Why Southeast Asia Matters with Gullnaz Baig
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People always ask us this question, "What can I learn from that country?" People ask us about this from the report also, especially when we're talking to policymakers or "What should I learn from Malaysia?" The thing to learn is to not learn to replicate exactly. But the thing to learn is what are the principles behind what works for them? What are your comparative advantages? Every country needs to be asking that for themselves.

So for Vietnam, comparative advantages are things like proximity to China and ability at a geopolitical level to navigate between the US and China. They do this pretty delicately given their history with both countries. There's an acquiescence by the major powers also to not force Vietnam to take sides. So it's the delicate balancing game that A Dien always plays.

Welcome to Analyze Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leung, and we have two perspectives on Southeast Asia. So where are the high winds for the region and how will we navigate the markets? With me today, Gunas Baik, Executive Director of Angsana Council. Gunas, welcome to the show.

Hi, Bernard. Thank you so much for having me on. Yes, we bumped into each other in the Sync AI event organized by Tech in Asia, and then we proceeded and discussed, and then we come to today. But like always, I always ask my first-time guests, your origin story, how did you start your career?

Well, it's an odd one to me because I feel like I stumbled into my career over time. So it wasn't a conscious decision. If you are an 18-year-old me, if I would end up here, I would not imagine that, right? So I started off in government in Singapore and I spent about six, seven years there, largely in policymaking. So that's really the line that is cut across all my career trajectory. I've always been very much a policy person.

And there I dabbled in, you know, policymaking for our social sector, education, etc. And it brought into light the need for short-term, long-term thinking on how to balance data that gives you short-term perspectives and how to then

think about what it means for the long term and also at scale. So a lot of government reforms need to consider long-term impact and scale and how it touches different demographics. So I think I learned a lot of skills that way. And then over time, I stumbled into big tech, first in Facebook. It was a very interesting role that I had there, which was to build out our counterterrorism policy efforts for Facebook.

And from then on, you know, I really started to think about scale in a very different way when your products and services are being made use of by billions of people across many different types of countries. It brings about different types of impact. And some of your assumptions about how it can pan out is constantly challenged because people find new and innovative ways to sort of think about

how to use technology. So that really was eye-opening. And then I went on to lead teams across other big tech companies, a startup, etc., pretty much in the public policy and product policy spaces.

And now I find myself leading this not-for-profit advisory council that is being sponsored and supported by a VC in Singapore. It's a pioneering VC that invests in early-stage tech startups across Southeast Asia. So it brings together a confluence of all the different things I've been doing, right? Policy, understanding technology, but also bringing in that long-term research and perspective into things.

so that we can really truly think about how do we leverage technology to bring about sustainable growth for the region that benefits as many of us as possible. Can you introduce the Angsana Council and its current focus?

Sure. So I talked a bit about the council in my own origin story, but going deeper into it. So it's a not-for-profit advisory council. We look at the whole region and we particularly sit in that space where we think deeply about technology and how it can be leveraged to bring about sustainable growth for the region itself. And our mission is twofold.

The genesis of Oxana Council itself is as a result of the partners at Monx Hill Ventures going around and trying to explain what is Southeast Asia. They often get questions like from various investors, questions like, oh, how close to China is it? Or,

Why invest in Southeast Asia and not India? I'm a US-based investor. I understand Latin America as an emerging market, but what is the Southeast Asia? So there's a whole slew of storytelling that needs to happen. It needs to help in order to help people understand the potential that Southeast Asia has. So that's one part of the mission, telling the story of Southeast Asia.

And the other part of the story came about, our mission came about as a result of our work. When we were going around the region and trying to understand what's going on in Blavitt's

in Southeast Asia, we realized they were asking us questions about, oh, what's going on in this other country? So you go to Thailand and they're keen to understand what's going on in manufacturing in Malaysia. You go to Vietnam and they're trying to understand the same. You go to Philippines and like, oh, how do we build our AI innovation? How did Singapore get there? So we kept getting questions like this. So the other part of our mission is to help Southeast Asia

Asia understand itself and how to lean into some of its comparative advantages in order to realize its potential. So just before we get to the main subject of the day, I want to ask you from your career journey, what are the lessons you can share with my audience?

Sure. There's a lot that I've learned in my life. I started out in my career thinking that, you know, do your job, do your job well, and it will speak for itself. And then over time, I realized actually, if I reflect on my journey, where I've grown the most is when I had people backing me up, people seeing the potential in me more than I saw the potential in myself.

