The battle for China’s backyard

From The Economist: We have two covers this week. In Asia we write about how the growing rivalry between America and China will hinge on South-East Asia. Although the region has no clear battle-lines, unlike cold-war Europe, which was divided into camps allied to the Soviet Union and the United States, that only makes the competition more complex. People across South-East Asia already see America and China as two poles, pulling their countries in opposite directions. This contest will become more fierce—both because of China’s need to secure access to raw materials and markets and because South-East Asia is ever more important in its own right. The region is home to 700m people, and its economy is big and growing rapidly. Prepare for a tug-of-war in China’s backyard. In the rest of the world we dissect a new turn in the global tech contest. The idea of the technology industry being dominated by monopolies is so widely held that it has monopolised much thinking, from investors’ strategies to antitrust watchdogs’ legal briefs. Yet it is becoming harder to sustain. In America digital markets are shifting towards oligopolies, in which second- and third-ranked firms compete vigorously against the incumbent. The big tech companies are wrestling over customers and standards: witness the confrontation between Apple and Facebook over who controls iPhone users’ privacy. And all across Asia digital conglomerates are battling it out. A more contested digital economy would be consequential—for markets, consumers and businesses alike. Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-In-Chief