For a long time, multinational corporations have often held a dangerous "holistic" bias when examining the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This perspective views ASEAN—a region with over 690 million people and interwoven diverse cultures—as a single emerging market, attempting to capture one country as a model and then replicating that pattern across other member states.
China is no longer just a manufacturing hub or a consumer market to watch from a distance. It has become the world's most dynamic innovaton laboratory where AI applications scale faster, humanoid robots roll off production lines at mass-market prices, smart factories rewrite the rules of manufacturing, and internet platforms evolve their business models quicker than anywhere else.
CES 2026 features nearly equal numbers of exhibitors from China and the United States, underscoring its increasingly balanced global landscape. China’s growing influence—driven by highly concentrated regional clusters such as the Pearl River Delta—highlights that competition now revolves around systems, scenarios, and industrial ecosystems rather than individual products.
Over the past decade, China's electric vehicle (EV) industry has evolved from a niche experiment into a leading force in the global automotive landscape. In the first ten months of 2025, China exported over 2 million EVs, nearly double the year-earlier figure. From European city streets to Southeast Asian highways and Latin American urban centers, Chinese EVs have emerged as one of the most prominent symbols of a new era of “Made in China.”
Leveraging geographic security, low costs, and strong policy incentives, Malaysia has rapidly risen as a computing power hub in Southeast Asia. Johor has absorbed spillover demand from Singapore and moved decisively into the AI high-compute track, becoming a key transit hub for Chinese companies’ overseas computing expansion.
Consumer-grade 3D printing is shifting from rapid expansion to structural differentiation. As technology becomes standardized, competition moves toward category choice, usage scenarios, and long-term value. Decorative, one-off products are losing momentum, while functional, niche, and extensible categories—supported by strategies focused on sustained use rather than device sales—are emerging as the core drivers of durable global growth.