So if there's any advice I would give your listeners or anyone out there,

It would be to find people who believe in you, people who can help you grow. So I currently work with Charles Ormiston, Charlie at Beyond Standard Counsel, who chairs our trustee. I work with Ping, whom a lot of your listeners would be very familiar with. And there are people who stretch me in different ways. Like my one-on-ones with Ping brings me into this like new pole of philosophical discussion, understanding things.

technology and its real implications and like him challenging me to think about things in different ways and we're very different people it's almost like a chicken and a duck having a conversation and that has helped me grow a lot and so my advice to everyone is like

You know, the common saying, you are the sum of the five people you're closest to. Think about that in your career also. And especially if you're a startup founder, because I know there's a lot of startup founders who listen to your podcast also. Sometimes you feel very lonely. So find others who can be your sounding board, your listening ear, people who help you see things in a different perspective. Where I've grown the most in my career is when I had these people in my life.

- That's a pretty interesting thing about the average of five. I actually tell that to my kids most of the time, because I think you are the average of the five, and then you have to go have someone that's in the top so that you can look up to and get better. And then you also have friends that you can communicate with and get your support, all that. So that comes to the main subject of the day. We're gonna talk about Southeast Asia's outlook between 2024 today. I think we're getting into 2025 in less than two weeks.

and navigating all the high winds that's going on. And Gunas, it's perfect that you are here because I'm hearing two very different narratives. Of course, I think you probably, I'm alluding to the recent Lightspeed report and then also the Google, Temasek and Bain's

Annual Economy Report. So I think before we get to there, maybe I should first ask you what inspired the creation of the Southeast Asia Outlook 2024 to 2034 report? And I guess what are the key takeaways you want readers to understand about Southeast Asia's future trajectory?

Yeah, I love the economy report and I know you had them also on your podcast and I see our report as complementary to what they also dig into, right? We probably sit in a more macro space. So we provide more of the contextual underpinning and they go deeper into the digital economy space and reading their report, there are separate teams working on it, even though we have been on both reports.

But when I read the report, it was interesting that two different themes also came to the same point of like, you know, some of the themes around strengthening capital markets and things like that. And the huge potential that the digital economy presents to the ecosystem, particularly for Southeast Asia. Now, coming back to your question, what inspired this report? This is actually our second report between our Insana Council and Bain, but it's the first one as a tri-partite team with DBS coming on board.

So when we came together and the three partners were decided, and everyone's doing it pro bono, it's a voluntary collaboration. We came together and we said, okay, how do we make something meaningful? There's loads of reports out there, particularly in macroeconomics, right? Like IMF pushes things out, various WF pushes things out, various folks have their data sets and they push a lot of this out already.

What can be different? What's our value at here? So that was the first question we started off with. And the second question we asked ourselves was, the three of us are very different beasts. We have a consultancy, we have an institutional bank, and then we have a not-for-profit outfit. How do we leverage that, right? And bring together our insights in a way that is holistic and makes sense. And I think...

We went through a few iterations. At one point in time, we had like over 100 slides. I was like, this was like three PhDs. We each can get another doctorate. But we then sat down and said, okay, first thing we need to do is leveraging on our expertise. Can we help contextualize Southeast Asian growth?

Because between the vast expertise that Charlie brought as a result of him having worked in the region very deeply with various businesses, he's seen that trajectory. With the Uncensored Council, our trustees, our network of members who straddle the public and private sectors, likewise, right, we've seen policy changes, we've seen businesses come and leave, etc. And

And then with DBS and their research team, we have that ability to then do this modeling that we weren't able to do in our first report. So we blended all three together and brought about the context within which we can understand fertilization growth. We then said, everyone's going to do a six-month forecast, two-year forecast. Let's go out on a limb and do a 10-year forecast. Because

Because for a lot of governments, for a lot of businesses, having longer term forecasting can help them in terms of longitudinal planning, which is missing now because you're hacking away at a six month, one year KPI. And then we also said, okay, particularly leveraging on some of the expertise that Amsana Council has being closer to the ground.

How do we think about key opportunities? And then this is also where Bain was like, okay, when I'm looking at the bigger businesses, here's some areas that we're seeing a lot of investments go into. And so we brought together the five key emerging areas of opportunities that countries, businesses can lean into further to accelerate the growth.

So those form the three broad parameters of the report itself. There were a lot of other things that we wanted to include. And then typical of any research, you have way too much and then you throw things out the window. Hopefully in future reports, we bring it back in.

