For many Chinese companies, Southeast Asia is no longer just a nearby export market; it's the testing ground for global expansion. As growth slows at home and geopolitical risks rise abroad, Chinese firms are increasingly turning to ASEAN for new customers, resources, manufacturing platforms, and strategic opportunities. Yet success in the region requires far more than competitive products or manufacturing scale.

Drawing on international business theory and practical examples, CEIBS Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Daniel Chng explores why ASEAN has become strategically indispensable to Chinese globalisation, and how Chinese firms can build lasting competitive advantage in one of the world's most dynamic yet complex regions.

This summer, Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, the latest retelling of Homer’s Ancient Greek epic, will premiere worldwide. On the IMAX screen, Odysseus struggles through storms on the Aegean, his fleet scattered and his companions lost one by one, while Ithaca, the homeland he expected to reach within months, shimmers on the horizon yet remains forever out of reach. Many young professionals leaving the cinema may recognise something of their own disorientation in his story

China's latest economic data presents a striking paradox. While industrial output and high-tech manufacturing continue to post solid gains, consumption remains subdued, investment has weakened, and net exports have lost momentum. How can production continue to grow when the economy's main demand drivers are faltering?

The 2026 FIFA World Cup final is just around the corner. The tournament's expansion from 32 to 48 teams this year offered more qualification opportunities than ever before, including for Asian teams. Yet China once again failed to qualify.

Europe’s latest heat wave is not simply a weather story. It is a story of human loss and mounting economic cost.

As the FIFA World Cup 2026 continues across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, global attention has once again turned to the business side of football. Although China has not qualified for the FIFA World Cup since 2002, its population remains one of the tournament's most important markets, and its companies some of its most high-profile sponsors.

On May 25, 2026, the Vatican released Magnifica Humanitas (“The Magnificence of Humanity”), the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV. Focusing on human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence, the document reflected growing global concerns about the social and ethical implications of increasingly powerful technologies. Standing beside the Pope during the announcement was Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic and one of the architects behind the Claude family of AI models.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup—hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico—approaches, global attention is once again turning to the intersection of sport, economics, and geopolitics. Beyond the excitement on the pitch, mega sporting events have become powerful platforms for national branding and soft power projection.

As global supply chains are reshaped and Chinese companies expand overseas at pace, demand for cross‑border renminbi (RMB) financing is rapidly rising. Trade and investment are now working together as a “dual engine,” turning the RMB into an increasingly important tool for supporting real economic activity beyond China’s borders.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving from experimental use cases to real-world deployment across healthcare systems worldwide, reshaping how care is delivered, how decisions are made, and how value is created across the healthcare value chain. Yet while technological progress continues to accelerate, the more difficult question is no longer what AI can do, but how healthcare systems can adopt it safely, responsibly, and effectively at scale.

Have you ever come across this familiar scenario in your organisation? Talented, sharp-minded employees gradually become difficult to manage. They question decisions, resist obedience, and challenge authority in meetings. Managers often privately complain that their star performers are capable, but too insubordinate.

On the morning of April 23, two announcements arrived from opposite ends of the technology industry's personality spectrum, and together they said something neither company intended to say alone.

For decades, annual performance reviews have been a defining feature of performance management in organisations. But as work becomes more dynamic and human-centred, are they still relevant?

As tensions escalate across the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East, the situation has become not only a regional security concern, but also a strategic test for China.

Tokens are the small units of text that AI models read and process; the building blocks of every request, question, or command we give to AI. In 2026, these tokens have become the invisible infrastructure of the AI economy. Whether autonomous agents like OpenClaw or large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, tokens are what AI ultimately runs on. For developers, they’re not just a pricing unit, but a proxy for capability: how well a model understands, remembers, and performs.

Insights drawn from a speech delivered by Joel Mokyr, recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and Robert H. Strotz Professor at Northwestern University, at CEIBS on March 27, entitled: “The Past and Future of Innovation: Can Progress be Sustained?”

In recent weeks, the open‑source, self-hosted AI agent OpenClaw has created huge waves in China, with users around the country racing to install it on their laptops and figure how to turn its exceptional task-executing abilities into increased efficiency at work.

Following the recent conclusion of China’s annual Two Sessions, what key signals did the latest Government Work Report convey for businesses navigating the country’s evolving policy landscape?