APAC

APAC, short for Asia-Pacific, is a geographic and economic region used in business, policy, and media to describe parts of Asia and the Pacific. There is no single, official boundary; definitions typically include East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, among others), South Asia (notably India and sometimes Pakistan and Bangladesh), and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and numerous Pacific island nations).

The region is home to some of the world’s largest economies and populations, ranging from highly developed markets with advanced services and manufacturing sectors to rapidly growing economies in the developing world. It includes economies such as China, Japan, India, and Australia, as well as fast-growing hubs in Southeast Asia.

In business and government, APAC is used as a market, investment, and policy category for regional strategy, supply chains, and economic analysis. The diversity of languages, cultures, regulatory regimes, and consumer preferences is a defining feature, with English functioning as a common lingua franca in many corporate contexts, alongside local languages such as Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Indonesian, and others.

APAC should not be confused with APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a specific intergovernmental forum comprising economies from the region.