Totally, right? But I think one interesting part, which I also gather from also the economy team was that putting such a report together with three different institutions is an extremely difficult task because you have to take three perspectives and then, as you said, group together and have three different all those of it. But maybe help me understand over the past 30 years, where

where Southeast Asia has actually demonstrated pretty much economic resilience. I think I'll think about when I was growing up, that was 1997's Asian crisis. And then subsequently, we have also the Great Financial Crisis. What were the most critical factors that drive stable growth across the region during this period? I'm going to take the question a step back and kind of challenge the hypothesis in first instance, right? I think yes and no, we've had good growth.

But it wasn't the best period of growth for us. And I think we were, we're the same generation. And, you know, a lot of folks listening to this podcast may be of our generation and younger. So we don't remember the 80s because we were toddling around in diapers or not even born yet. But those years, you know, sometimes we saw double digit growth in some countries in the region.

So I would say in the last 30 years, we had modest growth. Relative to other emerging markets, we did okay. We had stable growth. I would reflect it as that. So it wasn't a very steep uphill climb, but we had stable growth. We also had periods of instability that I think the most recent one, of course, is COVID. Some countries have shown stability.

outright recovery from it particularly Vietnam in our report itself we in some of the first few slides we show the GDP trajectory and Vietnam's Vietnam's recovery is on par with China and India but for the rest of Southeast Asia six the recovery is tapered some did better than others some are still recovering so I would say that in the last 30 years it's been up and down

What has been happening is steady growth. You do see wealth rising. So I think anecdotally, we all experience that standard of living is improving for your average Southeast Asian. So that's healthy. With the exception of Myanmar, the region itself is relatively peaceful. And that is fundamental for growth. So I would reflect on that. And I think alluding to that, the key factors that we see here is

Most of the government in Southeast Asia is relatively stable. So I take this with a huge pinch of salt because we've got countries where it got recent upheavals. We worry about the retreat of democracy and stuff like that. But relatively, there's stable governance. Can it be improved? Yes, we can definitely improve on the strength of governance within Southeast Asia. People's skill sets are also improving and that has helped big growth.

but also the contextual environment. For the longest time, Southeast Asia was seen as an area or region which could balance between the East and the West quite well. As we go through the rest of the report, I'll talk about this more, how we benefit from some of the vagaries of geopolitics and how

As a result of that, we've been able to attract FDI in key sectors, particularly manufacturing. So that has laid a foundation for strong manufacturing growth. I think this marriage of having strong fundamentals, governance, infrastructure, good talent,

together with the receptiveness of drawing in FDI and talent is the core ingredient for why we have seen stable growth. But there is also varying, I guess, development maturity within the Southeast Asia countries. I mean, you can think of, you can compare Singapore, say, to a city in the United States, say, a first-tier city. You can think about...

Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines and Vietnam as basically emerging markets and the rest of it, maybe sometimes frontier markets. And sorry, I missed Thailand as well as also emerging market. Singapore's growth is actually tends to be slower. I think with some also again, Malaysia and Thailand, and then as compared to Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines, which I think some VCs now call it the VIP market. What are the structural challenges?

these countries face in achieving higher growth then? Yeah, I mean, okay, let's talk about Singapore first, right? It's already at such a level of maturity. It's an advanced economy. So, you know, to expect higher growth rate is very challenging because of the level at which its economy is at.

Key structural challenge for Singapore is, you know, I think Elon Musk recently tweeted about it. He's like, Singapore is going to be extinct soon. And he's referring to our low fertility rate. I don't agree with him. I think we continue to be an attractive environment for talent. So even if domestically we're not replacing ourselves, I think you have done a good job in replacing yourself.

meeting the replacement rate, I'm just about there. We do attract a lot of talent, right? Then the challenge is slightly different. It's about more on the social side of things, sociocultural side of things, how do you maintain a Singaporean, et cetera. But we're not like some other countries where they're facing a demographic gap and it's

they're not able to attract talent in the same way. In the region itself, Thailand, for example, is struggling with that. So previously, Thailand has been able to attract talent, but now it's been more challenging for them to do so. Talent coming into the region, look at other countries like Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, etc. So that's one key challenge. A very significant one across Southeast Asia, particularly for Singapore and Thailand, would be demographic.

Then other than that, you know, it would be things like costs. Costs and resource constraints. Again, you see this pretty clearly in Singapore and Thailand in terms of rising construction costs, rising energy costs, etc. So coming to locate big manufacturing bases, etc. here does become difficult. Having said that though, even looking at these countries...

People are still coming and investing in Singapore and Thailand. Why? Because fundamentally, they believe that the money they put in will not disappear. The money they put in will bring about some returns. And this is because they trust the ecosystem. They trust the government policy. They trust the infrastructure development. And the rule of law.

