China Plus One, also known simply as Plus One or C+1, is the business strategy of avoiding investing only in China and diversifying business into other countries, or channeling investments into manufacturing in other promising developing economies such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippians or Vietnam.  For the last 20 years, western companies have invested mainly in China, drawn in by their low production costs, and enormous domestic consumer markets. Developing from the overconcentration of business interests in China, it may be done for reasons of cost, safety, or long-term stability. It has also been described as a ‘macro-level phenomenon’.

The increasing cost of doing business in China has increased operating costs, especially for manufacturers. The advantages of the cheap labor and market demand that China initially provided has increasingly been overshadowed by the advantages that SE Asian countries can provide. These benefits include cost control, as workers in Southeast Asian countries are generally less expensive than Chinese employees, risk diversification, and new market access into economies. There is also a high level of risk for investors in the Chinese transitional economy, the sources of this risk can be credited to social, and political change and the uncertainty that U.S. Tariffs will have on their costs.

Multinational corporations have been looking at countries with adequately stable governments such Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines to mitigate the rising costs and political instability of doing business in China.  Corporations in countries like the United States and Europe are now looking to divest or transition some or all of their manufacturing from China to these other countries.

Plus 1 Partners is the bridge between U.S. companies that are actively looking to transition some, or all, of their manufacturing from China to SE Asia.