ASEAN vs. BRICS: Two Models Shaping the Next Global Economy
Southeast Asia and the emerging economies are taking different paths to greater global economic influence.
The global economy is becoming increasingly multipolar. As emerging economies gain greater weight in trade, investment, manufacturing, energy, and finance, groupings such as ASEAN and BRICS are becoming more important to the future of global economic governance.
But ASEAN and BRICS represent two very different models. ASEAN has built influence through regional integration and interconnected supply chains. Meanwhile, BRICS draws much of its weight from the enormous scale, markets, and resources of its members. Similar but not the same.
The question is therefore not simply which grouping is stronger. It is how these two different models are reshaping the global economy—and what ASEAN needs to do to ensure its economic influence continues to grow.
Key Facts
ASEAN represents a market of around 680 million people and approximately US$3.9 trillion in economic weight. It has also become a major global manufacturing, trade, and investment hub ASEAN Economic Community, 2026 ASEAN Investment Report 2025, 2025.
ASEAN’s economic model is based heavily on regional integration, trade facilitation, investment liberalisation, and interconnected production networks ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
BRICS brings together eleven major emerging economies representing around 49.5% of the global population, around 40% of global GDP, and approximately 26% of world trade BRICS 2025, 2025.
ASEAN benefits from geographic concentration, an expanding network of trade agreements and increasingly integrated regional supply chains ASEAN Investment Report 2023, 2023.
BRICS derives significant influence from the scale of its economies, large consumer markets, natural resources, energy production, commodity exports and financial potential BRICS 2025, 2025.
Both groupings reflect the growing importance of emerging economies and the Global South in global economic governance, trade, finance and development Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025.
ASEAN’s challenge is converting its regional economic importance into greater global influence through deeper integration, stronger connectivity and more coordinated external economic policies ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
Background
Post-Cold War period, the global economic system was dominated by a relatively small number of advanced economies. The United States, European Union, Japan and other developed economies played an outsized role in global trade, finance and investment.
That balance is changing.
China and India have become central players in global production, consumption and trade, while Southeast Asia has emerged as an important manufacturing and investment destination. At the same time, commodity-producing economies have acquired additional strategic significance as energy security, industrial inputs and supply-chain resilience become more important to governments and companies BRICS 2025, 2025 ASEAN Investment Report 2025, 2025. This has created greater space for regional and emerging-economy groupings to influence global economic rules, development finance, trade patterns, and investment flows. ASEAN and BRICS are two prominent examples, but their approaches are fundamentally different Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025.
The ASEAN View
From a Southeast Asian perspective, economic influence is increasingly tied to resilience, diversification, and connectivity.
ASEAN has benefited from companies seeking to diversify production across Asia, while the region’s expanding consumer markets and rising investment flows have made it increasingly important to multinational corporations. ASEAN received approximately US$226 billion in foreign direct investment in 2024, an 8% increase despite an overall decline in global FDI flows ASEAN Investment Report 2025, 2025. The challenge is ensuring that this growth translates into deeper regional integration rather than simply attracting individual investments into separate national markets.
However, for ASEAN, its economic influence is not only about how large its members are individually. It is about how effectively they can function as a connected economic ecosystem, with companies able to distribute production, investment, services, and logistics across several member states ASEAN Investment Report 2023, 2023.
That distinction is important when comparing ASEAN with BRICS.
ASEAN’s Strength Is Integration
ASEAN’s greatest economic advantage is its ability to connect diverse economies into a regional production and trade network. Through several mechanisms like the ASEAN Economic Community, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, ASEAN-led free-trade agreements, and a growing range of bilateral arrangements, Southeast Asia has positioned itself as a bridge between major markets ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025. Its members bring complementary strengths. Indonesia provides scale and natural resources; Singapore offers finance, logistics and advanced services; Vietnam and Thailand are major manufacturing hubs; Malaysia in electronics and commodities; while the Philippines contributes a large services, digital and consumer economy.
Together, these economies create a diversified production base that is attractive to companies looking to reduce dependence on any single market. ASEAN’s varying levels of development and industrial specialties allow firms to build regional value chains across multiple countries Integrated Supply Chain, 2025.