And the rule of law, I think particularly in tech also, you know, issues of data, cybersecurity, we have a solid infrastructure here. So it's interesting, right? It's almost counterintuitive. You will always think, oh, let's build a plant where labor is cheaper, where manufacturing costs are lower. But actually, fundamentally, we see money still being pumped to where there is faith in the ecosystem. There's faith that the incentives, the policy, the tax breaks,

will be put in place and will be seen through. So even for countries like Indonesia and all, when we launched this report, we were challenged on our forecast for Indonesia. Shouldn't it be higher? But one of the key things we were uncertain about for Indonesia, even though the demographics would be healthy, etc., is the ability to see through policies.

and not pull back. And some of the measures that veer towards protectionism, things like downstreaming in various core sectors, significant barriers to further investment into the country. So it's a balance between the two, and you will see different levels of patchiness. I think Vietnam should continue on a good growth trajectory because it has solid fundamentals.

good comparative advantages, primarily given its proximity to China that it had benefited from, a strong manufacturing base. But again, it goes down to its people. When you look at Vietnam, it has the highest female participation in labor rate,

across Southeast Asia and also one of the top in the world. It has very high education levels, particularly in STEM, as ended the historical thing for Vietnam that they're now reaping the benefits of. It's also very interesting, something that's not in the report, but I've seen as we did our research and we were digging deeper into this, where as Vietnam got richer, where do you think Vietnamese tended to put the excess money into?

Just hazard a guess. You would know, I think. You understand the region quite well. Real estate. No, actually, a lot of them tended to put more into education. They're already, you know, highly educated, but they go and look to upskill themselves. Yeah. They go and... Yeah. Yeah, so I...

In my last company, so we helped set up a team in Vietnam. And then during my corporate roles with Airbus, even with AWS, Vietnam is a pretty interesting region. I think there were a couple of other factors as well. There's a lot of Silicon Valley founders who are from Vietnam who did very well. I think Uber's former CTO was excellent.

or I think maybe now the CTO, he was instrumental in bringing a lot of talent across. And I think they have probably what I call the critical mass population.

Whereas I think Singapore, Malaysia, it's stronger a lot. If you think about population growth to have a reasonable size that can match, say, a Japan-Korea situation, in East Asia, it was probably 120 male, if I were to take that. I think these are some of the factors. But I guess the question, is it just mainly the STEM that we can learn from their success, or is that something else that we haven't seen yet?

or just a multitude of factors? It's always going to be a multitude of factors, right? And I know people always ask us this question, like, what can I learn from that country? People ask us about this from the report also, especially when we're talking to policymakers or what should I learn from Malaysia? The thing to learn is to not learn to replicate exactly.

But the thing to learn is what are the principles behind what works for them. So for Vietnam, what are your comparative advantages? Every country needs to be asking that for themselves. So for Vietnam, comparative advantages are things like proximity to China and ability at a geopolitical level to navigate between the US and China. They do this

pretty delicately given their history with both countries. There's an acquiescence by the major powers also to not force Vietnam to take sides. So it's a delicate balancing game that ASEAN always plays and Vietnam is at the heart of this also. And then it's the infrastructure development.

It is able to build very quickly in the same way that probably not as quick as China, but pretty similar to these rapid productivity levels that you see in China. They can build a manufacturing plant, they can service it well and pretty quickly. So those are things that the Vietnamese can do well and they lean into. Am I going to say Philippines, please replicate that concept?

No, not necessarily. So I'm going to lean into like, okay, what are your comparative advantages?

So that's the operating principle that we're hoping people get from the report. And not so much, let's copy and paste. And also don't copy and paste what's worked from the past because context also change. So lean into your comparative advantages, recognize what is your position within the geopolitical contextual landscape, where you sit and how you can play that. So Vietnam is also interesting that way because it balances East and West.

