Asian markets have demonstrated resilience in the face of global economic headwinds - including tariffs and geopolitical tensions - due to a combination of strong domestic revenue dominance, robust technology sectors and a more tempered investment sentiment towards US assets, according to JPMorgan Asset Management executives.

Executives at the US asset manager's inaugural Asia media summit in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday said that Asian markets still held a rising appeal for investors.

China was a case in point, said Anuj Arora, head of emerging markets and Asia-Pacific equities, with nearly 85 per cent of listed companies' revenues generated domestically and corporates engaged in substantial share buy-backs.

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"Asian countries are not impacted by tariffs and geopolitics, and the markets are at one-year, three-year, five-year highs - it just keeps going up, even after Friday's news," Arora said, referring to US President Donald Trump's threat to impose a 100 per cent tariff on all Chinese imports and restrict US exports of critical software from November 1.

"We've got to separate the geopolitics from the economics," he added.

Senior strategists and portfolio managers at JPMorgan Asset Management, meanwhile, said that longer-term trends were expected to drive growth in Asian markets.

Exports in the region continued to diversify from US markets, as companies invested in share buy-backs and showed strong technology capabilities - including in the hard technology and artificial intelligence spaces, they said.

"The impact [of tariffs] gets a little bit overstated," said Paul Quinsee, global head of equities.

A rethink of US exceptionalism has also been helping the investability case for China and the broader Asian markets. Photo: AFP

Indonesia was also cited as another country that produced much of its revenue domestically, with 93 per cent of its MSCI-listed companies generating home-grown revenues. India, meanwhile, generated 77 per cent of its revenues domestically and the Philippines 75 per cent.

Arora said Chinese corporate policy towards shareholders was changing, amid slower economic growth in the country, and there was now a new focus on rewarding investors.

"For 25 years, Chinese corporates diluted the end shareholder by 2 to 3 per cent every year," he said. "But last year, they started buy-backs. If this trend persists, it will be very positive for the market."

China's technology capabilities would also bring upsides for investors, especially in a deflationary environment, Arora said.

"If there is no [gross domestic product] growth, then any corporate that can give you growth will trade at a premium once again," he said. "After the DeepSeek moment in January, China's growth animal spirits have really taken off."

"It's fantastic because the whole Chinese AI cycle is completely uncorrelated to the Western world."

The top 10 tech hardware companies in Asia-Pacific, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Tencent Co, Samsung, Alibaba and PDD, were 45 per cent cheaper in valuation compared with Nasdaq-listed top 10 firms - carrying a price-to-earnings ratio of 17 times versus 32 times, according to estimates from JPMorgan Asset Management as of August.

A rethink of US exceptionalism has also been helping the investability case for China and the broader Asian markets, according to Alexander Treves, head of investment specialists for the emerging markets and Asia-Pacific equities team.

"A lot of our clients in the region are already very exposed to US equities and, as we pointed out, some of them are quite richly valued," Treves said. "We've got a lot more conversations about Asian equities currently than we might have had a couple of years ago."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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