Keon Hee was sentenced to four years in prison in April by an appeals court, which upheld and extended her conviction for accepting Chanel bags and a Graff diamond necklace from a Unification Church official. Her final appeal is before the Supreme Court. In the Philippines, the luxury posts of politicians’ and contractors’ children, dubbed “nepo babies,” fueled a flood-control corruption scandal in 2025. Why Asia’s Gen Z consumers and social media watchdogs are turning against political luxury In a July essay for Indonesia at Melbourne, Abdullah Faqih, a master’s student at the University of Sydney, said luxury goods worn by officials have become a way for the public to keep watch on them, a practice he described as “sousveillance,” or watching from below. In 2023, then-President Joko Widodo told civil servants and public officials to avoid lavish, hedonistic lifestyles after public criticism, and ministries and government institutions then brought in regulations promoting a simple lifestyle, Faqih said. A simple lifestyle, in other words, has become one of the ways officials try to reach the public. “This is about more than just luxury handbags, designer shoes, or expensive watches. It is about visibility and power in the digital age,” Faqih said. “Social media has fundamentally transformed the relationship between citizens and political elites by enabling ordinary people to scrutinize, archive, and interpret the everyday lives of those in authority.” Gen Z, meanwhile, has grown more aware that luxury no longer signals success, and that it now carries ties to political turmoil and corruption. Youth-led protests over corruption broke out in Indonesia and the Philippines in August and September 2025, and wealth flaunted online by politicians’ children fed public anger in Indonesia, Nepal and Bangladesh, Usama Khilji of the Carnegie Endowment said in a March analysis. More politicians are turning to local or more affordable brands to stay out of the spotlight. Casio, for its part, has seen sales across Southeast Asia rise, with Vietnam and Indonesia driving growth in the region even as the picture varies by country, helped by the AE-1200WH’s retro digital design and a wider appetite for nostalgia. Politicians are thinking harder about the lifestyle they put on public display, particularly with Thailand’s economy under strain, as internet watchdogs stand ready to dig the moment something looks off. In public, at least, luxury no longer reads as a sign of success. An affordable watch with a personal touch has become a way to reach a bit of luxury without paying luxury prices. Anyone can make an item worth more. It depends only on who they’re close to. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

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The $60 watch that out-signals a Rolex in Thai politics