But it also has a diverse pool of FBI inflow. So the Japanese invest quite heavily in Vietnam also. So it's not just China. If you go to Da Nang, it's a Korean town. Because Samsung has a pretty big factory. In fact, I find more Korean restaurants than Vietnamese restaurants in Da Nang. For those who don't really know the region. I mean, think about Philippines. You think about business process outsourcing. You think about customer service.

and people that are working from late midnight after your senior executives in midnight to 6am for business

as such. So I think this is some of these quirks, things that I think people don't realize about the region. Yeah. And the interesting thing about Philippines, again, it goes back to the heart of what we were talking about, comparative advantages. In the Philippines, you have a large English speaking population. A lot of big tech is US based and US focused and their ability to speak American English helps.

their ability to communicate well and deliver services well, that's the comparative advantage of Filipinos in the services sector. And they're leaning into it and they should continue to lean into it and try and move up the value added layer of services. So I think

Given, I think, the recent spate of reports, and I think I alluded to that earlier, there are some different parties believe different things. So some say that the Southeast Asia region is an illusion, a mirage, and does not work. They would prefer the emerging startups to just stay within their respective economies. They don't need to build a unicorns, just build a centaur will do something above 100 mil.

I think I don't want to compare reports here. I think this is definitely not healthy and it definitely doesn't help the situation. What are your perspectives on the region given you see this? I mean, I can just, in my opinion, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but I don't know where the middle is. Yeah, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but also the answer lies in what kind of startup are you? All right, what are you solving for? I'm going to break this down into two.

If I think of a startup and if I were to set up a startup tomorrow, I would think about it as where do I build and where do I sell?

Where do I build? If I only think about a single country play, that's silly. That's really silly. Southeast Asia, to me, when I look at it, it's a microcosm of the world. It has different types of economies. There are different types of population and communities within one region. Within one, actually, it's not even a region, it's a sub-region. How do you leverage that? And you see our startups doing that, right? I think there's an ASEAN study that was digging into...

that more than 60% of the 100 startups they surveyed are operated in more than two countries. Not necessarily to sell, but operate meaning to build where they have operations and business processes. I know a lot of startups, they...

When you also look at our macroeconomic indicators, ease of doing business in Singapore is the highest. So most of them are registering in Singapore because it gives you legal protections. It gives you licenses that are recognized. It gives you that infrastructure around it that protects your rights and your business entity.

that I'd build maybe somewhere else. You and I were talking about Vietnam just before this, and there are great deaf teams out there, world-class deaf teams out there. Part of it is as a result of there being a huge STEM community, but you also alluded to the fact that these countries, within Southeast Asia, we also have underestimated the role of diaspora communities that link up global markets,

to countries within the region. And we see that a lot of our startup founders

are able to navigate cross-cultural nuances, different markets quite well because they are quite comfortable leaning into their diaspora lineage, their communities located in different parts of the world. Likewise, we see a lot of people coming into Southeast Asia as a result of some of these diaspora connections. So to me, it doesn't make sense to build only in one country in Southeast Asia. You should...

lean into where the advantages are. And the region increasingly allows you to do that. I think some of the initiatives that ASEAN is trying to put forth, various countries are trying to put forth in recognizing business licenses, cross-border data flow. We need to speed up in some of that. Malaysia is chairing ASEAN next year. And I know the digital master plan has some being baked into what the Business Advisory Council wants to propose that ASEAN see through. So that's going to help.

Yeah, go ahead. I think the digital infrastructure side is actually moving in that direction, right? You can see now AWS have regions not just in Singapore anymore. There's Malaysia, Indonesia launched already, and then Vietnam, Thailand is coming up, the Philippines probably as well. So there's one line that the digital infrastructure, while you can actually scale across these different economies pretty easily. What is the one thing you know about Southeast Asia that very few do?

Yeah, this one is a bit difficult because you have a lot of startup founders and people from within tech. So maybe they know this too, but having worked in various big tech companies and having witnessed firsthand the different responsiveness to tech, what people don't know is within Southeast Asia, we have communities which are most receptive to new technology. Whenever we used to roll out a feature or product,

Some of where we track where people are using and trying out these new features, you get the Philippines ranking quite high, you get Indonesia ranking quite high. And even things like crypto and stuff like that, a lot of people don't know there's a huge mining community in Sarawak, for example. I remember I had an intern, she was Vietnamese and she was

in Oxford. And she said, people still talk to me like I'm supposed to be hiding in mountains and the Vietnam War is still ongoing. So people look at Southeast Asia, their mental image is still that. But actually, I've seen both sides of it. The uptake of new technology, but also the abuse of new technology in very creative ways. It is rife in Southeast Asia, but fundamental is this

receptiveness to like, oh, this is something new, let me try. It's not like that in a lot of other markets. Yeah, and some American senators pretending that Singapore is still in China, but actually they visited Singapore, and I shall not name who, which actually couldn't even distinguish whether the TikTok CEO is from China or from Singapore. But coming back, which gets to my next point, right? Because given China's rising leadership and

in influence in the region. And you probably see a lot of mainland Chinese founders and these are ex-Tencent, NetEase, Alibaba founders coming into the region and starting up their companies. And also the new outcoming second Trump administration in the US. What are the challenges and opportunities that might affect Southeast Asia too? Let's just go for short and medium term. Okay. I think short term, we have been benefiting from China plus one.

