Odd Lots · Saturday, June 27, 2026
Winston Chang noted that China possesses the best infrastructure at scale for data centers, but regulations limit accessibility. He suggested that redirecting data center development to more efficient jurisdictions, like Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia), Japan, and even Hong Kong, could mitigate inflationary effects. He also pointed out the potential for cost efficiencies in these emerging locations compared to higher-cost, regulated regions.
“Well, I think Asia tends to be a little bit more flexible from that perspective, but clearly the best infrastructure of scale is in China. Yeah, I think from that perspective, a lot of people, due to certain regulations and policies, cannot have data center. So you have a lot of idle resources today, whether it's power and data center therefore accessibility and also supply chain. Right, That's not that the world is spending additional money on in higher cost jurisdictions because of regulations that you cannot put it in China.”
“So the world ends up having some of the inflationary effects is because you're not actually using the most efficient place in the world that you can actually do things. But having said that, I think other countries are actually catching up very fast as well. So we're seeing even if the supply chain area slightly lower costs, but in terms of the data center aspect and where the power Southeast Asia has been very good, and I think what we're seeing in this part of the world clearly in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, I think those are natural places where people have really been looking into.”
“But having said that, I think other countries are actually catching up very fast as well. So we're seeing even if the supply chain area slightly lower costs, but in terms of the data center aspect and where the power Southeast Asia has been very good, and I think what we're seeing in this part of the world clearly in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, I think those are natural places where people have really been looking into.”