REPORT: Asia-Pacific is at a Crossroads

The Region’s Digital Platform Regulation Choices Will Shape the Future of the Digital Economy for Startups and Small Tech Innovators

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) released a new analysis of the state of digital platform regulation in the Asia-Pacific region. The analysis highlights trends in policy making, forecasts the near-term impacts, and makes recommendations for improving the policy environment to drive growth in startups and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

With some of the fastest-growing digital economies in the world, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has become one of the most consequential arenas in the global digital policy debates surrounding emerging technology markets and curated online marketplaces (COMs), including digital platforms. The region’s internet economy was projected to exceed $300 billion USD in 2025, up from $200 billion USD in 2023, by the Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute (SEAPPI).

“Startups and MSMEs are the engines that drive the global app economy,” said Morgan Reed, president of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). “Ninety-eight percent of all businesses in the APAC region are MSMEs. Discriminatory online platform regulations threaten to limit competition, reduce consumer choice, and stifle innovation. A pro-innovation, risk-based policy environment could supercharge economic growth and put the APAC region at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution.”

The APAC region is not a uniform policy landscape, and it should not be treated as one. The analysis documents policy across 11 jurisdictions. Beyond a general trend toward digital regulation, it finds a region in the middle of choosing, in real time, whether it will build a digital economy on evidence or on borrowed frameworks it did not design. As of July 2026, APAC digital competition governance frameworks present four distinct risk profiles:

1. Those that have moved into active enforcement of ex-ante styled rules or approaches with a preexisting, sustained enforcement focus that tends to single out foreign—especially U.S.-based—firms (very high-risk level)
2. Those that have moved into active enforcement of ex-ante styled rules or approaches without the backdrop of sustained targeting of certain foreign entities (high risk level)
3. Those that are advancing legislation, but have not yet enacted it (medium risk level)
4. Those where geopolitical and trade pressures have constrained the most aggressive proposals (low risk level)

No two countries present the same picture, and the Republic of Korea stands alone at the very high-risk level.

The costs of poor choices are already materializing:

• The Republic of Korea’s smaller sellers are navigating the chilling effects of compounding enforcement uncertainty.
• Vietnam’s developers face a compliance architecture built for platforms at vastly greater scale than their businesses will ever reach.
• Australia’s startup community is absorbing the early tremors of a litigation and legislative environment whose final shape remains undecided.

The evidence does not counsel regulatory passivity. ACT offers the following principles to help APAC governments pursue genuine competition while preserving the platform functions that startups and MSMEs depend on:

1. Begin with evidence of actual harm rather than presumed harm.
2. Use existing competition law before building an ex-ante
3. Tie any enforcement targeting to genuine market power and durable gatekeeper characteristics.
4. Preserve the platform functions that small developers cannot replicate on their own.
5. Protect the inter-platform competition that gives startups and MSMEs their leverage.
6. Proceed deliberately and proportionately and resist mission creep.

Read the full brief, including profiles of each of the eleven countries: https://acttest2016stg.wpenginepowered.com/asia-pacific-at-the-crossroads/

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About the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT):
ACT is a global technology trade association representing startups and small technology businesses. We work directly with our members worldwide to advocate for a policy environment that takes into account their real-world challenges and supports innovation, access to capital, job creation, and the ability of small technology companies to grow and compete globally.