ASIC-resistance is a mirage. Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are made to do one thing only and will always beat general purpose hardware.
"General purpose computational devices like CPUs, GPUs, and even DRAM all make substantial compromises to their true potential in order to be useful for general computation."
–David Vorick, "State of Cryptocurrency Mining"
As an "ASIC-resistant" cryptocurrency appreciates in value, eventually someone would find it economically viable to produce an ASIC. Given the high development cost and relatively lower increase in profitability due to the ASIC-resistance, such a market would be even more likely to be dominated by a single producer.
Instead, consider the upsides of an ASIC-friendly hashing algorithm. ASICs beat general purpose hardware by magnitudes which quickly curbed botnets mining with CPU or GPU. It's easier for manufacturers to enter the market, which opens production up to more competition. Since the hardware is network specific, miners cannot hop networks to pursue any tiny shift in relative profitability. This results in a more stable hashrate. Due to the upfront cost of the hardware, miners are invested in the success of the network—quite literally.
Further, after just a bit over a decade, ASICs have largely caught up to state-of-the-art miniaturization. Product cycles have started to slow down. This reduces the advantage of mining operators with close ties to manufacturers, as the longer life cycle of hardware allows it to spread further geographically. When machines run longer, energy costs overshadow hardware cost further which favors locations with cheap electricity. While China does have relatively cheap electricity, there are also regions in Canada, USA, Venezuela, Russia Iceland, and Norway that are very favorable to mining operations. While most hashrate is situated in China, it has been trending downwards. Hopefully, it continues to do so.