And when you talk about China plus one, there's a lot of literature out there already on how various companies, various businesses diversifying their supply chain so that it reduces dependency. And this is independent of geopolitics. I think a lot of it also was learned during COVID when markets started to clamp down and it was hard to access certain supply chains depending on which market.

markets were shut. So diversification necessarily was a good thing so that you have alternative supply chains. So that's one thing.

The other thing would be even Chinese businesses, as you mentioned just now, is thinking about hedging. How do I hedge against expected rises in tariffs, not just from the US, but also from the EU? It's interesting when we launch a report, we often get questions from Western audience or Western base audience, like, are you not scared of China or Chinese overcapacity flooding your markets and things like that? I think what...

people don't understand, people a bit further away from this part of the world don't understand is China is a reality for us. It's our neighbor.

A lot of our communities have direct lineage with communities in China. So we don't see it as a zero-sum game. It's like a family member that you have to deal with. Christmas is coming, Lunar New Year is coming. It's like that uncle you need to see and you need to figure out and deal with. And we've been doing that for years.

And then we've got this visiting cousin called the US who comes and visit Old Store and brings their cultural values. And like, how do you guys live like that? And we balance between the two. And we've been doing that for the longest time. So China to us brings opportunities. And...

In our report, and sometimes when we talk about the report, one of the areas we see some of the opportunities afforded by China is its investment into the region. I think the report points to the fact that increasingly China is becoming a key investor in the region. It doesn't just invest in terms of FDI, but also in domestic capital formation, so infrastructure development and things like that. Hmm.

I want to ask this. You look at China's ultra-competitive manufacturing and innovation, also subsidized by government. And this has contributed to what we call premature deindustrialization in developing countries. And we don't need to name them. That's the EU and the U.S. This will include some of Southeast Asia. I think we're living in this like two worlds together at the same time. How do you think with China even transitioning now becoming our largest investor in the region, maybe with the U.S.?

how should we think about the relationship as a region? And how do we think is the best way to navigate in? I would say this is a pretty interesting time, but everybody thinks it's a bad time. I think it's an interesting time. And I think for us, as a region, we shouldn't be too scared. We've always been living in interesting time. For us, it's always interesting. Somebody...

Samoyed is telling us which guide to take and which investment to take and things like that. It's always been ongoing. I think what is challenging in this geopolitical landscape is

We as a region, we're highly dependent on external trade, more so than some other regions, right? In the report itself, we do break that down. I think external trade make up to 89% of our GDP contributions or impact up to 89%. So we need to be highly cognizant of overall trade. If there's a global contraction in trade, now we're going to necessarily suffer regardless of what we do, right? We

We can hedge against some of it by drawing closer regionally. So I think in our report, we do talk about some international trade agreements like ASET bringing down tariff barriers within the region and some of these efforts at the regional level to bring the economies closer and reduce tariff barriers, reduce cross-border flow and things like that will help. How do you think the region should navigate this evolving relationship?

Yes. So, yeah, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I think Charlie, who's one of the lead authors on this report, he said this best. So I'm going to just steal from him. He says...

Think about it as how can you complement what China has an advantage in or is doing. And he uses this great example in green technology because we know there's Chinese overcapacity right now in a lot of green tech, particularly say, for example, solar panels, right? So you're not going to say, I'm going to compete by building a solar panel plant in Vietnam or in Philippines, etc. But I'm going to think about how do I use this

overcapacity that's available in China to buy it cheap and install in, say, for example, a factory or install a solar panel farm in the Philippines.

In the data centers that we're building out of various countries in Thailand and in Malaysia, how can we use that? How can we lean into that and build that? How can we use also Chinese capital to say, hey, we've got this infrastructure project. Do you want to come and invest in that? And, you know, we're also going to buy the solar panels from China. How do we use some of their excess capital? So lean into the things which...

are complementary to what they have. Don't compete with them. And so it's a win-win situation for them and for us. They need to sell to someone. They've got way too much. The EU is clamping down. The US is clamping down. We can be an open market and it helps us

diversify our energy supply that then helps us with other things like balancing out our balance of payments because given expectation of greater conflict energy sources are going to be more unstable in the future that's one thing i expect can we diversify our energy sources can we ensure that around we don't have to overhaul all of our energy grids but around key infrastructure

So I use the example of data centers. Can we tap into this? Because it's also one area where a lot of countries are facing challenges. It's forcing up energy prices. It's drawing energy from residential use. We use some of this. So we need to think a bit more creatively, but approach it in complementary rather than thinking about it from an adversarial point of view. That's what we recommend in our report.

