The government's newly proclaimed 2030 National AI Strategy defers its two main tools for mobilising real public money, interest rate subsidies and tax incentives for AI activity, to future study rather than committing them now, while the investment target itself counts private and foreign capital the state does not directly control. Expect officials to point to rising private and FDI linked AI spending as proof of progress even as the state's own disbursed share of that target lags behind.
The Korean presidential office has announced it is negotiating with Washington over semiconductor tariffs on Korean firms, but the White House's own January proclamation already promises preferential treatment for firms investing in US chip production, and both companies already run large scale US operations. The story is not a fresh capital expenditure race but a bureaucratic qualification process built on investments both firms made years ago.
Beijing's informal leverage against erratic carmakers, such as bank credit, SOE ties and regulator goodwill, works on flagship firms like BYD but barely reaches the smaller, financially-struggling exporters and joint-venture distributors actually setting prices in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. Just as in the failed "anti-involution" push in China's domestic automobile market, overcapacity in the auto industry will undermine normative pressure when guidance carries no binding penalty.
The domestic market is set to grow from roughly $50-62 billion now to $103-155 billion by 2030 to 2031, while over 90 percent of chips are still imported today. Even if the new Semicon 2.0 government subsidies push the import share down to 70 to 75 percent by 2028, a more optimistic pace than any prior industrial policy has managed, the absolute import bill would still grow, because market expansion is outrunning capacity addition faster than substitution can catch up.
The latest 616 billion yen ($3.9 billion) tranche of fuel subsidies accelerates the burn rate of a 2.5 trillion yen ($15.7 billion) supplementary reserve created in June. If crude prices and the weak yen keep pushing import costs up through winter, expect the same May to June 2026 pattern, where reserve exhaustion will be followed by a new emergency supplementary budget before the fiscal year closes in March 2027.
South Korea has just added high-performance AI semiconductors and advanced chipmaking equipment to its strategic goods list, aligning its controls with the US, EU and Japan. China has already warned Korean companies against re-exporting rare-earth-derived goods to American defence firms and tightened mineral licensing, so a move that visibly locks Seoul into the Western export-control bloc gives Beijing fresh justification to single out Korean firms, likely through customs delays or a new anti-dumping probe.
The two leaders reaffirmed political alignment, but talks on the proposed Power of Siberia 2 LNG pipeline remain deadlocked over price, limiting the overland capacity for Russian energy exports. As Russia has no comparable alternative buyer for large volumes of gas, while Beijing keeps diversifying LNG supply through Central Asian and maritime routes, China owns maximum pricing leverage.
Vietnam is drafting rules letting its biggest tech firms claim official "advanced economy" status if they meet certain criteria, including spending 3% of revenue on R&D, but Viettel and VNPT currently spend only around 1%. With no strict rule separating true research from routine network upgrades or software procurement, reclassifying existing spending as R&D is the cheaper route to the threshold.
Beijing's reform, unveiled through five trial regulations, extends mortgages to 40 years and eases developer credit, but does nothing to absorb the huge unsold and shadow inventory built up since 2021, when roughly 90% of homes were sold before completion. Cheaper credit boosts affordability and transaction counts, not the price floor, since resale volumes have already overtaken new-home sales as buyers shun presale risk.
The scheme, which lets qualifying mining exporters retain just 30% of forex proceeds for three months instead of the standard 100% for 12 months, currently covers only investors from the United States, China, Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. Major Japanese and Korean investors in Indonesian nickel processing, holding stakes comparable to those from covered countries, have strong incentive to lobby for inclusion, and Jakarta has previously expanded similar carve-outs under bilateral pressure.
The raid on Unimicron over relabelled circuit boards has already pushed global clients to audit their Taiwanese vendors for origin compliance. With scrutiny rising alongside US tariff differentials on Chinese-made goods, more cases are likely to surface as clients tighten supply-chain checks.
ASEAN pilots typically start with a small coalition of states holding compatible digital certification systems rather than waiting for consensus across members with weaker verification infrastructure, such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Lower-skilled and informal work is harder to standardise into verifiable digital credentials, and even where it is certified, destination states like Singapore and Malaysia can keep strict criteria over visas and quotas, so gains stay concentrated among a limited group of higher-skilled, formally credentialed workers.