Kota Kinabalu: Chief Minister’s Adviser Tan Sri Andrew Sheng has called on Global South nations, including Malaysia, to embrace cooperation as the key to mutual survival in an increasingly uncertain world.
Speaking as a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute at a recent Invest Sabah event, Sheng delivered a presentation titled “The Responsibility of Cooperation”, declaring that “globalisation as a passive strategy is dead. All execution is purely local.”He argued that if nations pursued only their own self-interest, the inevitable outcome would be stagflation. In his view, the defining leadership challenge of the era is to build cooperative frameworks that ensure collective survival.
“There is no perfect solution to highly complex systemic change,” he said. “Under intense uncertainty, every enterprise and nation must ruthlessly self-strengthen to survive geopolitical warfare.
“However, without managed cooperation among the largest players, the Global South cannot survive, and planetary challenges will remain unsolved.”Sheng said national security now takes precedence over corporate profits, with companies becoming “active hostages” to sanctions and strategic chokepoints capable of disrupting global value chains almost instantly.
He urged businesses to pursue “self-strengthening” by developing resilient digital ecosystems and nurturing talent capable of adapting rapidly to emerging geopolitical and technological challenges.
On the financial front, Sheng said de-dollarisation and geopolitical sanctions are accelerating the emergence of hybrid ecosystems combining private and public digital money, enabling countries to bypass traditional financial networks dominated by the United States.
He cited central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenised commercial assets and stablecoins as examples of alternative payment systems that are reshaping global finance.
Highlighting the scale of economic fragmentation, Sheng said trade in critical goods between Eastern and Western blocs had fallen by about 90 per cent. At the same time, US imports were increasingly shifting towards Mexico and Asean, while Chinese exports continued to expand globally despite American sanctions.
He described what he called the “China Shock Formula” – a combination of innovation, affordability and rapid disruption at speed, scale and scope – as a force fundamentally reshaping global pricing power.
“All systemic change, from AI chips to cyber money, is strictly bound by energy grids,” Sheng said.
“Energy and power integration dictate systemic capabilities.”Turning to sustainable development, he noted that achieving global net-zero emissions by 2050 would require an estimated US$9.2 trillion annually, while official development assistance had declined by 18 per cent.
Looking ahead, Sheng announced that the 2027 Sabah Asia-Pacific Impact Investing for Sustainable Development Summit would focus on advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through three key drivers – finance, technology and markets.
“Getting to the Sustainable Development Goals is about money, technology and markets. If this is what Sabah wants to do, we are going to be the leading light in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.”He said Sabah could accelerate SDG projects from concept to implementation by bringing together investors, technology providers and market access.
Sheng also addressed what he described as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Supercycle, calling it a high-stakes collision between soaring productivity gains and unprecedented capital expenditure.
While AI could generate between US$2 trillion and US$4 trillion in additional global economic value annually, he said realising that potential would require enormous investment in advanced chips and data centres.
“The explosive, unprecedented capital expenditure on advanced sophisticated chips and data centres fundamentally alters enterprise risk profiles, forcing smaller players to rely on the state.”Sheng added that investors and investment funds are ready to come to Sabah, provided bankable projects are available.