So the message I think you're trying to get at is that just try to move with the wave. It's the same even with the US. If I want to reverse the situation, right, they are leading in the AI foundational models. And we're currently exiting between two countries with their own foundational models and trying to work out what's best for us.

using that technology from their point of view. Now, I'm going to go with a very quick fire round questions. Well, actually, the first thing I wanted to ask is what's the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Southeast Asia? I guess this one is, okay, so I'm a historian by training. So I would love people to ask me who are Southeast Asians. Okay, why did I ask you? Yeah, you know, because everywhere I go, people are like, oh, you're Indian. I'm like, I'm Singaporean. And then they like get really confused.

I'm not sure you get that too. You know, do people ask you your Chinese and then you say, I'm Singaporean, ethnically Chinese. And then they get really confused. I can't put you in a box. My life is... But if you understand...

are Southeast Asians, you will understand the porousness of Southeast Asia and you will then appreciate why we shouldn't be so scared of what is going on in the world right now. Because we've always been a region that is porous, that is open and exposed to the world out there, that always had China as a reality up north and the west as

around us coming in, coming out. That's always been our historical trajectory. A lot of our countries, except for one, had some sort of American border or bordered some sort of sea mass. We're very used to going up and down. We're very used to communities intermingling. I mean,

In Singapore itself, you know, when you speak to a lot of Singaporeans, they can still tell you, oh yeah, my grandparent was from this part of China or was Boyanese or Achenese or I have Middle Eastern heritage. You know, a lot of Middle Easterners also came in and based themselves out of Southeast Asia. So,

I wish people would ask me who are Southeast Asians because they will realize we're a confusing mix. And Southeast Asians will realize actually we're cosmopolitan from the get-go, from the minute we have realized that Southeast Asia were actually cosmopolitan. We shouldn't be scared of this. We should lean into it. And at the political level, we've always been leaning into that. And at the business level, you also see that. These are our advantages that will help us succeed

in times of, you know, turbulence. I mean, we're all going to suffer if international trade contracts, but that is everyone's suffering. But can we suffer less? If we lean into some of these things that give us confidence, I think we can.

When you talk about that porous plank, historically, a lot of people don't really know about Southeast Asia. There's a lot of Indian empires that actually have cultural influences into Southeast Asia. You think of the Angkor Wat, Java. I recently listened to this podcast called Empire and they talked about

about the entire movement of how the Indian Empire expand to Southeast Asia and all the cultural influence. And I think a lot of people don't realize that the region itself has this history of being in the crossroads of several different major nations, India, China, now the US. You have pointed it out. I just wanted to ask this very quick one. What has changed your mind in the past 12 months?

anything that actually that made you revisit how you've been thinking about what you're doing? So, you know, my husband and I, we're sort of polar opposites in terms of how we think about sources of information. And so, like, for the longest time, we're also fans of, like, MMA. We do martial arts and stuff like that. So,

Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, all these guys, they all have podcasts. And my husband tunes in and he listens and he takes some and he throws some away. And I'm always like, you know, oh, I would never listen to those people. You know, you associate them with certain things. And with everything that's gone on for the second time now around the US elections, I now I'm making a conscious effort to diversify my sources of information because I

for the second time, everyone got it wrong again, right? If you look at mainstream media, everyone got it wrong again. But then because I knew there were all these alternative sources of information and they were saying a different thing as a result of my conversations with my husband, then I started to tune into like the Joe Rogan podcast with Trump, etc. I realized the world is very different from everybody's reality is very different.

For me personally, particularly as someone who's steeped in policy, you're making policy, you're advocating for policies that impact many different types of people.

You need to break your perception of what is the common man as much as possible. You need to diversify that. And for me, reflecting back on this whole period, I take a step back and I say, now I need to diversify my sources of information. I need to move away. Like it was really nerve wracking for me. I was on a few panels talking about US elections and stuff like that. And I,

From an outsider perspective, from a non-American perspective. And it was uncomfortable for me to even say in those circles that I don't think it's a given Kamala Harris would have won. Because everyone around me was sort of, especially I think in the, you know, expat community and all, everyone was pretty lewd.

