Best Asia, China & Emerging Markets ETFs Australia 2026: The Complete Guide

No fund manager wrote this article. No issuer is paying for placement. This is an independent ranking of every Asia, China, Japan, India and emerging markets ETF listed on the ASX, using April 2026 CBOE Australia data.

Browse the live category tables:

These pages are updated continuously with the live fee, AUM and return data for every fund in the category. This blog is the editorial walkthrough of what's actually inside them.

The pitch nobody is making to you

Open any Australian super fund statement. Open any "balanced" portfolio. Open the holdings page of VAS, VGS or any of the funds on the most popular Australian ETF list.

Now ask yourself: how much of your money is actually invested in the half of the world economy that lives in Asia?

For most Aussie investors, the answer is "barely anything." Yet six of the world's twelve largest stock exchanges sit in Asia. China, Japan, India, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong combined are larger than the entire US market and growing faster.

This blog has been fully refreshed for April 2026, with one important correction to last year's version, and with the new BEMG Betashares MSCI Emerging Markets Complex ETF now included.

The cover stats

24 Asia / EM ETFs are now listed on the ASX
Biggest 1-year return: IKO (iShares MSCI South Korea) at +155%
Biggest 3-year return: ASIA (Asia Technology Tigers) at +158%
Best 5-year EM performer: EMKT (VanEck Multifactor EM) at +76%

Combined assets across these 24 funds now exceed $10 billion, up from $8.5B a year ago. The category is no longer fringe. You can see the full live list any time on the Asia ETFs and Emerging Markets ETFs tables.

What's inside each ETF? (The country breakdown that surprises people)

This is the chart everyone needs to see. The names are misleading. "FTSE Emerging Markets" and "MSCI Emerging Markets" sound identical — they are not. "Asia ex-Japan" can mean very different things depending on whether the index also strips Korea (FTSE does, MSCI doesn't).

Key things to read off this chart:

VGE (Vanguard FTSE EM): 29% China, 22% India, 21% Taiwan, ~28% other emerging (Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand). No Korea. No Hong Kong as a separate bucket either (small inside China).
IEM (iShares MSCI EM): 32% China, 17% India, 17% Taiwan, 9% Korea, 25% other. This is the one to use if you want Korea inside a broad EM ETF.
EMKT (VanEck MSCI Multifactor EM): roughly MSCI EM weights with a quality + value tilt.
EMXC (iShares EM ex-China): strips China entirely. Result is 25% India, 17% Korea, 24% Taiwan, 34% other EM. The "EM without the political risk" trade.
BEMG (Betashares MSCI EM Complex): the newest entrant. Tracks MSCI EM with active overlay. Now ~$100M AUM after just over a year listed.
VAE (Vanguard Asia ex-Japan): 29% China, 27% Taiwan, 26% India, 11% Hong Kong. No Korea (FTSE classification again).
IAA (iShares Asia 50): concentrated — top 50 stocks across HK, China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore. ~40% China, 26% Taiwan, 21% Korea.
ASIA (Asia Technology Tigers): 55% China + the tech giants in Korea (Samsung), Taiwan (TSMC) and India. Not a broad Asia play — it's an Asian-tech concentrated bet.

The takeaway: picking between VGE and IEM isn't a fee decision — it's a Korea decision and an "include Saudi/Brazil/South Africa or not" decision.

The full searchable, sortable list lives at the Asia ETFs table and Emerging Markets ETFs table.

The leaderboard: every Asia & EM ETF ranked by 3-year return

This is the master table. April 2026 data from CBOE Australia, sorted by 3-year total return.

A few things jump out:

ASIA wins the 3-year crown at +158%. Betashares' Asia Technology Tigers was the right place to be — TSMC, Tencent, Samsung and Alibaba have rerated hard. 0.67% MER is high for a passive ETF but the active concentration delivered.
IKO is the 1-year rocket. South Korea returned +155% on a 1-year basis. KOSPI was the cheapest developed market in the world entering 2025; corporate governance reform plus AI-chip demand re-rated everything. 3-year return now +152%, only just behind ASIA.
HJPN beat IJP by 60+ points over 3 years. Currency hedging Japan was a $1-for-$1 winning trade as the yen weakened. The unhedged version IJP is sitting on +47% over the same period. (See our hedged vs unhedged blog for why this happens.)
VanEck's EMKT beat both broad EM trackers. Multifactor (quality + value + momentum + low volatility) returned +77% over 3 years vs +58% for IEM and +42% for VGE. Same MER as IEM (0.69%) but materially better return.
Active works in Asia. PAXX (Platinum Asia, 1.10% MER) is at +51% over 3 years, ahead of VGE and just behind IJP. ASAO (Abrdn Sustainable Asian Opps, 1.18% MER) is at +39%. Active management has actually earned its fee in this part of the market — unlike global equities where SPIVA data consistently shows passive wins.
China-only ETFs lagged. IZZ +28%, CETF +20%, CNEW +7% over 3 years. China stayed cheap for a reason. See the full China ETFs list.
India faded. NDIA +2% over 3 years, IIND +6%. Nifty 50 is down -21% over the last 12 months as the rally unwound and the rupee weakened. Full list on the India ETFs page.

The emerging markets sweet spot

Zooming in on just the broad EM funds (no country specialists, no equity-active), there is a clear sweet spot pattern.

