English variants reflect Southeast Asia's identity awareness

For the past decade I have been error-correcting English publicity materials of domestic and foreign exhibitors at the China-ASEAN Expo, sponsored by the command center of China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit. The findings of the past 10 years of on-the-spot inspection and corrections are as follows.

Domestically, publicity materials in the English language of exhibitors from China's coastal provinces and cities are becoming more appropriate and acceptable to the target readers than those from the inland provinces and cities.

Internationally, the publicity materials of ASEAN member states exemplify, in many cases, the Southeast Asian variants of the English language. This is evident in the publicity materials of exhibitors not only from Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia, but also from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.