Everyone is pretty Democrat. And I was like, I don't think it's as much of a given. And then when you hear some of these podcasts, they're all the way, I don't even think why Kamala Harris is in the running. Why would anyone think they're in the running? So it's very interesting sources of information. And it's made me really think about, again, for the second time in my life, how do I figure out what reality is when I can't rely on media? I can't rely on some of these sources of information. How do I piece together information

I don't believe in there being the truth and we can go into a philosophical rabbit hole. That's a Marshall McLuhan's book on that. But at least, you know, a semblance of what reality is. And is there even such a thing? So I'm now in that space. Yeah. I always just look at, listen to both sources and then make up my mind which one is correct or wrong. Yeah, but then I ask myself, is that enough? Is there only two sides, you know? No, I think,

I don't think there are two sides. I think there is this multitude of sides that you see. But I think the problem with people is that they don't see nuances. They only see the black and white and they just want something that they can pin on. But a lot of things comes with nuances. And I think that's a harder part of that. So I'm going to get to my traditional closing question. What does great look like for you for the Southeast Asian region? Oh,

I was dreading this question. To a certain extent, I was like, are we in great already? Or should we expect greater? I think for me personally, we're in a good space. And great is an addition to that, which would be that more people are enjoying wealth.

more people have access to quality education, quality healthcare, no kid go to bed hungry. That's great for me. And I think in Southeast Asia, we can realize that pretty soon if we get our act together.

I'm idealistic in that sense that I think it's possible. I talk to the younger generation and they're very all doom and gloom about climate change and stuff like that. I think I am inherently an optimist in humanity. I think we have technology, we have resources where we can think about how to make it sustainable and better. So as long as everyone doesn't go to bed hungry...

100% agree with you. I think there was a time, I remember in the 1980s, everybody talked about the ozone crisis. It was solved by technology. So I really don't, I actually, I'm on the side of technology solving climate change, have a higher chance than a climate activist.

Yes, I agree. But I think we should, while we're waiting for that tech, we should make sure that we don't make it so bad that we can't reverse it. True. I agree with you on that. Definitely. So many thanks, Gunas, for coming on the show. I just have two last questions to ask. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Okay, can we do a fun one? I was going to do a serious one. I was watching Inside Out 2 with my kids. And for me, that is...

The introduction of anxiety, fear, shyness. It's a good reflection, even for adults to sit with difficult emotions and to process that. And also it was nice, right? It was a good way, something to enjoy with your family, but a good way to sort of recognize and appreciate what's going on. And there's a time and place for different types of emotion.

And to not just like push that aside. I think like as adults, as overachieving people, we tend to like, oh, this is uncomfortable, but I should just power through it, you know, and not process it. And then it comes back over and over again. And I think... Then I should add Wow Robot to your list as well. Oh, I watched your day. I watched and cried. Okay. So that's a very, very good to teach about actually living in different communities and dealing with... Yeah. Like I think it's a very good allegory to immigration. Yeah.

But also the role of technology. Yeah. So my actual other one is a book I'm reading, Power and Struggle. I've been reading it the whole year. Oh. Because I'm very slow. And it really goes through history and different points of technological development. And the trajectory and outcome of technology is not given.

I think, you know, the world sort of is divided between people who are very pro-tech and think anything that tech does is good. But there's also a bunch of people who like anything that tech does is bad and we're all going to be doom and gloom. But actually, what the book shows me was the intentionality is important. You can't just put...

tech out there you need to put tech out there with an intention and sort of like a framework around it and I think it's very timely for people to read this book because of all the developments in AI and the speed at which it's going and how to think about it meaningfully how did my audience find you I'm on LinkedIn if

If you spell my name correctly, I'm the only one with that name there. So you can always find me there. But please also read the report. You know, it's on our LinkedIn page. So the Amsana Council also has a LinkedIn page. You can also find us there. It's a label of love. And every time people reach out and say, hey, I really found this report meaningful. It makes all the blood, sweat and tears. And there were blood, sweat and tears involved.

And that's all we ask for. If this report is meaningful to others, that's our job done. I think we are at the end of the year closing. And of course, for everyone, please go and download the report and you'll have a few days you can look at it as well. And I'll definitely put all the links up. Definitely can find the podcast everywhere, including YouTube and Spotify. And of course, subscribe to us on our newsletter. Once again, Gunas, I think I'll definitely get you back on the show. I think we can talk a lot about history too. Yeah.

About the region. Yeah, and go down the philosophical rabbit hole. Yeah, I think that would be fun. So many thanks for coming on the show. And of course to everyone, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Goodness, same to you too. And let's continue the chat. Happy holidays and thank you for having me.