Diverging regulatory systems are reshaping how global firms have to operate. Singapore’s standards strategy is intended to make regulatory friction work in its favour.
On 11 June 2026, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announced the Standards and Conformance (S&C) 2035 Roadmap. The roadmap places particular emphasis on international recognition arrangements, trusted partnerships and cooperation in emerging sectors. At first glance, it looks like a routine technical document focused on market access and the growth of the local testing and certification sector. Yet, placed against the backdrop of a global economy marked by widening policy divergence, it points to a broader shift in how trade-oriented economies create value.
International businesses today must contend with more than the movement of goods across borders. While markets are still deeply linked, the regulatory frameworks behind them are drifting apart. Many companies now manage multiple, often conflicting, compliance systems at the same time – a challenge commonly referred to as parallel compliance.
Nowhere is this clearer than in artificial intelligence. A single AI product must satisfy the EU’s strict, risk-based AI Act, China’s detailed security rules for generative services, and the lighter, market-driven approach common in the United States. For firms operating globally, the difficulty is rarely about meeting one set of requirements in isolation. A system considered acceptable under one jurisdiction’s approach may require entirely different technical documentation, risk assessments or safety-testing procedures elsewhere. This divergence has begun to shape product design decisions long before a service reaches a foreign market, forcing developers to build separate regional variations of the same core technology.
The same issue appears in green supply chains. Companies exporting batteries or electric vehicle components to Europe must meet the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and Battery Regulation, which demand exhaustive lifecycle carbon tracking from raw materials to final assembly. At the same time, companies operate under domestic carbon accounting systems that often use different methodologies, especially regarding how non-grid-connected renewable energy or local green electricity certificates are calculated and verified.
The result is a substantial compliance burden. Even when different jurisdictions pursue the exact same goal of decarbonisation, technical mismatches in accounting frameworks mean that identical components are evaluated through entirely separate data pipelines. Manufacturers are often forced to maintain parallel auditing structures for the same product lines, significantly increasing administrative costs and complicating regional production networks, without necessarily improving environmental efficiency.
In a world where the major powers are unlikely to agree on one set of global rules, jurisdictions that are well positioned to help companies bridge these differences may find new forms of economic relevance. This is the gap Singapore is trying to fill.
Instead of trying to write the rules itself, Singapore is building practical tools to work with the rules that already exist. One interesting example is AI Verify – a testing framework designed to assess AI systems against different governance standards. It is still a work in progress, but it shows the direction: turning regulatory complexity into something businesses can actually test and manage. Beyond standards development itself, the S&C 2035 Roadmap places significant attention on the supporting institutions that make standards usable across borders, reflecting Singapore’s preference for practical interoperability over formal regulatory alignment. Through expanding frameworks on carbon markets and digital rules, the jurisdiction is gradually assembling a functional translation layer between conflicting systems.
The city-state’s interest in this role is consistent with its broader economic history. Singapore has long specialised in reducing friction in international commerce, first through shipping and port logistics, and later through finance and corporate services. Regulatory connectivity can be understood as an extension of this traditional logic.
In practice, Singapore is not stepping into unfamiliar territory. It already performs similar functions in fields like financial regulation and trade facilitation, where international firms routinely use Singapore as a reliable platform to access multiple regional markets. This capacity rests on a dense domestic ecosystem of multinational headquarters, trade lawyers and certification bodies. These technical experts and accreditation networks are critical because regulatory interoperability rarely emerges from high-level political agreements alone; it depends on mid-level professionals translating broad sovereign principles into audit procedures that businesses can actually implement on the factory floor. Its agencies have decades of experience guiding this translation, all within a regulatory environment widely regarded as predictable.
Success will ultimately depend on whether businesses begin to view Singapore not simply as a place to comply with regulations, but as a place where compliance across multiple jurisdictions can be coordinated more efficiently. That transition is far from guaranteed. Other hubs are waking up to the same opportunity. Hong Kong, for instance, occupies a unique position between China’s massive industrial system and global markets. Unlike Singapore, whose advantage lies in its ability to connect multiple external regulatory systems, Hong Kong’s opportunity is more closely tied to the internationalisation of Chinese standards and industrial supply chains. As Chinese clean-tech and digital firms expand globally, the need for platforms that can translate between domestic standards and international requirements is only likely to grow. And if geopolitical tensions eventually create fully separate regulatory blocs, the room for neutral intermediaries could shrink.
The role of global hubs is quietly changing. For decades they competed by cutting tariffs and speeding up physical supply chains. Goods, capital and technology still cross borders fairly easily. What has become much harder is crossing between the different rules that now govern them. In that sense, the future of the free port may lie not in connecting markets but in connecting the rules that increasingly divide them.
Jianbo Wu
Jianbo Wu is Secretary General of the Green and Smart Energy Organization (GSEO), an international non-profit focused on cooperation in green and smart energy systems. His work examines the intersection of energy, infrastructure, global supply chains, and economic connectivity. He has directed multiple United Nations-supported programmes and has contributed commentary to a range of international policy and business publications, including East Asia Forum, Singapore Business Review, and the LSE South Asia Centre.