EMXC is the cheapest and the highest 1-year return. At 0.25% MER, +44% over 1 year, it's the only true "sweet spot" pick on this chart. By stripping China, it captures the parts of EM that are rallying (India, Korea, Taiwan) without the drag.
EMKT at the same fee as IEM (0.69%) but with materially better 1Y, 3Y and 5Y returns. Factor tilting has worked.
BEMG is the newest entry — Betashares' MSCI EM Complex ETF launched in early 2025. At 0.35% MER it's much cheaper than IEM (0.69%) and EMKT (0.69%), but doesn't yet have enough history to judge performance. Worth watching.
VGE sits awkwardly — cheap enough at 0.48%, but the FTSE methodology excludes Korea, which has been the rocket fuel of the index over the past 12 months.

If you want one broad EM ETF, the choice for 2026 looks like:

EMXC if you specifically want to exclude China (popular trade right now)
EMKT if you want broad EM with a factor tilt and proven outperformance
IEM if you want the textbook MSCI EM benchmark
BEMG if you want the cheapest "real" MSCI EM tracker and are happy waiting for a track record

All of these sit on the Emerging Markets ETFs list page alongside the smaller funds — WEMG, JEME, FEMX — for direct comparison.

Country-specialist picks

If you don't want broad Asia or broad EM, the country-specific options have widened.

Country	ETF	MER	3Y return	1Y return
Japan (hedged)	HJPN	0.56%	+108%	+51%
Japan (unhedged)	IJP	0.50%	+47%	+14%
South Korea	IKO	0.45%	+152%	+155%
China large-cap (HK-listed)	IZZ	0.60%	+28%	-1%
China A-shares	CETF	0.60%	+20%	+17%
China tech / new economy	CNEW	0.95%	+7%	+22%
India broad	NDIA	0.69%	+2%	-21%
India quality	IIND	0.80%	+6%	-16%
India growth leaders	GRIN	0.75%	n/a	-9%

A few things to flag:

Currency hedging Japan has been the single most lucrative ETF decision an Australian could have made over the last 3 years. HJPN vs IJP = +60% spread.
India is taking a breather. After a multi-year rally, NDIA and IIND have both delivered negative 1-year returns. This is normal mean reversion — over 5 years NDIA is still +29%. Full list at /india-invest-etfs.
Korea has rerated hard. IKO's +155% 1-year doesn't mean Korea is cheap anymore. The corporate governance reform "Value-Up" program plus AI-chip demand front-loaded a lot of the move.
China-only funds all sit on the China ETFs table if you want to compare them side-by-side.

The bond and income angle

If you want emerging markets exposure but want income, not equity, there are two products:

EBND (VanEck EM Income Opportunities, 0.95% MER, $284M AUM): active fund holding sovereign and corporate EM bonds, currency mix. Returned +24% over 3 years, +10% over 1 year. Distributions are monthly.
IHEB (iShares J.P. Morgan USD EM AUD-hedged, 0.51% MER, $49M AUM): passive tracker of USD-denominated EM sovereign debt, hedged to AUD. +23% over 3 years.

Both fit as a small fixed-income satellite — a way to get yield from EM without the equity volatility. See our fixed income blog or the full fixed income ETFs list for how this fits in a portfolio.

How to build the Asia/EM slice of your portfolio

Here are three sample sleeves that fit on top of a core VAS + VGS (or equivalent) portfolio. Position size assumed 5–15% of total portfolio.

Option 1 — One-fund broad EM

Just hold EMKT at 5–10%. Single product, proven multi-year outperformance over IEM and VGE, one trade.

Option 2 — China-light core EM

EMXC 70% + IZZ 30% at a small allocation. This lets you dial China up or down based on your own view of Chinese equities, rather than accepting the index's 30% weight by default.

Option 3 — Country picks

HJPN 40% + IKO 20% + NDIA 20% + IZZ 20%. A 1–4 fund sleeve that gives you direct country exposure with no overlap. Higher tracking risk vs the broad indexes but you control the geography.

For everyone else, one of the broad EM ETFs at a 5–8% allocation is the simplest and historically the most effective.

What we left out (and why)

FANG, NDQ, other US tech ETFs: these are not Asia funds even though they hold global tech. See our top ETFs blog for these.
VGS and VTS: "developed markets" benchmarks that exclude EM by construction. See VGS vs IVV vs VTS comparison.
Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines: no direct single-country ASX-listed ETFs available. Exposure is via VAE, VGE or IEM.

The wrap

Asia and emerging markets used to be one of the harder slices of a portfolio to build. As of April 2026, every reasonable wedge — broad EM, EM ex-China, factor EM, single-country, hedged Japan, India quality, Asia tech concentrated — is available as an ASX-listed ETF.

The hard part isn't access anymore. It's understanding what's inside each ticker, because the labels are misleading. A "FTSE" tracker and an "MSCI" tracker can give you very different country exposures (most importantly: Korea, in or out). And a "China" ETF can mean Hong Kong-listed mega-caps (IZZ), mainland A-shares (CETF), or specialist tech baskets (CNEW, ASIA) that look completely different.

Most Aussie investors are still running with effectively zero direct Asia exposure. The numbers above say that's a choice worth re-examining.

Returns from CBOE Australia Monthly Funds Report, April 2026. Country weightings from issuer fact sheets. All ETF tickers link to the relevant ReviewETF fund profile. This article is general information and not personal financial advice.

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