China+1 Is Dead.
Supply-Chain Blocs Are Replacing Countries.

"China+1" describes a decision: leave China, choose a country instead. That's the wrong unit of analysis. Look at what's actually being built on the ground, and the real competition isn't between countries — it's between supply-chain blocs, moving almost intact.

What "China+1" gets wrong

The China+1 framing assumes a country either has China's factories or it doesn't — that the decision is "leave China, arrive in Vietnam" or "leave China, arrive in Thailand." But companies aren't choosing countries. They're choosing ecosystems, and increasingly, an entire ecosystem — anchor manufacturer, component makers, materials suppliers, capital — relocates together and re-forms largely intact inside whichever country will host it.

Two clusters make this concrete.

Case 1: Bac Ninh and Bac Giang, Vietnam

On paper, this is "Samsung's Vietnam." In practice, it's an electronics-assembly bloc that has grown up around Samsung and now pulls in suppliers regardless of where they're headquartered.

Korean anchor. American packaging. Taiwanese assembly. Chinese components — all in the same corridor of northern Vietnam. Nobody picked "Vietnam." They picked proximity to Samsung's ecosystem, and increasingly that ecosystem is where you go regardless of which country you're headquartered in.

Case 2: Rayong and Chonburi, Thailand

This is the mirror image — a Chinese-anchored bloc, moving almost intact.

The result: 48 Research's own count found only 12 of Thailand's 660 registered auto parts makers can actually supply these Chinese EV brands. Chinese investors already account for 16% ($8.4B) of approved EEC investment from 2019–2024 — second only to Thailand itself.

It isn't that Chinese carmakers picked Thailand. It's that an entire ecosystem — OEM, cathode maker, cell maker, pack assembler — picked Rayong as its regional base, largely self-contained, with limited need for Thai component makers.

What the two cases show together

Put side by side, these clusters overturn three assumptions built into the China+1 framing.

• Blocs don't need the host country's supply base. The Bac Ninh cluster barely touches Vietnamese-owned firms below tier one. The Rayong cluster locks out all but a sliver of Thai suppliers.
• Blocs cross the "China vs. non-China" line freely. Goertek moving into a Korean/American-anchored Vietnamese cluster shows the real divide isn't nationality — it's which ecosystem you're plugged into.
• A country can host two unrelated blocs at once. Vietnam is simultaneously the anchor of a Korean/US electronics bloc in the north and the #1 source of new Chinese manufacturing FDI nationally. These barely intersect.

This also changes how the trade-policy conversation should work. Transshipment penalties — 40–44% under the current US tariff schedule — target goods that are essentially Chinese products passing through with a new label. But a fully transplanted bloc, with cell maker, pack assembler, and OEM all physically operating inside Thailand, creates real local value-add and real local jobs. It isn't transshipment. It's still a Chinese-controlled production network. Current trade rules aren't built to tell these two things apart.

Why this matters

For policymakers: counting FDI dollars tells you capital arrived. It doesn't tell you whether the bloc that arrived has any linkage to the local economy, or is simply operating as an enclave.

For buyers: "Made in Thailand" and "Made in Vietnam" increasingly describe where final assembly happens, not whose ecosystem actually built the product.

For operators and investors: the question worth asking before entering a market isn't "which country is cheapest." It's "which bloc's cluster am I trying to plug into — and is there room for me in it, or has it already closed around its own suppliers?"

The bottom line

China+1 was never really about leaving China. It's about which cluster gets to plug in first.