Therefore, ASEAN’s model is less about collective size than connectivity. It is about making different economies work together despite differences in development levels, political systems, and economic structures ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
BRICS’ Strength Is Scale
BRICS derives much of its economic influence from the sheer size and diversity of its membership.
The grouping brings together major emerging economies, large consumer markets, major energy and commodity producers, industrial powers and significant financial centers. Its eleven members represent nearly half of the global population, around 40% of global GDP and approximately 26% of global trade BRICS 2025, 2025. Countries such as China and India provide enormous consumer and manufacturing markets, while other BRICS members contribute significant oil, gas, minerals, agricultural products, and infrastructure capacity. This gives BRICS a different kind of leverage from ASEAN, with focus on market size, resources, energy, trade, and financial capacity BRICS 2025, 2025.
They have also increasingly discussed reducing dependence on Western-dominated financial structures. Efforts involving local-currency settlement, development financing, and institutions such as the New Development Bank reflect a broader push for greater representation of emerging economies in global economic governance Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025 BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Chair’s Statement, 2025. For example, the New Development Bank’s 2022–2026 strategy, set a target for 30% of its total financing to be conducted in the local currencies of member countries General Strategy 2022–2026, 2022.
However, BRICS is not an economic union in the same institutional sense as ASEAN’s Economic Community. Its members have different economic structures, strategic interests, and relationships with major powers. Its strength therefore comes less from market integration than from the combined global weight of its individually significant members ASEAN Economic Community, 2026 Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025.
Comparing Their Strengths
The contrast between ASEAN and BRICS is ultimately a contrast between integration and scale.
ASEAN’s advantage is that its members are geographically concentrated and increasingly connected through trade, manufacturing, investment, and supply chains. This makes the region particularly relevant to companies pursuing diversification strategies and regional production networks ASEAN Investment Report 2023, 2023.
BRICS, by contrast, has greater geographic reach and access to a far broader combination of markets, commodities, energy resources, and financial capacity. Its members can exert influence through the sheer size of their individual economies and their importance to global trade and commodity markets BRICS 2025, 2025.
This creates two different models of economic influence. ASEAN’s strength lies in making its members more valuable together than they would be separately. BRICS’ strength lies largely in bringing together countries that are already individually consequential in the global economy. Neither model is interchangeable. ASEAN’s cohesion gives it a distinctive advantage in regional economic integration, while BRICS’ scale gives it significant weight across global markets, commodities and development-finance discussions ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025 Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025.
For ASEAN, the lesson is not that it needs to become another BRICS. Instead, it needs to ensure that its own model of integration continues to translate into global economic influence.
Investment Will Be Key Intersection
Investment will be one of the clearest areas where these different models intersect.
ASEAN has become an important destination for foreign direct investment as companies seek manufacturing alternatives, new consumer markets, and more resilient supply chains. FDI inflows reached approximately US$226 billion in 2024, even as worldwide investment flows weakened ASEAN Investment Report 2025, 2025. Its ability to offer multiple production locations within a relatively connected region is particularly valuable. A company can manufacture components in one ASEAN economy, assemble products in another, and access consumers across the wider regional market Integrated Supply Chain, 2025.
BRICS offers a different proposition. Its members include enormous domestic markets, major industrial economies and resource-rich countries. For investors, this provides access to large consumer bases, energy supplies, commodities and infrastructure opportunities BRICS 2025, 2025.
The competition for investment is unlikely to be a simple ASEAN-versus-BRICS contest. Companies can increasingly operate across both ecosystems. The more important question is whether ASEAN can continue improving infrastructure, regulatory coordination, digital connectivity and investment rules so that capital sees the region not simply as a collection of individual markets, but as an integrated economic platform ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
The Global Economy Is Moving Toward Multiple Centres
The rise of ASEAN and BRICS reflects a wider transformation in the global economy. Rather than one dominant economic centre, companies and governments increasingly operate across multiple centres of production, consumption, finance and resources Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025.
Southeast Asia sits at an important intersection of these networks. China remains ASEAN’s largest trading partner, with two-way merchandise trade reaching US$772.4 billion in 2024, equal to 20.1% of ASEAN’s total trade. China was also ASEAN’s third-largest source of FDI among ASEAN Dialogue Partners in 2024 ASEAN-China Economic Relations, 2026.
