Jardine CEO Warns Asia’s AI Data-Center Boom Faces Political Risk

Jardine Matheson Holdings CEO Lincoln Pan warned that political risk could disrupt Asia’s data-center and artificial-intelligence infrastructure expansion as projects depend on U.S. data policy and cross-border technology access.

Pan made the remarks at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore at 11 p.m. ET on Oct. 8 (03:00 UTC on Oct. 9). He identified political risk as the main concern surrounding the region’s data-center and AI infrastructure boom.

Pan said investments in U.S.-based infrastructure for large language models represent a concentrated bet on the stability of U.S. data policy and U.S.-China relations. He also described the future ability of U.S.-domiciled technology companies to operate globally with consistent stability over the next decade as highly uncertain.

APAC data centers could require about $6.7 trillion in cumulative capital investment across the global data-center value chain from 2025 through 2030. The region could account for about 34% of global data-center demand by 2030, compared with about 46% for North America.

Demand is expanding beyond a spillover from North America, supported by local AI adoption, enterprise digitization and sovereign technology priorities. A September 2025 survey covered 61 hyperscalers and 334 enterprises in APAC.

Outside mainland China, Western cloud providers account for 70% of hyperscaler demand, while Chinese cloud and platform companies account for 30%. Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle committed more than $160 billion from January 2024 through May 2026 to build AI infrastructure in APAC.

Mainland China is projected to account for more than 70% of APAC data-center demand by 2030. Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are developing mixed ecosystems involving Western hyperscalers, Chinese technology companies and domestic infrastructure programs.

That growth can leave projects physically located in Asia dependent on a limited number of customers and technology and cross-border operating conditions. Jardine Matheson’s portfolio includes Hongkong Land, a listed property investment and development group operating across Asian gateway cities.