Korea's Falling Competitiveness
China Surges to Be Formidable Competitor
The competitiveness of the Republic of Korea in international community has ever been weakening, ranking 25th out of 68 countries in the world this year, compared to 21st in 2001.
Adding insult to injury is an outlook that the competitiveness could fall to as low as 43rd place, if we hold fast to our low-price strategies and fail to foster high value-added industries.
The report by the Institute for Industrial Policy Studies simply serves that the nation could be outpaced by developing countries, represented by China that has already surged as a formidable competitor of South Korea in international market.
Having gathered up the ``bamboo curtain,¡¯¡¯ China, dubbed ``sleeping lion,¡¯¡¯ has been dashing forward for industrialization over the past years and has finally begun to acquire high-tech enterprises of Korea.
BOE Group of China took over the TFT-LCD part of Hynix and the Nanxing Group of China was chosen as the priority negotiator to acquire Ssangyong Motor Co., maker of ``Chairman¡¯¡¯ and ``Rexton.¡¯¡¯
In addition, three electronic companies of the neighboring country are now conducting final negotiations to buy Orion PDP, a subsidiary of Orion Electric Co.
These testify to the brilliant growth of China¡¯s economic power even in the high-tech sector. Just until a few years ago, China had a competitive edge only in low-price goods based on cheap labor force or agricultural products.
In the field of high-tech industry, China had not been considered a competitor of Korea because the former was far behind the latter in technology. Yet, the situation has greatly changed at present. The sensational successful launch of a manned spacecraft two months ago evidences China¡¯s surprising growth in the field of technology.
As a result, China¡¯s national competitiveness is ranked 32nd this year, a five-step rise from the previous year. China is rapidly rising, while the Republic of Korea is falling down.
Needless to say, political corruption, labor unrest and amateurish bureaucracy are to blame for the weakening national competitiveness.
In other words, Korea has increasingly become a bad country to do business in, considering the simple fact that competitiveness of a country mainly depends on corporate competitiveness.
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times.hankooki.com |
