BriefAsia tracks the stories moving across borders: money, supply chains, regulation, infrastructure and the people making Asia's next cycle.
We tracked 87 data-centre projects unveiled across the region in the first half of 2026 — the gigawatts, the dollars, the power they will need and the places that cannot supply it.
A 1,200-megawatt cross-border trade between Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore cleared its first commercial settlement this week, the largest yet on a regional grid that has spent two decades on paper.
From Colombo to Subic to a half-built terminal on the Gulf of Thailand, state-backed capital is racing to own the physical infrastructure of regional trade. A BriefAsia investigation traces the money, the leverage and the debt.
On the new express line from Hanoi to the Chinese border, a single overnight train carries the ambitions of a trade corridor a generation in the making — and the contradictions of a country trying to grow without being absorbed.
Five years in, the bloc's most boring clause — cumulative rules of origin — is quietly doing what tariff cuts never did: stitching ASEAN factories to one another instead of to China.
Grace Tan spent a decade inside regional banking watching cross-border payments fail. Her startup now settles them in seconds across six currencies — and the incumbents are calling.
A BriefAsia Studio Presents feature, produced for AWS ASEAN. The BriefAsia newsroom was not involved in writing or editing.
We pulled filings, planning permits, and grid-connection requests from seven jurisdictions. Here is what the spreadsheet actually says.
