About Brian B. Su & Artisan Business Group
Right when Asia matters most, the West has never had fewer people who actually know it.
Over the past decade, Asia's weight in the global economy has grown faster than almost anyone forecast — China leading in EVs, batteries, robotics, and frontier AI, but not China alone. Supply chains have shifted into Vietnam and across Southeast Asia; family wealth has concentrated in Singapore and Hong Kong. The manufacturing, the money, and the decisions that move your business increasingly sit somewhere in the arc from Shenzhen to Ho Chi Minh City to the Lion City.
Over that same decade, the number of Westerners who actually live in the region, negotiate there, and read these markets on their own terms has collapsed. By some counts there were more foreigners in Shanghai in 1925 than in 2025.
That gap doesn't stay empty. It fills with secondhand narrative — think-tank papers and "Asia expert" commentary produced at a distance, often by people who haven't sat in the room in years and have every incentive to make the region legible in whatever way suits their funding. The result is a real risk: that executives and investors misjudge Asia with total confidence, precisely because the people who could correct them are the ones who've left.
That gap is what we exist to close.
You don't need another analyst who reads Asia from the outside. You need an advisor who works inside both systems — who knows what Asian executives actually think today; who understands that Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen run on entirely different logic, that Taiwan sits apart from all three, and that Singapore, Vietnam, and the wider ASEAN market each play by their own rules; and who can translate one side's reasoning into terms the other can act on. That's the seat Brian Su sits in.
Artisan Business Group
Founded in Springfield, Illinois, in 2009, Artisan Business Group is a boutique cross-border advisory firm serving high-net-worth individuals, family offices, institutional investors, and corporate leaders across the U.S., Greater China, and Southeast Asia.
We do one thing well: we turn geopolitical dynamics, regulatory change, and on-the-ground market reality into clear, current options — where to invest, how to enter which market, who to partner with, and when to change course. That work spans the questions clients face today: supply-chain realignment and China-plus-one moves into Southeast Asia, cross-border family-office and wealth structuring across Singapore and Hong Kong, two-way market entry, and the U.S. and Asian regulatory risk underneath all of it. Our senior bilingual team combines geopolitical analysis, cross-border risk assessment, transaction due diligence, and market-entry strategy across technology, real estate, manufacturing, and financial services. You work directly with the decision-makers on our side of the table — not layers of junior staff.
Principal
Brian B. Su
Founder & President · MPA
Brian Su has spent more than three decades in the United States and an entire career working across the Pacific — which is exactly what makes him valuable now that firsthand Asia experience has become rare and expensive to acquire. A naturalized U.S. citizen and native Mandarin speaker, he is at home in both systems: he has deep, firsthand knowledge of Asian culture, Chinese politics and policymaking, and the way Chinese business systems actually work — from the Party-state logic that drives decisions to the commercial norms that govern deals on the ground. He deals with executives, founders, and officials across Greater China and Southeast Asia on a current basis, and explains them to American boards, investors, and institutions in terms those rooms can use — and translates the American side back in language Chinese counterparts will act on.
He brings more than 17 years of experience in cross-border investment, market-entry strategy, and risk management. Since founding Artisan Business Group in 2009, he has facilitated more than US $1 billion in project investments spanning infrastructure, clean energy, high-tech manufacturing, real estate, and ocean technology.
Before ABG, Brian spent 16 years in Illinois state government — as Staff Assistant to Governor Jim Edgar (1996–1998) and then as a Compliance Specialist at the Illinois Department of Transportation (1998–2011), building deep expertise in contract compliance, labor regulation, and fraud prevention on public infrastructure projects. That grounding is why regulatory and compliance risk is second nature to his cross-border work today.
Brian currently serves as Independent Director and Compensation Committee Chairman of a Nasdaq-listed company. He has been an invited speaker at Singapore family office summits, U.S.–China investment forums, university speaker series, and industry conferences across the Pacific. He holds an MPA and works bilingually in English and Mandarin Chinese.
Brian is currently a commissioner of the Springfield Commission on International Visitors, appointed by the Mayor.
The bottom line
Anyone can sell you a confident opinion about Asia. Very few can give you a current, firsthand read from inside both systems — and tell you plainly when the conventional wisdom is wrong. If your next decision carries real exposure to Greater China or the wider Asian market, that's the difference worth having on your side of the table.
Let's talk. → Contact Brian