Global Strategy 2.0: Why Leading Companies Are Reframing China...

...and How Consulting Firms Must Now Create Real Value.

Geopolitical fragmentation, technology decoupling and shifting demand patterns require a structural redesign of global business models. China remains important but no longer provides predictable scale, stability or guaranteed growth.
The winning model is a modular, multi-hub operating system that integrates China without depending on it.

Companies must transition from China-centric architectures to regionally anchored, reconfigurable global systems to remain competitive in a multipolar environment.

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1. Context: A Structural, Not Cyclical, Shift

The globalisation logic of the past — optimise cost, scale through China, export globally — has broken down. Geopolitical bifurcation is fragmenting supply chains and regulatory regimes, forcing companies to abandon single-architecture global models. China’s demand dynamics have become more volatile, dominated by strong local competitors and less predictable cycles. Meanwhile, India, ASEAN and the Middle East are emerging as structural growth markets, and technology decoupling is driving the rise of parallel ecosystems in cloud, data and cybersecurity. These forces are not temporary; they define the next decade.

The environment has shifted permanently. Organisations must redesign their models to reflect geopolitical fragmentation, regionalised demand and technological decoupling, not react to short-term disruptions.

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2. Implications for Global Strategy

The central strategic question is no longer where companies produce and sell, but how they design a global system that remains operational under geopolitical or technological shocks. China must be rebalanced — not exited — as one important hub among others. Leaders need to diversify global demand portfolios, with India, ASEAN and MEA absorbing roles once held solely by China. The essential shift is toward modular global architectures, where regional autonomy and global coherence coexist through decoupled supply chains, adaptable processes and region-specific technology platforms.

Strategy moves from footprint optimisation to system design. Success requires rebalancing China, expanding into new demand regions and building modular, reconfigurable operating models.

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3. The New Target State: The Multi-Hub Global Operating Model

Future operating models distribute critical functions across multiple regional hubs with distinct, complementary roles. No single market — including China — should carry the entire value chain. Engineering may sit in India, production diversification in ASEAN, high-margin commercial operations in the Middle East, nearshoring in NAFTA, IP-heavy activities in Europe, and selective production and commercial presence in China. This architecture reduces concentration risk, stabilises global P&L and improves geopolitical resilience.

The winning target state is a multi-hub global system where each region contributes its strengths. China shifts from global backbone to strategic component of a diversified architecture.

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4. The Consulting Mandate: Architecting the System

Clients no longer look for incremental optimisation — they need system redesign. Consulting firms must architect multi-hub operating systems that align strategy, structure and capabilities. This includes designing global architectures, defining hub roles, orchestrating governance and ensuring execution feasibility. Consultants must also drive modularity and decoupling, helping clients build region-specific tech stacks, dual/multi-sourcing networks and shock-resistant supply chains. A core task is rebalancing global demand portfolios, understanding where sustainable structural growth lies and restructuring GTM models accordingly. Finally, governance must be reframed as a strategic control system, with exposure heatmaps, scenario models and board-level guardrails.

Consulting’s role expands from efficiency improvement to global system architecture, modularisation, commercial rebalancing and governance redesign — enabling resilience by design.

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5. Implementation Pathway: A Three-Phase Transformation

Transformation requires a practical, staged approach. The first phase is exposure and system assessment, mapping China dependencies, geopolitical risks, supply chain fragilities and regional demand potential. The second phase defines the target multi-hub architecture and roadmap, aligning governance, modular tech systems and regional portfolios. The third phase is execution and enablement, establishing hubs, piloting architectures, reconfiguring supply chains and embedding global steering mechanisms.

A staged transformation ensures feasibility: assess exposure, design the architecture and then execute through regional hub build-out and governance embedding.

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6. What Leaders Should Do Now

Leadership teams must act on three fronts. First, establish board-level guardrails for China exposure across revenue, supply chain, tech and IP. Second, build parallel growth tracks in India, ASEAN and MEA as structural pillars — not optional bets. Third, launch modularity programmes in supply chain and technology to eliminate single points of failure and increase reconfiguration capability. The goal is not risk avoidance but strategic sovereignty.

Executives should formalise exposure limits, develop alternative demand engines and build modularity into their operating models to secure strategic autonomy in a volatile global environment.

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Conclusion:

The Next Decade Belongs to Companies with Multi-Hub DNA
China remains important but no longer singular. India, ASEAN and MEA are becoming structural anchors, and globalisation itself is shifting from linear to modular. The organisations that will win are those that operate as multi-hub systems — regionally autonomous, globally orchestrated, and resilient by design.

Consulting firms have a critical role:
architecting the global operating system for a multipolar world — modular, scalable, geopolitically resilient and commercially future-proof.