The United States, European Union, Japan, South Korea, India and Gulf economies also remain important sources of trade, investment, technology and market access for ASEAN. ASEAN’s strategic value may therefore come not from choosing one economic bloc over another, but from maintaining relationships across multiple centres of economic power ASEAN Economic Integration Brief, 2025.
ASEAN’s Vulnerabilities Remain Significant
However, ASEAN’s economic rise should not obscure its challenges.
Infrastructure gaps remain in parts of the region. Regulatory systems differ substantially between member states, while development levels remain uneven. ASEAN’s own long-term economic planning identifies regulatory harmonisation, infrastructure, digital integration, competitiveness and inclusive growth as continuing priorities ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
There is also the risk that ASEAN economies compete against each other for investment rather than building complementary regional capabilities. The region’s challenge is to deepen value-chain connections so that investment produces regional benefits rather than isolated national gains ASEAN Investment Report 2023, 2023. Geopolitical tensions adds a deeper layer to it. The region is increasingly exposed to major-power competition, trade restrictions and disruptions to global supply chains. If ASEAN’s economic integration stalls, its collective influence could fail to match the potential suggested by its population, markets and growth.
Integration therefore cannot be treated as a finished project. It needs to keep evolving ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
What Should Happen Next?
Deepen ASEAN Integration
ASEAN should continue reducing barriers to intra-regional trade and investment while improving customs procedures, digital connectivity and regulatory coordination. This should be to make it easier for businesses to operate across several ASEAN economies as part of a single regional strategy ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
Diversify Investment Partnerships
Diversification can strengthen economic resilience while preventing excessive dependence on any single external market ASEAN Investment Report 2025, 2025. They should continue attracting investment from a broad range of partners, including China, Japan, South Korea, the United States, the European Union, India and Gulf economies.
Strengthen ASEAN’s Global Voice
Using its economic weight more effectively in discussions about trade, investment, digital rules, supply chains and global economic governance will strenghten ASEAN's collective influence. However this will depend not only on the size of its economy, but also on its ability to articulate and defend common regional interests ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
Conclusion
ASEAN and BRICS represent two different responses to the changing global economy.
ASEAN demonstrates how integration, connectivity, and complementary economies can create collective strength BRICS 2025, 2025 ASEAN Economic Community, 2026. BRICS demonstrates how scale, resources, and large domestic markets can generate international economic influence.
For Southeast Asia, the priority should not be to replicate the BRICS model. ASEAN’s distinctive advantage is its ability to bring together different economies into an increasingly connected regional ecosystem. The challenge is turning that integration into greater global influence ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
As the world moves toward a more multipolar economic system, ASEAN’s future influence may depend less on becoming the largest economic bloc and more on becoming one of the world’s most indispensable economic connectors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ASEAN part of BRICS?
No. ASEAN and BRICS are separate groupings with different memberships, institutional structures, and objectives. ASEAN is a regional organisation centred on Southeast Asian integration, while BRICS is a transregional grouping of major emerging economies ASEAN Economic Community, 2026; BRICS 2025, 2025.
What is ASEAN’s main economic strength?
ASEAN’s main strength is regional economic integration. Its members combine manufacturing, services, resources, logistics, consumer markets, and investment opportunities within an increasingly interconnected regional economy ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
What is BRICS’ main economic strength?
BRICS’ economic influence comes largely from the scale and diversity of its members, including large populations, major consumer markets, energy resources, commodities, industrial capacity, and significant economies BRICS 2025, 2025.
Are ASEAN and BRICS competitors?
Not necessarily. Their economies and memberships overlap with broader global trade and investment networks, and companies can operate across both ecosystems. Their different structures mean they represent different models of economic influence rather than directly comparable economic unions ASEAN Investment Report 2025, 2025 Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 2025.
Why does ASEAN’s economic influence matter?
ASEAN’s growing importance gives Southeast Asia greater relevance in global trade, investment, manufacturing, and supply-chain decisions. Deeper integration could strengthen the region’s ability to shape external economic partnerships and global economic discussions ASEAN Economic Community Strategic Plan 2026–2030, 2025.
