Guanie LimAssociate Professor

For decades, industrial policy was discouraged in developing economies, even as China’s state-led model reshaped global supply chains. Now, with the US and Europe embracing massive interventions, the old orthodoxy looks less like principle than self-interest. Academic Guanie Lim examines how the discourse on industrial policy has shifted. This picture shows robot arms working at the production workshop of a mould and stamping company in Fuzhou, in China’s eastern Fujian province, on 16 April 2026.

Looking at Chinese investment in Southeast Asia, Soon Cheong Poon and Guanie Lim find that the impact of investment depends on how it is governed. Southeast Asian governments can and have pushed back against negative spillovers. But it remains to be seen if they can band together regionally to handle the next waves of investment. Nickel matte processing activities at Vale Indonesia’s refining facility in Sorowako, South Sulawesi.

Despite ambitious plans, deep pockets and expanding ties with China, neither Kazakhstan nor Thailand has achieved sustained structural transformation. Academic Guanie Lim analyses what went wrong. An employee walks past stacked cargo containers at the terminal of the railway station of Dostyk at the Kazakh-Chinese border, a key hub for trade between China and Europe through Central Asia, on 19 November 2025.