South Korean media: South Korean export industry "in crisis", Chinese companies' share rapidly expanding!
On July 16, South Korean media "Herald Economic" published an article stating that in the context of structural changes in the global market, some analysts believe that South Korean companies have not effectively responded to the global market trends centered on high-growth products. In contrast, the market share of Chinese companies has rapidly expanded during the same period.
Recently, Senior Researcher Ji Wan-soo of the Korea Institute of Finance released a report titled "Assessment of South Korea and China's Export Situation in Growth Markets". The report pointed out that "South Korean exports have not kept up with the pace of global demand growth in fast-growing markets," indicating a structural lack of response.
The report defined the top 200 product categories among all manufacturing product categories based on the average annual growth rate of the export market size from 2015 to 2022 as "growth markets", and conducted a comparative analysis of South Korea and China's export changes in these markets.
The analysis results showed that South Korea's market share in growth markets decreased from 5.6% in 2015 to 5.0% in 2022, a decrease of 0.6 percentage points. During the same period, South Korea's export volume increased from 128.2 billion USD to 239.8 billion USD, growing by 1.9 times, but failed to keep up with the 2.1-fold increase in growth markets.
On the other hand, China's market share increased significantly by 9.5 percentage points, from 21.7% to 31.2%. In terms of export volume, China's exports increased from 459.8 billion USD to 1.1 trillion USD, growing by 2.2 times, which was faster than the market growth rate.
Especially, comparing the performance of the top 20 goods in which South Korean exports ranked in each growth market last year, from 2015 to 2022, China's export growth rate exceeded that of South Korea in 16 goods such as semiconductor-related products, batteries, steel, and construction machinery.
This means that even in key industries, South Korea failed to maintain its market share.
Ji Wan-soo said, "In the growth products where market opportunities are concentrated, South Korean export companies have not achieved results proportional to the growth rate. Due to competition with China, it is very difficult to expand exports."
He suggested, "To cope with the structural changes in the global market, companies should expand investments in new products and new industries, and the government should also identify emerging growth markets early and provide them to companies."
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1837775821860874/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.