How technology is helping ASEAN's smaller businesses

Over the weekend, leading AI companies were debating how quickly AI should advance. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for the development of frontier AI to be paced, while Microsoft has stressed the need to keep increasingly capable AI systems under human control.

For developing economies, the priority is to seize the opportunities created by AI. The technology can help raise productivity, create jobs and give smaller businesses new ways to grow. Malaysia therefore needs to keep building its digital capabilities and working with technology partners such as China.

The 23rd China-ASEAN Expo, scheduled for Sept 17-21, is one such opportunity. Among the technologies on display, what matters most to ASEAN businesses is what they can actually use — to cut costs, improve efficiency and find new customers.

Visitors to Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, will encounter an impressive range of AI technologies.

Their real value will be measured after the exhibition halls shut down. Can they help an ASEAN enterprise lower costs, make better decisions, reach new customers or complete a cross-border transaction more easily?

ASEAN is home to about 70 million micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, which contribute 85 percent of regional employment. Bringing them into the AI economy will determine whether AI produces broad-based prosperity or widens the distance between large, digitally mature companies and everyone else.

The challenge goes beyond providing MSMEs with more tools to make AI affordable, understandable and relevant to their daily problems. AI adoption must therefore begin with the business problem, not the technology.

In Malaysia, MDEC's Digital AgTech program supports the use of connected sensors, data analytics and AI to digitally empower the agriculture sector, in the process of improving agricultural productivity, incomes and resource use.

Our work on e-invoicing seeks to move businesses from paper-based processes toward seamless and interoperable transactions.

The technologies differ but the principle is the same: Successful adoption requires a pathway. Businesses need digital foundations, people with the skills to use the tools and access to finance. For a small enterprise, a modest tool that solves an immediate problem can be more transformative than the most sophisticated model.

One of these commitments illustrates the importance of pairing technology with capability-building.

A planned sovereign AI development center involving Baidu's strategic partner in Malaysia is expected to become the first Baidu-powered AI development center outside China. Besides creating more than 300 high-value digital jobs, the initiative is expected to train over 3,000 Malaysians through partnerships with universities and polytechnics.

This is where China and ASEAN can accomplish more together. China brings scale, strong technological capabilities and experience in turning digital innovation into widely used applications. ASEAN brings diverse markets, entrepreneurial energy and an enormous base of MSMEs seeking to grow. Joint development of local-language datasets and responsibly adapted models could make AI more useful in commerce, tourism, education and public services across Southeast Asia.

Malaysia is already seeing the potential of multilingual AI. Investment by Chinese enterprises, through their local arm Tsing Digital, will support the establishment of multilingual AI-powered customer experience hubs in Johor, Perak and central Malaysia and create more than 5,000 high-value jobs. It demonstrates how ASEAN's linguistic diversity can become an economic asset when AI is localized responsibly.

What's more, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 provides a timely framework because digital cooperation and MSME participation are central to the relationship.

Trust must develop alongside adoption. AI tools should be transparent about how data is used, secure by design and supported by clear accountability. Human judgment remains especially important where systems affect financing, employment or access to essential services.

Under the Malaysia Digital Action Plan 2030, Malaysia aims to raise the digital economy's contribution to 30 percent and create 500,000 high-value digital jobs as it advances toward becoming an AI Nation.

Reaching those targets is not simply about growing the technology sector. It is about digitizing the wider economy so that conventional businesses become more productive, workers gain higher-value capabilities and Malaysian products and services compete internationally.

When the exhibits are packed away in Nanning, the most meaningful measure of success will not be how advanced the technology appeared. It will be whether a farmer produced more with fewer resources, a manufacturer reduced waste and an entrepreneur completed a cross-border sale that previously seemed beyond reach.

That is how the enduring friendship finds new expression in the AI era: By turning shared technological progress into shared prosperity across China and ASEAN.

The author is the Chief Executive Officer of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, the agency under Malaysia's Ministry of Digital tasked with driving the country's digital economy and advancing its ambition to become an AI Nation by 2030.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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